Avedon at Sideshow links to an excellent post on Obama by Ian Welsh, and adds:
Obama had the power to do many, many good things, and he refused every opportunity to do them. He refused to even attempt the most basic steps of negotiation with the opposition, asking not for a higher goal than what we really needed, but a lower goal as a pre-compromise, thus lowering the bar further still. He alleged (when he was trying to get elected) that he believed single-payer was the best way to go, but then he started babbling about the public option before he'd even started making a case for single-payer, having simply declared that passing single-payer wasn't politically feasible. (Oh, yeah? Start pounding it into the general public that everyone in America can get effectively free health care without raising taxes, and see how far Congress gets trying to resist it past the next election.) He even telegraphed to the press that he wasn't even really trying to get his so-called "compromise" of the public option, but instead was hoping the threat of the public option would frighten the insurance companies into slightly softening their viciously predatory and fraudulent practices - which it didn't. If he'd really wanted single-payer, he could of course have spent a lot of time explaining how real socialized medicine actually works in Britain and used it as the scare image of what "the left" was demanding, forcing the not-so-left to welcome single-payer as a longed-for compromise. And that has been his pattern with everything.
And more.
I read through the comments on Welsh's posts, and it seems to me that the Obamabots, while present, are fewer in number and somewhat less vitriolic than they used to be. Maybe they have bigger fish to fry elsewhere, like showing their cojones by jeering at Glenn Beck in comments at alicublog, but maybe they're losing the faith just a bit. But where will they go? The wilderness is cold and scary, and Robert Gibbs will call them names, and they can't stand that. (It's okay for them to call other Democrats names, of course, to say nothing of The Terminader.)
Avedon at Sideshow links to an excellent post on Obama by Ian Welsh, and adds:
Obama had the power to do many, many good things, and he refused every opportunity to do them. He refused to even attempt the most basic steps of negotiation with the opposition, asking not for a higher goal than what we really needed, but a lower goal as a pre-compromise, thus lowering the bar further still. He alleged (when he was trying to get elected) that he believed single-payer was the best way to go, but then he started babbling about the public option before he'd even started making a case for single-payer, having simply declared that passing single-payer wasn't politically feasible. (Oh, yeah? Start pounding it into the general public that everyone in America can get effectively free health care without raising taxes, and see how far Congress gets trying to resist it past the next election.) He even telegraphed to the press that he wasn't even really trying to get his so-called "compromise" of the public option, but instead was hoping the threat of the public option would frighten the insurance companies into slightly softening their viciously predatory and fraudulent practices - which it didn't. If he'd really wanted single-payer, he could of course have spent a lot of time explaining how real socialized medicine actually works in Britain and used it as the scare image of what "the left" was demanding, forcing the not-so-left to welcome single-payer as a longed-for compromise. And that has been his pattern with everything.
And more.
I read through the comments on Welsh's posts, and it seems to me that the Obamabots, while present, are fewer in number and somewhat less vitriolic than they used to be. Maybe they have bigger fish to fry elsewhere, like showing their cojones by jeering at Glenn Beck in comments at alicublog, but maybe they're losing the faith just a bit. But where will they go? The wilderness is cold and scary, and Robert Gibbs will call them names, and they can't stand that. (It's okay for them to call other Democrats names, of course, to say nothing of The Terminader.)
It seems like literally everyone is losing their shit for the latest Cee Lo Green single "Fuck You", but for us it's all about its predecessor, his amazing cover of Band of Horses' "No One's Gonna Love You" that surfaced earlier this summer as a teaser single for Green's forthcoming new album Lady Killer. Dripping with all the desperate desire of the original, Green emotes over a backdrop of epic synths from producer Paul Epworth on one of the more heartwrenching tracks we've heard all year. Complete with a nigh on perfect video from Partizan newcomers Skinny (save for that somewhat cringe dialogue break halfway through), it's one of our favorite singles of the year and the first taste of what's shaping up to be a formidable comeback from Green in 2010.
This is cute, but it's not really a good antithesis. How about "Science lets you bomb civilians from the sky without any danger to you"? Or "Science lets you shred unarmed civilians with machine-gun fire via video in your attack helicopter"? Or "Science lets you kill children with remote-control drones from thousands of miles away"? Or "Science lets you cull the human race of inferior losers through eugenics"?
The September 11 terrorists didn't fly into the World Trade Towers by the power of religion. (Whoa, dude, you mean they totally flew through the air? Praise God!) Like any other good soldiers, they used high technology which enabled them to do much more damage than they could have done by their own muscle power. Scientists have been remarkably willing to put enormous destructive power into the hands of politicians and generals, but that's okay because it's not for scientists to decide these things -- or so they claim. The responsibility isn't theirs alone, of course, but they must shoulder their share.
What's wrong with this bumper sticker is that it deliberately confuses what is at stake. It's not a confusion limited to atheistic scientists, of course. At the beginning of Patience With God, for example, Frank Schaeffer draws the reader this picture of the trouble we're in here in River City:
At a time when Islamist extremists strap bombs to themselves and blow up women and children; when America has just come staggering out of the searing thirty-year-plus embrace of the reactionary, dumb-as-mud Religious Right; and when some people are bullying, harassing, and persecuting gay men and women in the name of religion, it's understandable that the sort of decent people most of us would want for neighbors run from religion. There is a problem, though, for those who flee religion expecting to find sanity in unbelief. The madness never was about religion, let alone caused by faith in God. It was and is about how we evolved and what we evolved into [3].
Now, I'm the kind of atheist who agrees that "the madness never was ... caused by faith in God", since human beings create their gods. "Faith in God" is an effect, not a cause. (Schaeffer, though, still thinks there's a nice God who protects babies.) But look again at those opening clauses: he mentions "extremist" Muslim suicide bombers, but not "extremist" Christian American soldiers killing hajis as payback for 9-11, though American soldiers have killed far more people in the past few decades than Muslim suicide bombers have. America is rich, after all, and can equip its soldiers to kill more effectively and on a much larger scale. I think Schaeffer can now blame Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush for their murderous religiosity, though it will be interesting to see just how far he goes as the book proceeds. But my point is that it's easy and safe to invoke Islamist suicide bombers as a symbol of religious fanaticism, and not so safe or easy to recognize the same fanaticism on our side -- whether "our side" is America, Christianity, or science.
So the bumper sticker that inspired this post really is meant to paper over Western science-driven state terror. Possibly the person who designed it didn't realize that, but if so, he or she is less rational than he or she clearly wants to believe.
This is cute, but it's not really a good antithesis. How about "Science lets you bomb civilians from the sky without any danger to you"? Or "Science lets you shred unarmed civilians with machine-gun fire via video in your attack helicopter"? Or "Science lets you kill children with remote-control drones from thousands of miles away"? Or "Science lets you cull the human race of inferior losers through eugenics"?
The September 11 terrorists didn't fly into the World Trade Towers by the power of religion. (Whoa, dude, you mean they totally flew through the air? Praise God!) Like any other good soldiers, they used high technology which enabled them to do much more damage than they could have done by their own muscle power. Scientists have been remarkably willing to put enormous destructive power into the hands of politicians and generals, but that's okay because it's not for scientists to decide these things -- or so they claim. The responsibility isn't theirs alone, of course, but they must shoulder their share.
