I have long thought that every generation believes theirs to be the worst, and every generation is right. But that does not mean that things only get worse. My experience of life indicates that things are ever getting different. And for conservatives souls, which all humans are, this is bad. I’ve long noted that when at the grocery store the day before the Super Bowl when there are 12 check stands open, that everyone would choose, if they could, to get into a single queue. The mad rush to find the best stand is not about getting ahead of others but only about maintaining their rightful place.

It is only reptiles and vicious beasts who will not share a kill that they cannot eat all by themselves. We are, at base, cooperative creatures that want nothing more than our due. And when we behave badly it is not because we are greedy but because we fear others’ greed.

If this time seems worse than times we remember, it is because we inevitably lose our connection to each other, and thus our belief in each other. But none of this really matters, and anyway: Dickens was right about our times and ourselves:

Don’t expect me to be so cheery tomorrow.

I decided, for reasons not all together clear to me, that I ought to read a little Anne Brontë. I certainly wasn’t going to read any Lord Byron wannabe poetry, so that left me with her two novels: Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Andrea told me that the latter was better and so I picked up a copy at the library today. I mentioned to the librarian that I figured I should read “the other Brontë” and she asked if I had read the brother. I had not. All I knew of him was that he was an opium addict, and I said as much.

I wish I hadn’t. It seems clear that had he been an opium addict, it was probably to medicate his undiagnosed tuberculosis. We tend to forget in this modern age of pill variety, where those with erectile dysfunction have a large choice of pills to take, that it was not always so. Indeed, most of the push during the 19th century to develop drugs from morphine to heroin came from a desire to treat tuberculosis. Even today, there really isn’t an effective cure and if you aren’t dying from it, it is probably more due to public health measures than anything.

Now I can say that I have read Branwell Brontë. And I can see why he is generally referred to as an artist rather than a poet. The painting in this article is an example of his work. This is Anne, Emily, and Charlotte—from left to right. But if you look in the space between Emily and Charlotte, you can see a kind of ghostly figure. This apparently was where Branwell originally painted himself. Later he decided to paint over himself. This could have been because he didn’t think it was very good. But I prefer to think that this is what a tortured soul like him would do. He was 31 when he died.

All the Brontë children died young: Charlotte at 38, Emily at 30, and Anne at 29. Anne also died of tuberculosis shortly after her brother, so she probably got it from him. This has led me to speculate that the Family had bad genes, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. Their father, Patrick Brontë, lived to be 84 years old. He outlived his wife, Maria, by almost 50 years.

As for the writing of the Brontë’s, I used to be very fond of both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. But I’ve cooled off on them. Jane Eyre has too much nonsense in it (like the first 100 pages and the last 100 pages) to make up for the good parts. And Wuthering Heights is just 400 pages of foggy mood. But The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has potential. It starts well enough:

And you must know by now: I will let you know.

In my ongoing efforts to destroy any joy you might have during holidays or other gift-buying opportunities, I thought I’d say a few words about Valentine’s Day.

When I was confirmed in the Catholic Church, my mother bought me a book of saints. It amazes me to this day that I managed to get this far in the Catholic Church knowing almost nothing about the Catholic Church. I knew about St. Francis, of course. Partly, this was because I shared his name. Mostly, however, it was because I was crazy for Theater of the Absurd and I had read Tiny Alice. But the thing is, Francis of Assisi was an exception for a Saint—in terms of his death; like the rest, he was a nut-job. The book of saints showed that the normal way to become a saint was to get murdered, usually in a suicidal effort to push your religious beliefs in the faces of others.

And so we come to St. Valentine. Unfortunately, St. Valentine was not one guy, but two or maybe three. The early church was not good at keeping records.

First, there is Valentine of Rome. According to Catholic Online:

That’s how I want to go: beaten with clubs in defense of an imaginary god! You go, priest!

Second, there is Valentine of Turni, who was born around 175 AD in Turni, Italy. Check out this bit of information from Saints.SQNP [Bold mine]:

Okay, more of the same: tortured, beheaded; the usual things you associate with Valentine’s Day. But dig that last sentence! Some scholars think that a guy who died around 197 AD might be the same guy who died around 270 AD. They aren’t even sure that these guys who lived almost a century apart aren’t the same. And they think we should believe them about Jesus who supposedly lived 200 years earlier. Amazing!

