The Dog Is Alive

Stewdog is still alive and off leash. For some reason, and I can't seem to put my finger on it, I just have not been motivated to write anything about politics. I shall continue to bury my head, act locally to try to improve my neighborhood, and follow the Cardinals!

"Cousin Bill's Game of Chicken"

Here. Enjoy.

Getting medieval on their hindquarters

Professor Michael Drout begins a crusade to defend the proposition that the study of the medieval history and literature is -- gasp! -- at least as important as the study of more modern or "contemporary" history.

The posse is forming. Hee Haw!

Marilynne Robinson interview

Here's a fascinating interview with Marilynne Robinson in The Paris Review.

Robinson comments on religion as a way of orienting oneself toward the world and describes culture as the "skeleton" of meaning:

INTERVIEWER
Ames [the narrator of Gilead] believes that one of the benefits of religion is “it helps you concentrate. It gives you a good basic sense of what is being asked of you and also what you might as well ignore.” Is this something that your faith and religious practice has done for you?

ROBINSON
Religion is a framing mechanism. It is a language of orientation that presents itself as a series of questions. It talks about the arc of life and the quality of experience in ways that I’ve found fruitful to think about. Religion has been profoundly effective in enlarging human imagination and expression. It’s only very recently that you couldn’t see how the high arts are intimately connected to religion.

INTERVIEWER
Is this frame of religion something we’ve lost?

ROBINSON
There was a time when people felt as if structure in most forms were a constraint and they attacked it, which in a culture is like an autoimmune problem: the organism is not allowing itself the conditions of its own existence. We’re cultural creatures and meaning doesn’t simply generate itself out of thin air; it’s sustained by a cultural framework. It’s like deciding how much more interesting it would be if you had no skeleton: you could just slide under the door.

And when was the last time you heard a critically-acclaimed contemporary author speaking favorably about John Calvin?

Robinson is a Christian whose faith is not easily reduced to generalities. Calvin’s thought has had a strong influence on her, and she depicts him in her essays as a misunderstood humanist, likening his “secularizing tendencies” to the “celebrations of the human one finds in Emerson and Whitman.”

Her book of essays is called The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought.

Withywindle on Booker T. Washington and a counter-canon of great Black Americans

Withywindle's recent post responding to Eric Holder's canon of great Black Americans is a must-read:

And then Booker T. Washington. What to say? I object more to ignoring him, and his work for Black Americans; I’m not actually inclined to say Yay, Booker; Boo, DuBois. He shouldn’t be forgotten, but neither do I say that his is the one true path. Surely Washington and DuBois were the great complements, both necessary for the liberation of Black Americans?

But more than that: how can one look at Washington’s accommodations and not perceive the strength of character it took to make them? How can you look at the soft voice and think “Uncle Tom”, rather than recognize the iron will that made that voice soft? I am reminded of Gottfried Lessing’s Nathan the Wise - Nathan the Jew, an endlessly patient plaster saint of a man, whose endurance of Christian prejudice eventually redeems the Christian characters. Oh, joy, being effeminately virtuous for other people’s benefit – I’m told various Black Americans have tired of that role too. But there is a bit in the play worth focusing on:

"You found me at Darun – the child and you.
You did not know that Christians just before
Had murdered all the Jews that were in Gath –
Men, women, children; knew not that my wife
And sons, seven hopeful sons, were there among them,
And in my brother’s house, where they had fled
For safety, had to perish in the flames. ....
Three days and nights I’d lain
In dust and ashes before God, and wept
When you arrived. Wept? I had wrestled hard
At times with God; had stormed and raved; had cursed
Myself and all the world; had sworn a hate
Against the Christians, unappeasable. ....
Gradually my reason
Returned to me. She spoke with gentle voice:
'And yet God is: e’en this was God’s decree!
Up, then! and practise what you’ve long believed
To practise cannot be more difficult
Than to believe, if you but will. Rise up!'
I stood erect and cried to God: 'I will!'"

Nathan is not just a plaster saint, but a man who has known unappeasable hate, wrestled hard with God. Who can look at Washington’s life and think he was different? That his soft words were any less hard won than Nathan’s? My God, the man lived in a furnace all his life and burnt himself out for his people; and he is to be without honor in his own country? Not if I can help it.

Read the whole thing.

Sadly, this doesn't surprise me . . .

When "liberals" make "outsourcing" jokes about Bobby Jindal, or impersonate Indian customer service representatives, or make Slumdog Millionaire cracks about Bobby Jindal, it's not ugly racism, it's . . . it's . . . um, help me out here.

Okay, now I'm angry!

What the heck is wrong with the name Frank, Mrs. Obama?

The first lady said her daughters will have to wait until the end of April to get the dog, since her family is planning on going away for Spring Break.

The only thing left to pick is the name, and Mrs. Obama said she is not a fan of her daughters’ choices.

“There are names floating around and they're bad," Mrs. Obama said in the interview. "You listen and you go – like, I think, Frank was one of them. Frank! Moose was another one of them. Moose. I said, well, what if the dog isn't a moose? Moose. I'm like, no, come on, let's work with the names a little bit."

UPDATE: Thank you, Arethusa.

Looking backwards

Alpheus explains why those "backward-looking" conservatives may have the right idea.

UPDATE: The always-thoughtful Withywindle continues the discussion here.

Of new languages and second souls . . .

Here's Jeff Sypeck being brilliant, as usual.

Comedy Gold

Student "protesters" at NYU occupy the student food court, and then proudly videotape the hilarious failure of their "revolution". I think my favorite part comes toward the end when they're videotaping the contents of their backpacks -- presumably to protect themselves against having their adolescent status symbols confiscated by The Man. As they sift through yards of Macbooks and headphones and cords and gadgetry, their whiny spokeskid suggests that the authorities probably won't want their bottles of water, because "they" only drink "corporate water."

UPDATE: From Stuff White People Like:

On the surface, you would ask yourself how white people could love a multibillion-dollar company with manufacturing plants in China and mass production, and that contributes to global pollution through the manufacture of consumer electronic devices. The simple answer: Apple products tell the world you are creative and unique. They are an exclusive product line only used by every white college student, designer, writer, English teacher, and hipster on the planet.

How's that change thing working out for you?

Obama administration upholds Bush policy on detainees in Afghanistan.