What's wrong with this bumper sticker is that it deliberately confuses what is at stake. It's not a confusion limited to atheistic scientists, of course. At the beginning of Patience With God, for example, Frank Schaeffer draws the reader this picture of the trouble we're in here in River City:
At a time when Islamist extremists strap bombs to themselves and blow up women and children; when America has just come staggering out of the searing thirty-year-plus embrace of the reactionary, dumb-as-mud Religious Right; and when some people are bullying, harassing, and persecuting gay men and women in the name of religion, it's understandable that the sort of decent people most of us would want for neighbors run from religion. There is a problem, though, for those who flee religion expecting to find sanity in unbelief. The madness never was about religion, let alone caused by faith in God. It was and is about how we evolved and what we evolved into [3].
Now, I'm the kind of atheist who agrees that "the madness never was ... caused by faith in God", since human beings create their gods. "Faith in God" is an effect, not a cause. (Schaeffer, though, still thinks there's a nice God who protects babies.) But look again at those opening clauses: he mentions "extremist" Muslim suicide bombers, but not "extremist" Christian American soldiers killing hajis as payback for 9-11, though American soldiers have killed far more people in the past few decades than Muslim suicide bombers have. America is rich, after all, and can equip its soldiers to kill more effectively and on a much larger scale. I think Schaeffer can now blame Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush for their murderous religiosity, though it will be interesting to see just how far he goes as the book proceeds. But my point is that it's easy and safe to invoke Islamist suicide bombers as a symbol of religious fanaticism, and not so safe or easy to recognize the same fanaticism on our side -- whether "our side" is America, Christianity, or science.
So the bumper sticker that inspired this post really is meant to paper over Western science-driven state terror. Possibly the person who designed it didn't realize that, but if so, he or she is less rational than he or she clearly wants to believe.
Sinabung Mountain located in the Karo district, North Sumatra erupted twice, overnight. Residents of 14 villages around the volcano were evacuated.
Previously, the community Sinabung did not expect the mountain will erupt as it gets information from officers Climatology Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), that the mountain is still in a safe condition. But suddenly erupts.
Sinabung having an altitude of 2460 meters above sea level began to show its activity by removing the black smoke on Saturday (28 August 2010) yesterday morning.
Because dormant for hundreds of years, many analysts do not predict it, so impressed by a sudden eruption and the government is not ready. And I think the government is less concerned with the natural conditions in Indonesia,a lot happening around the mountain and forest logging activities that do not destroy nature ought to be imitated.
September is historically the worst month for the stock market. The stock market internals continue to weaken and I am keeping my crash helmet on for now. A few fractals in terms of September fireworks follow for those with a current bearish inclination towards equities like myself. First up, 2008 in the S&P 500 ($SPX):
Next up, 2001 in the S&P 500:
Or, an example from way back in 1946 (copied from chartsrus, a great site):
I think ol' Uncle Buck has a fall surprise in store for U.S. Dollar bears (again) and I think this will cause almost all asset classes to fall in a brief deflationary type drop. I am ready with cash, hoping to pick up some Gold miners on sale. My target level remains 40 for the GDX ETF and I expect to get there in the next 1-2 months. I think a disorderly move down in stocks is coming when "Wall Streeters" get back to their desks after Labor Day.
Got your attention, did I? When that title occurred to me today, I didn't know when I'd find a use for it. And then I logged onto Facebook and found this Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, linked by a right-wing acquaintance of mine. The subhead crows, "In 2008 liberals proclaimed the collapse of Reaganism. Two years later the idea of limited government is back in vogue." Of course, I'm not a liberal, so, just to show off, let me quote myself from a year ago:
Driftglass, which has some nice discussion here and here, also shares this video clip and Washington Post article from 1994, when the Republicans, having taken control of Congress, thanked Limbaugh for his services and leadership. In the video you can see Limbaugh pronouncing the final defeat of liberalism: every college should have one liberal and one communist professor, he declares, living fossils who will remind students of what they tried to do to America.
This Nostradamus-like prediction should, I think, be borne in mind now as liberal pundits celebrate the end of the conservative movement. Just on general principles, this is never a good idea. The arch-reactionaries who now define conservatism in the U.S. were supposedly defeated for good when Barry Goldwater was defeated by Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential elections -- but sixteen years later Ronald Reagan proved those claims premature. Yes, the Republicans are in serious disarray now, which suits me just fine, but I don't think that Obama is in office, or that the Democrats now control Congress, because the Democrats or his center-right policies are superior to the Republicans' -- it's because the Republicans screwed up the economy so spectacularly. (I say "the economy" because in foreign policy Obama clearly intends to continue screwing things up as Bush did.) The Dems now have a chance to do better, and I hope their timid approach is enough to right the damage that the Republicans inflicted (with Democratic collaboration), because it doesn't take long for the voters to become disgusted with Democratic ineptitude. In particular, Obama is going to have to stand up to the banking system, but so far he only seems to be interested in throwing more money at it. Clinton was elected in 1992 because of Americans' disillusionment with Reaganomics, and he lost his mandate in just two years.
As I said, liberals have jeered at the right's paltry showing in their tea parties, and it's been entertaining to watch the indignant right-wing response to the jeers: Big trees from little acorns grow! There may be just a few of us now, but there will be more! One, two, many Pinochets! ... And after all, the Civil Rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, the women's movement, the gay movement all started with little bands of nutty extremists. The same is true of the conservative movement William Buckley Jr. built, which ultimately took over this country for three decades. So, for that matter, did Christianity, which is a reminder that, contrary to what one commenter argued at the Village Voice, it is not necessary to have realistic or coherent ideas to build a frighteningly successful movement. Irrationality can be a strength. And forty-seven percent of the electorate voted against Obama last November; they lost the election, but they are not a negligible part of the population.
I said it was premature to celebrate the death of the Right. But did anybody listen to me? Noooooooo!
Anyway, Berkowitz's analysis is wrong from start to finish. American voters in 2008 pretty decisively rejected what he calls "limited government" -- though that's a misnomer for Republican policy since Reagan. "[R]eining in spending, cutting the deficit and spurring economic growth" describes neither the Reagan nor the George W. Bush administration. Bill Clinton cut the deficit by cutting social spending, but without benefiting most Americans economically -- most of the money created by the Internet bubble went to the rich, and the bubble burst just in time for Dubya to take office. (See Robert Pollin's Contours of Descent [Verso, 2003] for more information.) Obama has mostly continued their policies, which is why most Americans are still in bad economic shape. On the other hand, corporate profits -- the only measure that interests Republicans and their Democratic collaborators -- have bounced back since Obama took office, so from Berkowitz' point of view Obama has been doing the right thing, or at least not doing wrong.
The far-right Republican revanchists of the Tea Party never complained about big government, runaway spending, and ballooning deficits while Bush was in office, at least not until he bailed out Wall Street at the end of his second term. (With the cooperation of McCain and Obama, remember.) They only became restive when a brown-skinned Democrat moved into the White House. Unfortunately, given our zero-sum two-party system, those voters who don't want either Republican or Democratic pro-corporate pillaging have few options this November. A defeat for the Democrats won't be a vindication of Republican policies -- if anything, the reverse -- any more than it was in 1994, but the corporate media, the Republicans, and the Democratic Party apparatus will spin it that way.
"In the aftermath of the global economic crisis of 2008, Western liberal democracies have been increasingly forced to come to grips with their propensity to live beyond their means," Berkowitz intones. This is typical right-wing hackery, but it's important to get warmed up for this November, whether the Republicans make electoral gains or not. The global economic crisis was the result of neoliberal economic policies championed by the Republicans in the US and their allies elsewhere. They never had any interest in making governments live within their means -- rather the opposite: the aim was to cut back government revenue (by tax cuts for the richest) in order to rationalize and justify cutbacks in social spending, while continuing to raise deficits, subsidize corporations, and wage war. This would starve the mass of people while enriching the top one percent or so of the population. (See Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine [Holt, 2008] for a fuller account.)
