THE OLD DARK HEARST: Two points on re-watching Citizen Kane: 1) The fashionable consensus now is that it’s overhyped. I suppose if you mean that it’s not the best movie ever made, then okay. But it is about as good as The Bride of Frankenstein–and if you know me, you know that’s very high praise. It’s a terrific, engaging movie, and it’s not Orson Welles’s fault that you already know about Rosebud. I’ll go ahead and say that even though... Read more

A NEW HAVEN AND A NEW EARTH. So in a conversation about how 1) how it’s a total cop-out to praise loyalties only insofar as they’re chosen and unzippable, and 2) “vocation” complicates the concept of “choice” anyway–you don’t choose what you hear even when you choose how you answer, I mangled Ingmar Bergman to get what I think is my new right-wing bumper sticker: WE MAKE AN IDOL OF OUR FEAR AND CALL IT CHOICE. Read more

WHY I WOULD NEVER PLAY “I WOULD NEVER”: Uh, hello. I realized that this post, written in a state of post-debate lethargic, self-indulgent wrath, broke at least two of the rules for not being awful on the Internets: 1) Don’t psychoanalyze anyone, especially but not exclusively people you don’t know, especially if you think your take on them is so very clever; and 2) Don’t tell people you “genuinely don’t understand how” they believe what they do. Nothing’s more frustrating... Read more

THE SERENITY PLAYER: In which I tell you why you should read The Glass Bead Game. …There is no term in this book that is not interrogated: not the serenity Knecht offers a distraught Plinio, nor the exalted experience and self-direction he claims for himself at the end of the book. No final answer is given to the book’s underlying question: What is the life of the mind for? more Read more

After all, the stupidity of a stupid man is exercised in a restricted field; the stupidity of an intelligent man has a much wider diffusion, and a far greater effect, aided as it is by the element of surprise.—Peter Ustinov, introduction to Great Operatic Disasters Via the Rattus. Read more

THE NURTURING NETWORK HAS A BLOG! Via Mark Shea. I’m going out of town this afternoon, and won’t be back until Tuesday, so blogging will be sparse–but when I get back I hope to have a cornucopia of bloggy goodness to spill before you all! Read more

MATCH ME, CHENEY: Am I the only one who gets a real Sidney Falco vibe from John McCain these days? Pawning what he perceives as his soul, to be redeemed later. It doesn’t work that way. Of course, the same criticism could be made of Barack Obama, the Christian who won’t acknowledge that Mary was not pro-choice. I know Protestants keep quoting the Isaiah lines about how God knew the prophet before he was formed in his mother’s womb, but... Read more

DISTILLED SPIRITS: Holy cats, you guys. Read more

JUST MAKE ME SOMETHING SOMEBODY CAN USE: It occurred to me that my earlier post on crisis pregnancy counseling–specifically, the issue of complicity with the client vs. complicity with the “system”–might shed some light on what my admittedly over-abstract discussion of conservatism looks like in practice. Read more

IN THE EUSTON TAVERN THEY SCREAMED IT WAS YOUR SHOUT/BUT THEY WOULDN’T GIVE YOU SERVICE, SO YOU KICKED THE WINDOWS OUT. Am I wrong to find a Pogues-ish hint in this poem? Read more