Have a happy Valentine’s day! Do your part for the chocolate, flower, and greeting card industries. But just remember: real men were beheaded so you could have this day. So keep their headless corpses in your mind while you enjoy this day with your special someone. And if you don’t have a special someone, go find a cop to abuse; I’m sure he’ll be happy to beat you to death with a club.

Watch Ezra Klein hosting The Rachel Maddow Show:

Or read this blog posting by him:

Comparing taxes under Obama’s and Romney’s budgets

But don’t do both. You see, they are pretty much identical. And you would expect this. And this just shows that if Rachel Maddow had a blog I habitually read every morning, I probably wouldn’t watch her show very often.

But make no mistake: Ezra Klein is an astute political observer. You should read his blog.

What are we to make of a film like Mongol? Certainly, we don’t expect it to be historically accurate. I think we expect it to be thematically and emotionally accurate. Take Braveheart, for example: it is a mess from a historical stand-point, but it does provide a pretty good picture of William Wallace.[1] Mongol, on the other hand, is far more accurate than Braveheart. But it does present Genghis Khan as a far more likable guy than he probably was—just trying to bring the law to the people.

A woman I met when I was still a teenager was fond of saying that people could not be held accountable for the views of their time, but that they could be held accountable for their own views. I accepted this for a good long time, but finally I abandoned it. Are we really to say that Thomas Jefferson and a modern day redneck are the same, just because they both share the belief that blacks were inferior to whites? I don’t think so. It is no different than anthropogenic climate change: 15 years ago a reasonable man could deny it, but not today.

21st Century Genghis Khan

If Genghis Khan is to be presented in a film, he can’t be presented as he actually was. No one would like him. The film takes place in the 12th century, after all. There must be some compromise with the time we live in.

Mongol doesn’t do this by changing events in the life of Genghis Khan; it does it by focusing on the good and noble things he did, like offering Jamukha freedom (but, unlike in the movie, Jamukha would not take it and so was killed). What it doesn’t show is all the indiscriminate killing and genocidal campaigns. But hey, what’s most of the Persian race between friends? According to Mongol, Genghis Khan was just a guy who cared deeply about conservative social values.

The Film

The film itself is shockingly engaging. It is beautifully shot and moves gracefully from epic battle scenes to the most intimate personal moments. The only bad thing about the film is that the subtitles are worse than usual.

[1] Braveheart fails completely at the end. It is true that Wallace was tortured to death. It is not true that this was done because he wouldn’t submit to the crown’s authority. Wallace was more of an intellectual who tried to get foreign support for the Scottish cause. I think all of the inaccuracies regarding Wallace’s character stem directly from the tortured soul of Mel Gibson.

Paul Krugman presented a graph of the 50 United States by the ratio the federal taxes they pay to the federal money they receive. It is interesting. Here are the top ten states that pay the most and receive the least (and who they voted for in 2008):

1. Delaware (Obama)
2. Minnesota (Obama)
3. Connecticut (Obama)
4. New Jersey (Obama)
5. Colorado (Obama)
6. Nebraska (McCain)
7. Texas (McCain)
8. Illinois (Obama)
9. Maryland (Obama)
10. Massachusetts (Obama)

See the trend? Those states that paid the most and got the least voted overwhelmingly Democratic.

Here are the states who got the most and paid the least (and who they voted for in 2008):

1. West Virginia (McCain)
2. Mississippi (McCain)
3. Maine (Obama)
4. New Mexico (Obama)
5. South Carolina (McCain)
6. Alabama (McCain)
7. Montana (McCain)
8. Kentucky (McCain)
9. Vermont (Obama)
10. North Dekota (McCain)

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. I now expect that people I meet who are wholly dependent upon the government to be anti-government. I can’t exactly explain it. A few things come to mind. One is that they have all the time in the world to sit around watching Fox News and listening to Right-Wing Hate Radio. They are outraged like everyone else, but have little intellectual armor to defend against the specious arguments to be found there.

It rankles though. When asked about the money they get from the government, it is always justified. It is only those other people who are milking the system. It is only those other people who the pundits on Fox News are railing against.The conservatives they vote for would never take away their benefits; they would only take away those of the other, undeserving people.