To describe Obama's record as "aggressive progressivism" is absurd, but I'd expect no less from a Wall Street Journal op-ed. For even more fun, read the comments, like this one: "Re-reading this article a day later, I have come to suspect that Peter Berkowitz is a closet progressive." And why? Because Berkowitz allowed that our government's "responsibilities include putting people to work and reigniting the economy—and devising alternatives to ObamaCare that will enable the federal government to cooperate with state governments and the private sector to provide affordable and decent health care", and that
A thoughtful conservatism in America—a prerequisite of a sustainable conservatism—must also recognize that the liberty, democracy and free markets that it seeks to conserve have destabilizing effects. For all their blessings, they breed distrust of order, virtue and tradition, all of which must be cultivated if liberty is to be well-used.
To observe this is not, as some clever progressives think, to have discovered a fatal contradiction at the heart of modern conservatism. It is, rather, to begin to recognize the complexity of the conservative task in a free society.
Working at the Hoover Institution must be a cushy gig, with no thought required, just the ability to shuffle and deal out gaseous cliches. Numerous commenters took vehement exception to his platitudes, however, and to
The Gingrich revolution fizzled, in part because congressional Republicans mistook a popular mandate for moderation as a license to undertake radical change, and in part because they grew complacent and corrupt in the corridors of power.
The "Gingrich revolution fizzled" because most Americans didn't want it -- Gingrich never had a mandate, since voter turnout in the off-year elections of 1994 was typically low. The Republicans capitalized on voters' anger over one of their own programs, the North American Free Trade Agreement, just as they're capitalizing now on the consequences of their policies under Bush and Obama.
My ambivalent Obama-supporter friend just posted this joke to Facebook, from Fark:
Estimates show that there would be fewer jobs and larger deficits under the Republicans' plan. Republicans say that's impossible, they don't have a plan.
Got your attention, did I? When that title occurred to me today, I didn't know when I'd find a use for it. And then I logged onto Facebook and found this Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, linked by a right-wing acquaintance of mine. The subhead crows, "In 2008 liberals proclaimed the collapse of Reaganism. Two years later the idea of limited government is back in vogue." Of course, I'm not a liberal, so, just to show off, let me quote myself from a year ago:
Driftglass, which has some nice discussion here and here, also shares this video clip and Washington Post article from 1994, when the Republicans, having taken control of Congress, thanked Limbaugh for his services and leadership. In the video you can see Limbaugh pronouncing the final defeat of liberalism: every college should have one liberal and one communist professor, he declares, living fossils who will remind students of what they tried to do to America.
This Nostradamus-like prediction should, I think, be borne in mind now as liberal pundits celebrate the end of the conservative movement. Just on general principles, this is never a good idea. The arch-reactionaries who now define conservatism in the U.S. were supposedly defeated for good when Barry Goldwater was defeated by Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential elections -- but sixteen years later Ronald Reagan proved those claims premature. Yes, the Republicans are in serious disarray now, which suits me just fine, but I don't think that Obama is in office, or that the Democrats now control Congress, because the Democrats or his center-right policies are superior to the Republicans' -- it's because the Republicans screwed up the economy so spectacularly. (I say "the economy" because in foreign policy Obama clearly intends to continue screwing things up as Bush did.) The Dems now have a chance to do better, and I hope their timid approach is enough to right the damage that the Republicans inflicted (with Democratic collaboration), because it doesn't take long for the voters to become disgusted with Democratic ineptitude. In particular, Obama is going to have to stand up to the banking system, but so far he only seems to be interested in throwing more money at it. Clinton was elected in 1992 because of Americans' disillusionment with Reaganomics, and he lost his mandate in just two years.
As I said, liberals have jeered at the right's paltry showing in their tea parties, and it's been entertaining to watch the indignant right-wing response to the jeers: Big trees from little acorns grow! There may be just a few of us now, but there will be more! One, two, many Pinochets! ... And after all, the Civil Rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, the women's movement, the gay movement all started with little bands of nutty extremists. The same is true of the conservative movement William Buckley Jr. built, which ultimately took over this country for three decades. So, for that matter, did Christianity, which is a reminder that, contrary to what one commenter argued at the Village Voice, it is not necessary to have realistic or coherent ideas to build a frighteningly successful movement. Irrationality can be a strength. And forty-seven percent of the electorate voted against Obama last November; they lost the election, but they are not a negligible part of the population.
I said it was premature to celebrate the death of the Right. But did anybody listen to me? Noooooooo!
Anyway, Berkowitz's analysis is wrong from start to finish. American voters in 2008 pretty decisively rejected what he calls "limited government" -- though that's a misnomer for Republican policy since Reagan. "[R]eining in spending, cutting the deficit and spurring economic growth" describes neither the Reagan nor the George W. Bush administration. Bill Clinton cut the deficit by cutting social spending, but without benefiting most Americans economically -- most of the money created by the Internet bubble went to the rich, and the bubble burst just in time for Dubya to take office. (See Robert Pollin's Contours of Descent [Verso, 2003] for more information.) Obama has mostly continued their policies, which is why most Americans are still in bad economic shape. On the other hand, corporate profits -- the only measure that interests Republicans and their Democratic collaborators -- have bounced back since Obama took office, so from Berkowitz' point of view Obama has been doing the right thing, or at least not doing wrong.
The far-right Republican revanchists of the Tea Party never complained about big government, runaway spending, and ballooning deficits while Bush was in office, at least not until he bailed out Wall Street at the end of his second term. (With the cooperation of McCain and Obama, remember.) They only became restive when a brown-skinned Democrat moved into the White House. Unfortunately, given our zero-sum two-party system, those voters who don't want either Republican or Democratic pro-corporate pillaging have few options this November. A defeat for the Democrats won't be a vindication of Republican policies -- if anything, the reverse -- any more than it was in 1994, but the corporate media, the Republicans, and the Democratic Party apparatus will spin it that way.
"In the aftermath of the global economic crisis of 2008, Western liberal democracies have been increasingly forced to come to grips with their propensity to live beyond their means," Berkowitz intones. This is typical right-wing hackery, but it's important to get warmed up for this November, whether the Republicans make electoral gains or not. The global economic crisis was the result of neoliberal economic policies championed by the Republicans in the US and their allies elsewhere. They never had any interest in making governments live within their means -- rather the opposite: the aim was to cut back government revenue (by tax cuts for the richest) in order to rationalize and justify cutbacks in social spending, while continuing to raise deficits, subsidize corporations, and wage war. This would starve the mass of people while enriching the top one percent or so of the population. (See Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine [Holt, 2008] for a fuller account.)
To describe Obama's record as "aggressive progressivism" is absurd, but I'd expect no less from a Wall Street Journal op-ed. For even more fun, read the comments, like this one: "Re-reading this article a day later, I have come to suspect that Peter Berkowitz is a closet progressive." And why? Because Berkowitz allowed that our government's "responsibilities include putting people to work and reigniting the economy—and devising alternatives to ObamaCare that will enable the federal government to cooperate with state governments and the private sector to provide affordable and decent health care", and that
A thoughtful conservatism in America—a prerequisite of a sustainable conservatism—must also recognize that the liberty, democracy and free markets that it seeks to conserve have destabilizing effects. For all their blessings, they breed distrust of order, virtue and tradition, all of which must be cultivated if liberty is to be well-used.
To observe this is not, as some clever progressives think, to have discovered a fatal contradiction at the heart of modern conservatism. It is, rather, to begin to recognize the complexity of the conservative task in a free society.
Working at the Hoover Institution must be a cushy gig, with no thought required, just the ability to shuffle and deal out gaseous cliches. Numerous commenters took vehement exception to his platitudes, however, and to
The Gingrich revolution fizzled, in part because congressional Republicans mistook a popular mandate for moderation as a license to undertake radical change, and in part because they grew complacent and corrupt in the corridors of power.
The "Gingrich revolution fizzled" because most Americans didn't want it -- Gingrich never had a mandate, since voter turnout in the off-year elections of 1994 was typically low. The Republicans capitalized on voters' anger over one of their own programs, the North American Free Trade Agreement, just as they're capitalizing now on the consequences of their policies under Bush and Obama.
My ambivalent Obama-supporter friend just posted this joke to Facebook, from Fark:
Estimates show that there would be fewer jobs and larger deficits under the Republicans' plan. Republicans say that's impossible, they don't have a plan.
WARNING: Here There Be Spoylers If you haven't seen this movie but want your first viewing to take place in blissful ignorance of its content, read no further. Georgy Girl isn't really plot-driven, and you can probably enjoy it just fine if you know the story in advance, but if you care, I'm interested in raising questions about it that assume the reader has also seen it (and maybe read the book as well), to compare notes rather than excite the curiosity of those who haven't seen it.
A couple of weeks ago I finally decided to check out the DVD of Georgy Girl from the public library. I'd been listening to songs of the Australian easy-listening group The Seekers, who had a big hit with the highly annoying theme song for the movie, and I was curious to see just what sort of story Georgy Girl had to tell. I expected something like a Richard Lester film, an upbeat fable of an ugly duckling who becomes a bird.
The DVD case encouraged that impression: the top half of the cover has heavily retouched headshots of the four stars, with the women in flip hairstyles and Alan Bates looking like a young and goofy Leonard Cohen. The lower half shows Bates, Lynn Redgrave, and Charlotte Rampling dancing hand-in-hand in colorful outfits. It's not typical of the movie, and in context the dancing scene is ironical: the characters are hoping for a happy outcome (in this case, of Bates's marriage to Rampling) they aren't going to get. And, of course, the film itself is in black-and-white, not pink-tinged color.
The opening credits were a pleasant surprise: Lynn Redgrave saunters (almost swaggers) down a London street, her hair tied back in a loose ponytail, without makeup, wearing a baggy sweater, a leather coat, and midlength culottes over tights. Though not conventionally pretty, she looks wonderful. Some reviewers describe her as "chubby," which she's not, though she's no Twiggy either. The sequence takes a silly turn (though, as I discovered, it's straight out of the book) when she's tempted by the window dressing of an upscale hair salon. She enters, then emerges with her hair in a bouffant beehive, which immediately makes her uncomfortable, so she ducks into a ladies' loo and soaks it down in the sink. A moment later her ponytail is back and she looks happy. To my eyes she looks (and mostly acts) like a real person, not a Hollywood movie character, but then this is not a Hollywood movie -- it's English, from a period when the English film industry was playing with more realist themes and styles, exploring sexual subjects that the US wouldn't deal with for another decade or more. But even so, Redgrave projects a naturalness that almost no one else in the film (except maybe Charlotte Rampling) does: the other main characters are stagy Brit film actors, which isn't necessarily a bad thing (except maybe Alan Bates, whose overacting gets tiresome pretty quickly) but makes Redgrave stand out even more.
Georgy -- short for Georgina Caroline -- is the daughter of Ted and Doris, valet and housekeeper to the wealthy James Leamington and his hypochondriac wife Ellen. Because his own marriage is childless, James (James Mason) has always treated George as his daughter, even sending her to a posh finishing school, and encouraging her headstrong ways. Ted and Doris are embarrassed by her casual assumption of privilege and James's favor, and try to keep her in her place by reminding her that she's too big, fat and ugly for any man to want. In her mid-twenties as the film begins, she lives in a flat of her own, using James's house for the dancing class she teaches to neighborhood children. James, who's always been a womanizer, abruptly asks Georgy to become his mistress. She puts off giving an answer either way.
Georgy shares her flat with the chic, gorgeous Meredith (Charlotte Rampling), a first violinist who sleeps around a great deal. (For those of us who remember the period, all you need to know about Meredith is that the ultra-hip Mary Quant designed her costumes.) Georgy, who has no love or sex life, plays the same role with respect to Meredith that her father plays to James: adoring servant. Among Meredith's many admirers, Jos (Alan Bates), a banker and part-time musician with mod aspirations, has become a regular and befriended Georgy somewhat. When Meredith gets pregnant, presumably by Jos, she realizes she wants a rest from her wild life, so she decides to keep the baby and marry Jos. Georgy is delighted, and expects that the three of them will raise the baby together. Meredith tires of motherhood and Jos even before she gives birth, and in a series of scenes that shocked 1960s audiences and critics, refuses to take care of the baby and insists on putting it up for adoption. Meanwhile, James's wife has died suddenly and unexpectedly, so James upgrades his proposal to Georgy to marriage.
Meanwhile, Jos and Georgy have fallen into an affair, relieving her of her virginity. She wants to keep the baby herself, and manages to block the adoption. Meredith runs off, leaving the baby with Jos and Georgy, but Family Services takes a dim view of cohabitation, and takes the baby away. Jos says he loves Georgy but is too irresponsible to have a relationship with her or his daughter, so he dumps her. This relieved me. I don't see how anyone could have wanted them to stay together, with the characters as they were: Bates's manic overacting, which he would refine to apotheosis in Simon Gray's Butley a few years later, makes Jos a person no one could live with for long. Georgy then agrees to marry James if he'll adopt Meredith's baby, and the film ends with their wedding and Georgy in a white wedding gown in the back seat of James's car, looking as uncertain but determined as Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross would look in the final scene of The Graduate a year later.
So. Even by twenty-first century standards, Georgy Girl is rather strong stuff, flouting all the standards of Christian civilization. That's what makes it interesting. British cinema had explored some of these byroads already in such works as A Taste of Honey (1961), in which an illegitimate working-class girl is impregnated and abandoned by her black sailor boyfriend, then befriended by an effeminate gay boy who wants to take care of her and the baby.
Georgy Girl has aged well. Cohabitation and single parenthood aren't as scandalous now as they were then. Seen from today's perspective, Meredith doesn't seem quite as monstrous as she appeared in the Sixties, though she's still not particularly sympathetic. In a way, she's a throwforward: an independent career woman with no interest in marriage or motherhood, but she lets herself succumb to both in a brief moment of weariness. Such a character couldn't have appeared in an American film of the period, or even later. Georgy may be a great lumpy thing, but to some extent -- not nearly enough -- Second Wave feminism made it easier to appreciate the beauty of women who aren't Charlotte Rampling or Marilyn Monroe, who aren't fragile or femme, who don't wear makeup or spend hours on their hair, and who take up space. Of the contemporary reviewers I've found so far, only Eleanor Perry, writing for Life of all places, really appreciated the character. The New York Times reviewer generously allowed that Redgrave couldn't "be quite as homely as she makes herself in this film. Slimmed down, cosseted in a couture salon ... she could become a comedienne every bit as good as the late Kay Kendall." Pauline Kael, complaining that movies were "out of control," mistook Georgy Girl for a failed conventional comedy. Redgrave herself was a tall woman, "Nearly 6 feet tall, bluntly outspoken and something of a kook," according to this profile from Life.