Today, Paul Krugman posits that the current state of the GOP is due to the fact that while the party’s policies are for the very rich, they have gotten elected by appealing to social conservatives and other whack jobs. As an example, he talks about George W. Bush, who won (I dispute this) the 2004 election by running against same-sex marriage, but who, after winning said he had a mandate for privatizing Social Security.

There is much to this argument. However, I think the movement of both parties to the right is just as important. The big problem I see in the GOP primary is that the candidates don’t have any real differences with President Obama. The Democratic Party is now as conservative a party as the United States can support. So what we see are people like Romney making extremely fine distinctions. “Sure,” he says, “My healthcare plan was the same as Obama’s but that is okay because it is a state plan; when enacted federally, it is totally unacceptable.”

After you get past a certain place on the right (or left), you don’t get much farther by taking extreme positions. Being against abortions in all cases is not in any substantive way more conservative than being in favor of a rape exception. And this is all that the Republicans have to offer: one step farther to the right. Certainly this matters for those women who are raped, but for the average voter, it doesn’t matter at all.

I think we are heading for a shake-up of the parties. The Democratic Party has become little more than the old GOP and the new GOP appeals only to people’s vague outrage. It cannot last.

I’m sick, so I don’t know that I will post anything today. But I found this ad that I thought was very funny. It is a parody of Clint Eastwood’s Halftime in America ad. I’m surprised that there haven’t been more of them.[1] It was created by comedian Andy Cobb:

From the poster:

Currently: 45,228 views.

[1] There have been some. Most of them are conservative and kind of short on humor.

I just watched the Intelligence Squared debate on the question of whether or not “The Catholic Church is a Force for Good in the World.” It was recorded back in 19 October 2009 and featured Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Ann Widdecombe arguing in favor; Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry arguing against.

The way these debates work is that the audience is polled at the beginning and the end and the results are compared. One side can get over half the final votes, but still lose because the other side gained more votes. This, of course, presents certain problems because in some highly charged debates, many people on one side won’t initially admit their position. Such was not the case on the Catholic question.

Watch:[1]

So the pro vote plummeted from 678 to 268, and the anti vote skyrocketed from 1102 to 1872. There were only 34 undecideds. I’ve never seen that before.

I think the most important reason for this result is that the Catholic Church does a lot of really bad things. The one issue that was brought up again and again was their stand on birth control. Frankly, I think the Church will eventually have to reverse its position on this issue. Eventually, people just won’t be willing stay in the church over it. This is not just about personal choice; it is about life and death in many parts of the world. And then there is the question of child rape, but I doubt that had much to do with the results.

Another reason the Catholic Church lost this debate, almost as important as the facts of the matter, is that Widdecombe and (to a lesser extent) Onaiyekan did a really bad job of debating. Hitchens and Fry were great, of course, but they didn’t really need to try. If you watch the whole debate, you can skip all of the pro debating; it isn’t worth watching.

[1] This is my first YouTube upload!

It must be that Eric Alterman doesn’t get much mail.

Certainly, he is kind of an old-fashioned guy. He doesn’t allow comments on this “blog.” And he doesn’t post all the time. I hate Fridays because it is the beginning of the weekend, and there are lots of reasons to hate the weekend. But there are three reasons to be excited about Fridays: Paul Krugman‘s second column of the week, FAIR’s CounterSpin, and Eric Alterman. On Fridays, on his The Nation blog, he provides links to what he’s written during the week in addition to an article by the always interesting Reed Richardson.

On 27 January of this year, he posted an article called The Winter of Our Discontent. Ah, anyone quoting Richard III is a friend of mine. In the article, he mentions going to see a number of plays and concerts and generally makes me feel bad that my life sucks so badly. But he opens the article with two things that brought a smile to my face:

Okay. Yes, Shaw is generally a lot better than Shakespeare and it is nice to see others admit to this. But I was especially happy to hear him say that he prefers Mozart to Beethoven. In general, in the classical world, Beethoven is thought to be better. And there is no doubt he is great, but I tend to think he appeals more to the young. Certainly I loved him when I was a teenager. But now, that whole century of Romantic music more annoys than anything else. Again, however: I still enjoy Beethoven, especially compared to the likes of Schumann and Wagner.