It's partly because I'm queer myself, of course, but I thought that what Georgy needed was a girlfriend. That's not to say that the filmmakers or the novelist Margaret Forster, who wrote Georgy Girl and cowrote the screenplay, saw her as lesbian or even bisexual. But George's adoration of the beautiful and icy Meredith, her readiness to wait on her, cook for her, and clean up after her, certainly allows a queer reading of the film. (So does her name, which if only in retrospect conjures up Frank Marcus's scandalous 1964 lesbian play The Killing of Sister George, filmed in 1968, and Van Morrison's possibly transvestite "Madame George" from his 1968 album Astral Weeks. What is it with the Brits and these names?) Yes, I know, a big-boned woman shouldn't be stereotyped as a dyke; Georgy wanted to be Meredith, not have her; and so on. But gay and gay-friendly viewers will know that there's not a sharp line between wanting to be and wanting to have, and since movies especially convey a lot of information about a character through appearance, the character as written and as played by Redgrave permit, though she doesn't require, her to be read as lesbian. True, she has an affair with Jos, but many young dykes experiment with (or are pushed into) heterosexuality; I wouldn't say that Georgy was even closeted -- probably she was still too naive to think of sex with a woman as a possibility; and she ends up married to a much older man for convenience. It's not at all outrageous (though too bad if it is) to see Georgy a few years down the line, raising her daughter with a female partner, perhaps after James dies.
After watching Georgy Girl I read the novel (Secker & Warburg, 1965) on which it's based, and I was extremely startled at how faithful the film is to the book, both in spirit and text. Much of the movie dialogue comes verbatim from the book, and even scenes like the one where Georgy submits herself to a hairstylist, or the one where she puts on a gown and makeup and, looking like a drag queen, sings a bawdy torch song to James's party guests, are in the original. (In the book, though, everyone thinks Georgy's performance is amusing; in the film, they're embarrassed. That's the only place where the film really fails the book's spirit.
I was also struck by this bit of backstory in the novel (pages 8-9), describing how Georgy's father Ted had come to work for James in the first place.
James picked Ted up at a music hall. He came to see a little blonde juggler and happened to sit next to Ted, who hadn't come to see anyone in particular. He was what he called "on spec". Ted noticed James, which wasn't surprising as James was very imposing looking, and James noticed Ted, which was surprising because Ted was very ordinary. He was small, seedy and at that time thin because it was 1935 and he was out of work. James wore a beautiful fur coat and a rakish hat tilted over one eye. Ted didn't have a coat of any sort and he had momentarily removed his hat because he had a fixation about not being able to hear properly without it on.They didn't speak during the performance. Ted was too busy thinking what a wicked waste of money his seat was, and James was all keyed up waiting for the blonde juggler.
But at the end they happened to go out together and Ted sort of followed the toff he'd been sitting beside partly because he'd nothing better to do and partly to see what sort of car he had. He looked rich enough and dashing enough to be a car man.The toff went round to the stage door and hung around a bit until he appeared to get fed up and handing a card to the doorkeeper walked briskly off. Ted followed. The car was round the side of the theatre, a big Rover with shiny red upholstery. Ted wanted the car so much that all the saliva rushed into his mouth with desire and he had to spit to get rid of it. It was a very noisy spit. The toff turned round and said "Are you spitting at me?" and Ted almost said "Yes, what you gonna do abaht it" but luckily changed his mind and said "No". Instead he said what a lovely car it was and the toff was all agreeable and offered him a ride which Ted accepted without any ill feeling whatever.
His wife Doris, James's cook and housekeeper, disapproved.
Every now and then they would have a real row and she would scream at him that he'd never dirtied his hands since she married him. Well, he hadn't. His job was a clean job. As James's valet he looked after clothes and he had to be clean. He couldn't make out why she wanted him to go and get some filthy job, as though there was some sort of virtue in dirt. He knew when he was lucky, which was more than she did. He had a soft job, free accommodation, good wages, life-long security and, above all, constant access to James [11].
Again, I think all this supports (though it doesn't require) a gay reading. Not that Ted and James are 'really gay' -- the popular concept of 'fluidity' in sexuality always gets forgotten in cases like this. But what, exactly, happened on the ride they took that night they first met? Add James's sexual frustration at not getting to the blonde juggler he was after to a few drinks and Ted's decision to be acquiescent rather than uppity to this "toff," and a brief sexual connection between the two is quite plausible. The bond was sustained by other factors once Ted married Doris and went to work for James, and I don't suppose that it was sexual after the beginning. But it's remarkable (partly because it's never stated explicitly, as far as I remember) that Ted's subservience to James is mirrored by Georgy's subservience to the glamorous Meredith.
If the idea of even a transient sexual connection between these characters bothers you, fine: put it firmly from your mind. It's not explicit, it's at most a subtext, it probably wasn't in the minds of the writer or the filmmakers, but I think it's a legitimate reading of the story that adds to and thickens the emotional interactions of the characters. It also added to the already considerable pleasure I took in watching the film and reading the novel. Numerous reviewers called Georgy Girl an "ugly duckling" story, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it wasn't. Rather than becoming a normal girly-girl, Georgy remains her ungainly, ugly-duckling self even in her wedding gown. Both the book and film are open-ended, with an unfinished protagonist who still has some growing to do, but will probably turn out all right. That suits me much better than turning her into a swan.
WARNING: Here There Be Spoylers If you haven't seen this movie but want your first viewing to take place in blissful ignorance of its content, read no further. Georgy Girl isn't really plot-driven, and you can probably enjoy it just fine if you know the story in advance, but if you care, I'm interested in raising questions about it that assume the reader has also seen it (and maybe read the book as well), to compare notes rather than excite the curiosity of those who haven't seen it.
A couple of weeks ago I finally decided to check out the DVD of Georgy Girl from the public library. I'd been listening to songs of the Australian easy-listening group The Seekers, who had a big hit with the highly annoying theme song for the movie, and I was curious to see just what sort of story Georgy Girl had to tell. I expected something like a Richard Lester film, an upbeat fable of an ugly duckling who becomes a bird.
The DVD case encouraged that impression: the top half of the cover has heavily retouched headshots of the four stars, with the women in flip hairstyles and Alan Bates looking like a young and goofy Leonard Cohen. The lower half shows Bates, Lynn Redgrave, and Charlotte Rampling dancing hand-in-hand in colorful outfits. It's not typical of the movie, and in context the dancing scene is ironical: the characters are hoping for a happy outcome (in this case, of Bates's marriage to Rampling) they aren't going to get. And, of course, the film itself is in black-and-white, not pink-tinged color.
The opening credits were a pleasant surprise: Lynn Redgrave saunters (almost swaggers) down a London street, her hair tied back in a loose ponytail, without makeup, wearing a baggy sweater, a leather coat, and midlength culottes over tights. Though not conventionally pretty, she looks wonderful. Some reviewers describe her as "chubby," which she's not, though she's no Twiggy either. The sequence takes a silly turn (though, as I discovered, it's straight out of the book) when she's tempted by the window dressing of an upscale hair salon. She enters, then emerges with her hair in a bouffant beehive, which immediately makes her uncomfortable, so she ducks into a ladies' loo and soaks it down in the sink. A moment later her ponytail is back and she looks happy. To my eyes she looks (and mostly acts) like a real person, not a Hollywood movie character, but then this is not a Hollywood movie -- it's English, from a period when the English film industry was playing with more realist themes and styles, exploring sexual subjects that the US wouldn't deal with for another decade or more. But even so, Redgrave projects a naturalness that almost no one else in the film (except maybe Charlotte Rampling) does: the other main characters are stagy Brit film actors, which isn't necessarily a bad thing (except maybe Alan Bates, whose overacting gets tiresome pretty quickly) but makes Redgrave stand out even more.
Georgy -- short for Georgina Caroline -- is the daughter of Ted and Doris, valet and housekeeper to the wealthy James Leamington and his hypochondriac wife Ellen. Because his own marriage is childless, James (James Mason) has always treated George as his daughter, even sending her to a posh finishing school, and encouraging her headstrong ways. Ted and Doris are embarrassed by her casual assumption of privilege and James's favor, and try to keep her in her place by reminding her that she's too big, fat and ugly for any man to want. In her mid-twenties as the film begins, she lives in a flat of her own, using James's house for the dancing class she teaches to neighborhood children. James, who's always been a womanizer, abruptly asks Georgy to become his mistress. She puts off giving an answer either way.
Georgy shares her flat with the chic, gorgeous Meredith (Charlotte Rampling), a first violinist who sleeps around a great deal. (For those of us who remember the period, all you need to know about Meredith is that the ultra-hip Mary Quant designed her costumes.) Georgy, who has no love or sex life, plays the same role with respect to Meredith that her father plays to James: adoring servant. Among Meredith's many admirers, Jos (Alan Bates), a banker and part-time musician with mod aspirations, has become a regular and befriended Georgy somewhat. When Meredith gets pregnant, presumably by Jos, she realizes she wants a rest from her wild life, so she decides to keep the baby and marry Jos. Georgy is delighted, and expects that the three of them will raise the baby together. Meredith tires of motherhood and Jos even before she gives birth, and in a series of scenes that shocked 1960s audiences and critics, refuses to take care of the baby and insists on putting it up for adoption. Meanwhile, James's wife has died suddenly and unexpectedly, so James upgrades his proposal to Georgy to marriage.
Meanwhile, Jos and Georgy have fallen into an affair, relieving her of her virginity. She wants to keep the baby herself, and manages to block the adoption. Meredith runs off, leaving the baby with Jos and Georgy, but Family Services takes a dim view of cohabitation, and takes the baby away. Jos says he loves Georgy but is too irresponsible to have a relationship with her or his daughter, so he dumps her. This relieved me. I don't see how anyone could have wanted them to stay together, with the characters as they were: Bates's manic overacting, which he would refine to apotheosis in Simon Gray's Butley a few years later, makes Jos a person no one could live with for long. Georgy then agrees to marry James if he'll adopt Meredith's baby, and the film ends with their wedding and Georgy in a white wedding gown in the back seat of James's car, looking as uncertain but determined as Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross would look in the final scene of The Graduate a year later.
So. Even by twenty-first century standards, Georgy Girl is rather strong stuff, flouting all the standards of Christian civilization. That's what makes it interesting. British cinema had explored some of these byroads already in such works as A Taste of Honey (1961), in which an illegitimate working-class girl is impregnated and abandoned by her black sailor boyfriend, then befriended by an effeminate gay boy who wants to take care of her and the baby.
Georgy Girl has aged well. Cohabitation and single parenthood aren't as scandalous now as they were then. Seen from today's perspective, Meredith doesn't seem quite as monstrous as she appeared in the Sixties, though she's still not particularly sympathetic. In a way, she's a throwforward: an independent career woman with no interest in marriage or motherhood, but she lets herself succumb to both in a brief moment of weariness. Such a character couldn't have appeared in an American film of the period, or even later. Georgy may be a great lumpy thing, but to some extent -- not nearly enough -- Second Wave feminism made it easier to appreciate the beauty of women who aren't Charlotte Rampling or Marilyn Monroe, who aren't fragile or femme, who don't wear makeup or spend hours on their hair, and who take up space. Of the contemporary reviewers I've found so far, only Eleanor Perry, writing for Life of all places, really appreciated the character. The New York Times reviewer generously allowed that Redgrave couldn't "be quite as homely as she makes herself in this film. Slimmed down, cosseted in a couture salon ... she could become a comedienne every bit as good as the late Kay Kendall." Pauline Kael, complaining that movies were "out of control," mistook Georgy Girl for a failed conventional comedy. Redgrave herself was a tall woman, "Nearly 6 feet tall, bluntly outspoken and something of a kook," according to this profile from Life.
It's partly because I'm queer myself, of course, but I thought that what Georgy needed was a girlfriend. That's not to say that the filmmakers or the novelist Margaret Forster, who wrote Georgy Girl and cowrote the screenplay, saw her as lesbian or even bisexual. But George's adoration of the beautiful and icy Meredith, her readiness to wait on her, cook for her, and clean up after her, certainly allows a queer reading of the film. (So does her name, which if only in retrospect conjures up Frank Marcus's scandalous 1964 lesbian play The Killing of Sister George, filmed in 1968, and Van Morrison's possibly transvestite "Madame George" from his 1968 album Astral Weeks. What is it with the Brits and these names?) Yes, I know, a big-boned woman shouldn't be stereotyped as a dyke; Georgy wanted to be Meredith, not have her; and so on. But gay and gay-friendly viewers will know that there's not a sharp line between wanting to be and wanting to have, and since movies especially convey a lot of information about a character through appearance, the character as written and as played by Redgrave permit, though she doesn't require, her to be read as lesbian. True, she has an affair with Jos, but many young dykes experiment with (or are pushed into) heterosexuality; I wouldn't say that Georgy was even closeted -- probably she was still too naive to think of sex with a woman as a possibility; and she ends up married to a much older man for convenience. It's not at all outrageous (though too bad if it is) to see Georgy a few years down the line, raising her daughter with a female partner, perhaps after James dies.
After watching Georgy Girl I read the novel (Secker & Warburg, 1965) on which it's based, and I was extremely startled at how faithful the film is to the book, both in spirit and text. Much of the movie dialogue comes verbatim from the book, and even scenes like the one where Georgy submits herself to a hairstylist, or the one where she puts on a gown and makeup and, looking like a drag queen, sings a bawdy torch song to James's party guests, are in the original. (In the book, though, everyone thinks Georgy's performance is amusing; in the film, they're embarrassed. That's the only place where the film really fails the book's spirit.
I was also struck by this bit of backstory in the novel (pages 8-9), describing how Georgy's father Ted had come to work for James in the first place.
James picked Ted up at a music hall. He came to see a little blonde juggler and happened to sit next to Ted, who hadn't come to see anyone in particular. He was what he called "on spec". Ted noticed James, which wasn't surprising as James was very imposing looking, and James noticed Ted, which was surprising because Ted was very ordinary. He was small, seedy and at that time thin because it was 1935 and he was out of work. James wore a beautiful fur coat and a rakish hat tilted over one eye. Ted didn't have a coat of any sort and he had momentarily removed his hat because he had a fixation about not being able to hear properly without it on.They didn't speak during the performance. Ted was too busy thinking what a wicked waste of money his seat was, and James was all keyed up waiting for the blonde juggler.
But at the end they happened to go out together and Ted sort of followed the toff he'd been sitting beside partly because he'd nothing better to do and partly to see what sort of car he had. He looked rich enough and dashing enough to be a car man.The toff went round to the stage door and hung around a bit until he appeared to get fed up and handing a card to the doorkeeper walked briskly off. Ted followed. The car was round the side of the theatre, a big Rover with shiny red upholstery. Ted wanted the car so much that all the saliva rushed into his mouth with desire and he had to spit to get rid of it. It was a very noisy spit. The toff turned round and said "Are you spitting at me?" and Ted almost said "Yes, what you gonna do abaht it" but luckily changed his mind and said "No". Instead he said what a lovely car it was and the toff was all agreeable and offered him a ride which Ted accepted without any ill feeling whatever.