More than this, however, much of people’s appreciation for Mozart comes down to this argument that I’ve heard ad nauseum, “It’s too bad Mozart died so young, otherwise he might have developed into… [wait for it] Beethoven!” This is ridiculous. Yes, it is tragic that Mozart died so young (but it would have been a good deal more tragic had he died at 30, given the amazing things he created during that last five years). But had he lived longer, he would have developed into… older Mozart. His artistic trajectory was not to Beethoven. Mozart didn’t have Beethoven’s peevish musical temperament.

Then, on 2 February, Alterman printed a letter:

What? To begin with, I love how Ben just throws Mozart’s most important work (his operas) aside, “Yeah. He wrote a few operas.”[1] And there’s the whole thing of claiming that Alterman said that Mozart was better than Beethoven when he only said he preferred him. But that’s not the main thing. I couldn’t believe that Alterman would betray our cause for so little cause. So I popped off an email to the scoundrel. Either Eric Alterman doesn’t get much mail, or he has a soft spot for petulant little music snobs (Ben and me): he printed my letter:

This is coming off last week’s column about a 20 minute conversation he had with The Boss. He is so deft at sticking the knife in and twisting it simultaneously. I am, as it turns out, well aware that his life is infinitely better than mine.

Damn you to hell, Eric Alterman!

[1] Fun fact: “opera” is the plural of “opus.” But the plural of “opera” (the ones we are talking about) is “operas.” This could be confusing. A composer’s first ten compositions are opera one through ten. Would ten such composers’ opera be the operas one through ten? I suppose not, but isn’t it pretty to think so?

This last week, I got a text from Andrea, “I just watched The Cats of Mirikitani and it made ME cry.” Since you don’t know my relationship with Andrea, you probably think this text represents some kind of information about her life or about a film recommendation. It isn’t. It is more along the lines of a dare.

You see, I am a crier. I cry during most films and much else in life and art. It doesn’t take a great artist to get me to laugh, but it takes no artist at all to get me to cry. Andrea, on the other hand, prides herself on her steely exterior strengthened with a withering sarcasm that has been known to bring real men (e.i. not me) to tears. If Andrea cried during a film, she suggests, I may go catatonic for a week.

But is that really true? Isn’t it the case that there are only certain things that can make it through her armor? I know things that will make her cry. So I was not sure she was right.

As I got ready to watch the film, I became more convinced that this film was not going to be the sob-fest that Andrea had indicated. Old homeless artists and concentration camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II: I’d seen it all before. I started watching the film. And I didn’t even make it to the credits, which are less than two minutes into the film, without crying.

The Cats of Mirikitani

The film tells the story of 81 year old Jimmy Mirikitani, a homeless artist who earned his dignified living selling drawings on the street in New York City. After the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11, he was left alone on the street inside a cloud of toxic debris. The filmmaker, Linda Hattendorf, took him in and tried to get him some help. This turned out to be harder than you would think, because Mirikitani didn’t want any help from a United States government that he thought of as evil for what it did to him and hundreds of thousands of other Japanese-Americans.[1] Slowly, Mirikitani relented and his life got better.[2]

The first half of this film is very sad, in that “cry your eyes out” way so beloved by people of my ilk. The second half of the film, however, is very uplifting, but in that “cry you eyes out” way so beloved by people of my ilk.It speak to the resilience of the human soul (in that “cry your eyes out” way). And the story is inspiring even after it stops. Mirikitani seems to be doing very well to this day. According to the official website of the film:

I’d say more, but I think I’m going to cry.

Update

The library has the Samurai Trilogy boxed set. I should have it next week. I may not be able to see the San Francisco Opera’s production of Don Giovanni, but life still has its pleasures.

[1] I find it interesting that many people don’t like labels like “Japanese-American” or “Afro-American.” But when a country uses their heritage against people, are we really just supposed to pretend that such distinctions don’t exist and aren’t used in negative ways? Are we to pretend, like Stephen Colbert’s character, that we just don’t see color?

[2] One sign of this is that Mirikitani got to rent Samurai I, the first part of Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Triology starring the great Toshirô Mifune.