His wife Doris, James's cook and housekeeper, disapproved.
Every now and then they would have a real row and she would scream at him that he'd never dirtied his hands since she married him. Well, he hadn't. His job was a clean job. As James's valet he looked after clothes and he had to be clean. He couldn't make out why she wanted him to go and get some filthy job, as though there was some sort of virtue in dirt. He knew when he was lucky, which was more than she did. He had a soft job, free accommodation, good wages, life-long security and, above all, constant access to James [11].
Again, I think all this supports (though it doesn't require) a gay reading. Not that Ted and James are 'really gay' -- the popular concept of 'fluidity' in sexuality always gets forgotten in cases like this. But what, exactly, happened on the ride they took that night they first met? Add James's sexual frustration at not getting to the blonde juggler he was after to a few drinks and Ted's decision to be acquiescent rather than uppity to this "toff," and a brief sexual connection between the two is quite plausible. The bond was sustained by other factors once Ted married Doris and went to work for James, and I don't suppose that it was sexual after the beginning. But it's remarkable (partly because it's never stated explicitly, as far as I remember) that Ted's subservience to James is mirrored by Georgy's subservience to the glamorous Meredith.
If the idea of even a transient sexual connection between these characters bothers you, fine: put it firmly from your mind. It's not explicit, it's at most a subtext, it probably wasn't in the minds of the writer or the filmmakers, but I think it's a legitimate reading of the story that adds to and thickens the emotional interactions of the characters. It also added to the already considerable pleasure I took in watching the film and reading the novel. Numerous reviewers called Georgy Girl an "ugly duckling" story, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it wasn't. Rather than becoming a normal girly-girl, Georgy remains her ungainly, ugly-duckling self even in her wedding gown. Both the book and film are open-ended, with an unfinished protagonist who still has some growing to do, but will probably turn out all right. That suits me much better than turning her into a swan.
Katherine Jackson -- who has custody of Michael's three children, Prince, Paris and Blanket, 8 -- has been working hard to provide the kids with a more normal upbringing since their father's tragic passing. In June, Jackson's kids were spotted going door-to-door as Jehovah's Witnesses.
I'm the last person to stump for normality, but I'm experiencing some cognitive dissonance here.
And it continues. The two oldest Jackson children have been homeschooled, but now they're going to be exposed to "traditional schooling."
The Buckley School is an exclusive private school with scads of famous alumni: Matthew Perry, Alyssa Milano, Nicole Richie, Nicollette Sheridan, Laura Dern, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian all attended.
I guess the meaning of "normal" here is to prep them for a career of reality TV and cocaine busts. Well, I'm sure Grandma knows best.
Katherine Jackson -- who has custody of Michael's three children, Prince, Paris and Blanket, 8 -- has been working hard to provide the kids with a more normal upbringing since their father's tragic passing. In June, Jackson's kids were spotted going door-to-door as Jehovah's Witnesses.
I'm the last person to stump for normality, but I'm experiencing some cognitive dissonance here.
And it continues. The two oldest Jackson children have been homeschooled, but now they're going to be exposed to "traditional schooling."
The Buckley School is an exclusive private school with scads of famous alumni: Matthew Perry, Alyssa Milano, Nicole Richie, Nicollette Sheridan, Laura Dern, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian all attended.
I guess the meaning of "normal" here is to prep them for a career of reality TV and cocaine busts. Well, I'm sure Grandma knows best.
At long last the time has come, friends. Ellie Goulding finally hits our fair shores next month, playing her debut US shows at The Roxy in LA and New York City's Hiro Ballroom. We're thrilled to be putting on the latter, going down on September 30th and presented in conjunction with Bowery Presents. And as if Ellie's first US show wasn't exciting enough as is, we've also got our main man Penguin Prison opening up the night with his high octane brand of soulful electro, making this one of the absolute hottest tickets in town. Seriously, this is going to be HUGE. Tickets are on sale now but will no doubt go fast, so cruise on over to Bowery's site to cop your tickets NOW.
Russ Chimes upcoming Midnight Club EP and its accompanying short films have us besides ourselves with excitement, and now that the first installment has dropped we're pleased to report it doesn't disappoint. Brilliant non-linear filmmaking from director Saman Keshavarz set to another absolute burner from Monsieur Chimes. We seriously can't wait for parts two and three to arrive in the coming weeks, loving everything about this project.
So I went back to the beginning of Frank Schaeffer's Patience With God. He says that when he plays with his five-month-old granddaughter Lucy,
I find myself praying, "Lord, may none but loving arms ever hold her." This prayer has nothing to do with theology. I'd pray it whether I believed there is a God or not, for the same reason that when I'm looking at the view of the river that flows past her home I sometimes exclaim, "That's beautiful!" out loud, even when I'm alone [ix].
Maybe it's the same reason, but what is the reason? Schaeffer doesn't like the New Atheists any more than he likes fundamentalists, but New Atheist Daniel Dennett has written that, after a sudden health crisis that nearly killed him,
I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say "Thank goodness!" this is not merely a euphemism for "Thank God!" (We atheists don't believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now.
To whom, then, do I owe a debt of gratitude? To the cardiologist who has kept me alive and ticking for years, and who swiftly and confidently rejected the original diagnosis of nothing worse than pneumonia. To the surgeons, neurologists, anesthesiologists, and the perfusionist, who kept my systems going for many hours under daunting circumstances. ...
The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God is that there really are lots of ways of repaying your debt to goodness—by setting out to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come. Goodness comes in many forms, not just medicine and science. Thank goodness for the music of, say, Randy Newman, which could not exist without all those wonderful pianos and recording studios, to say nothing of the musical contributions of every great composer from Bach through Wagner to Scott Joplin and the Beatles. Thank goodness for fresh drinking water in the tap, and food on our table. Thank goodness for fair elections and truthful journalism. If you want to express your gratitude to goodness, you can plant a tree, feed an orphan, buy books for schoolgirls in the Islamic world, or contribute in thousands of other ways to the manifest improvement of life on this planet now and in the near future.
The trouble is, "goodness" is no more a real thing than, say, God. It's an impersonal abstraction, and you can neither thank it, nor owe it a debt. All those people who kept Dennett alive are not "goodness." "Goodness" didn't give us Randy Newman's music, nor fresh water nor fair elections (do those exist?), any more than God did. By doing good things, I am not trying to "repay my debt to goodness." At most I'm repaying other people who've done good things, but if I create goodness, I do it for its own sake, because creating goodness is both subjectively pleasant to do and objectively useful.
More serious, though, there's widespread disagreement as to what "goodness" is. Dennett appears to be blissfully (and remarkably, for a professional philosopher) unaware of this. Even among atheists there's no consensus. Dennett thinks it would be good to "cage" and "quarantine" theists who get in the way of his scientific triumphalism. Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris think it's good to kill ragheads. Ayn Rand thought that selfishness (as she very tendentiously defined it) is the paramount human good. Once theists get beyond generalities like loving and serving their gods, they too get bogged down in details. "Kill them all, let God sort them out" is a good for many theists. Divorce? Homosexuality? Wealth? Family? Believers prefer to sweep these issues under the rug, but they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. But neither should atheists.
It's natural for human beings to personify the impersonal, and there's no harm in saying "Thank goodness" (though I don't think I agree with Dennett that the phrase is not merely a euphemism for "Thank God!", any more than "God" is a euphemism for "goodness," though some believers use it that way). It seems reasonable to me to want to thank someone for good or beautiful or pleasurable things in our lives that don't come from specific, identifiable persons -- but there's no one and nothing to thank for the beauty of a sunset or the river that flows past your house. "I prefer real good to symbolic good," Dennett declares, but "goodness"as he's using the word is symbolic good. Ah, my fellow atheists are such an embarrassment to me sometimes.
So back to Schaeffer. I'm not a parent or a grandparent, but I don't need to be to feel the same way about babies and young children, about human happiness in all its fragility. I hope too that such happiness and beauty will last, though I also know it won't. (In the long run, John Maynard Keynes said, we are all dead.) But the last person I'd ask to preserve these things is the god Schaeffer prays to, a being who kills babies and children and adults and old people without mercy, often stretching out their suffering to a horrifying extent. (Schaeffer, who survived childhood polio, knows this very personally.) It's easy to feel gratitude toward a god when you're dandling a healthy, happy baby; not so easy when you're burying that baby after it dies of one of the diseases to which your god made babies so vulnerable. It's easy to be dazzled by Nature when you see a picturesque landscape; not so easy when Nature rears up and drowns you and your whole family. I've mentioned before my agreement with the Peter De Vries character who'd rather deal with an empty universe than with a universe under the sway of an omnipotent, omniscient Someone who sees horrible things happening and does nothing about them.
Schaeffer declares at the outset in Patience with God that he's writing for people who believe in God already, but are put off by nasty fundamentalists, bible-thumpers, preachers of hate. Preachers like Jesus, if he was paying attention. It seems that he's going for a feel-good religion that won't make many demands on him -- sort of like Philip Kitcher, an equally moderate, middle-of-the-road atheist. That's fine with me to a point: I too want to feel good, and I want everyone else to feel good too. But in the world Frank Schaeffer and I share, life isn't always like that. Whether you believe in gods or not, it seems to me that your engagement with life has to address the bad things as well as the good, the pain as well as the pleasure, the misery as well as the joy. I'm now curious to see if Schaeffer will grapple with the wholeness of life in this book, but it doesn't look promising. His main approach so far is to blame other people (and the occasional marginal biblical book) for everything that goes wrong, but any half-trained philosopher could tell him that won't work.
So I went back to the beginning of Frank Schaeffer's Patience With God. He says that when he plays with his five-month-old granddaughter Lucy,
I find myself praying, "Lord, may none but loving arms ever hold her." This prayer has nothing to do with theology. I'd pray it whether I believed there is a God or not, for the same reason that when I'm looking at the view of the river that flows past her home I sometimes exclaim, "That's beautiful!" out loud, even when I'm alone [ix].
Maybe it's the same reason, but what is the reason? Schaeffer doesn't like the New Atheists any more than he likes fundamentalists, but New Atheist Daniel Dennett has written that, after a sudden health crisis that nearly killed him,
I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say "Thank goodness!" this is not merely a euphemism for "Thank God!" (We atheists don't believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now.
To whom, then, do I owe a debt of gratitude? To the cardiologist who has kept me alive and ticking for years, and who swiftly and confidently rejected the original diagnosis of nothing worse than pneumonia. To the surgeons, neurologists, anesthesiologists, and the perfusionist, who kept my systems going for many hours under daunting circumstances. ...
The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God is that there really are lots of ways of repaying your debt to goodness—by setting out to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come. Goodness comes in many forms, not just medicine and science. Thank goodness for the music of, say, Randy Newman, which could not exist without all those wonderful pianos and recording studios, to say nothing of the musical contributions of every great composer from Bach through Wagner to Scott Joplin and the Beatles. Thank goodness for fresh drinking water in the tap, and food on our table. Thank goodness for fair elections and truthful journalism. If you want to express your gratitude to goodness, you can plant a tree, feed an orphan, buy books for schoolgirls in the Islamic world, or contribute in thousands of other ways to the manifest improvement of life on this planet now and in the near future.
The trouble is, "goodness" is no more a real thing than, say, God. It's an impersonal abstraction, and you can neither thank it, nor owe it a debt. All those people who kept Dennett alive are not "goodness." "Goodness" didn't give us Randy Newman's music, nor fresh water nor fair elections (do those exist?), any more than God did. By doing good things, I am not trying to "repay my debt to goodness." At most I'm repaying other people who've done good things, but if I create goodness, I do it for its own sake, because creating goodness is both subjectively pleasant to do and objectively useful.
More serious, though, there's widespread disagreement as to what "goodness" is. Dennett appears to be blissfully (and remarkably, for a professional philosopher) unaware of this. Even among atheists there's no consensus. Dennett thinks it would be good to "cage" and "quarantine" theists who get in the way of his scientific triumphalism. Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris think it's good to kill ragheads. Ayn Rand thought that selfishness (as she very tendentiously defined it) is the paramount human good. Once theists get beyond generalities like loving and serving their gods, they too get bogged down in details. "Kill them all, let God sort them out" is a good for many theists. Divorce? Homosexuality? Wealth? Family? Believers prefer to sweep these issues under the rug, but they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. But neither should atheists.
It's natural for human beings to personify the impersonal, and there's no harm in saying "Thank goodness" (though I don't think I agree with Dennett that the phrase is not merely a euphemism for "Thank God!", any more than "God" is a euphemism for "goodness," though some believers use it that way). It seems reasonable to me to want to thank someone for good or beautiful or pleasurable things in our lives that don't come from specific, identifiable persons -- but there's no one and nothing to thank for the beauty of a sunset or the river that flows past your house. "I prefer real good to symbolic good," Dennett declares, but "goodness"as he's using the word is symbolic good. Ah, my fellow atheists are such an embarrassment to me sometimes.
So back to Schaeffer. I'm not a parent or a grandparent, but I don't need to be to feel the same way about babies and young children, about human happiness in all its fragility. I hope too that such happiness and beauty will last, though I also know it won't. (In the long run, John Maynard Keynes said, we are all dead.) But the last person I'd ask to preserve these things is the god Schaeffer prays to, a being who kills babies and children and adults and old people without mercy, often stretching out their suffering to a horrifying extent. (Schaeffer, who survived childhood polio, knows this very personally.) It's easy to feel gratitude toward a god when you're dandling a healthy, happy baby; not so easy when you're burying that baby after it dies of one of the diseases to which your god made babies so vulnerable. It's easy to be dazzled by Nature when you see a picturesque landscape; not so easy when Nature rears up and drowns you and your whole family. I've mentioned before my agreement with the Peter De Vries character who'd rather deal with an empty universe than with a universe under the sway of an omnipotent, omniscient Someone who sees horrible things happening and does nothing about them.
Schaeffer declares at the outset in Patience with God that he's writing for people who believe in God already, but are put off by nasty fundamentalists, bible-thumpers, preachers of hate. Preachers like Jesus, if he was paying attention. It seems that he's going for a feel-good religion that won't make many demands on him -- sort of like Philip Kitcher, an equally moderate, middle-of-the-road atheist. That's fine with me to a point: I too want to feel good, and I want everyone else to feel good too. But in the world Frank Schaeffer and I share, life isn't always like that. Whether you believe in gods or not, it seems to me that your engagement with life has to address the bad things as well as the good, the pain as well as the pleasure, the misery as well as the joy. I'm now curious to see if Schaeffer will grapple with the wholeness of life in this book, but it doesn't look promising. His main approach so far is to blame other people (and the occasional marginal biblical book) for everything that goes wrong, but any half-trained philosopher could tell him that won't work.
Avedon at Sideshow links to an excellent post on Obama by Ian Welsh, and adds:
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