Flat earth, pointy head

I was reading the latest bullshit from New York Times' Bush apologist Thomas Friedman this morning, another one of those helpful advice columns where rabid right wingers tell left wingers what they're doing wrong and how they can fix it (the answer--surprise!--is progressives need to act more like conservatives.) Anyway, watching Friedman worm his way up Tony Blair's asshole put me off my breakfast, so I was pretty pleased to read this review of Friedman's latest literary endeavor. In particular I loved this dig:

On page 174, Friedman is describing a flight he took on Southwest Airlines from Baltimore to Hartford, Connecticut. (Friedman never forgets to name the company or the brand name; if he had written The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa would have awoken from uneasy dreams in a Sealy Posturepedic.)

And this sums neatly encapsulates everything that is wrong with Friedman and America in general:

It's impossible to divorce The World Is Flat from its rhetorical approach. It's not for nothing that Thomas Friedman is called "the most important columnist in America today." That it's Friedman's own colleague at the New York Times (Walter Russell Mead) calling him this, on the back of Friedman's own book, is immaterial. Friedman is an important American. He is the perfect symbol of our culture of emboldened stupidity. Like George Bush, he's in the reality-making business. In the new flat world, argument is no longer a two-way street for people like the president and the country's most important columnist. You no longer have to worry about actually convincing anyone; the process ends when you make the case.

Things are true because you say they are. The only thing that matters is how sure you sound when you say it. In politics, this allows America to invade a castrated Iraq in self-defense. In the intellectual world, Friedman is now probing the outer limits of this trick's potential, and it's absolutely perfect, a stroke of genius, that he's choosing to argue that the world is flat. The only thing that would have been better would be if he had chosen to argue that the moon was made of cheese.

The rest of the review is, as Friedman would say, the icing on the sizzling steak. Or something like that.

Hallelujah

I've been accused a few times of being an anti-religious and, specifically anti-Christian, bigot. Now, my personal feelings are that organized religion is a bunch of bullshit is well known, but I generally take pains to be clear that these are my personal opinions, just as religious beliefs are personal opinions, and it is really the intrusion of the spiritual into he realm of public policy that gets my goat. These people have no more right to force their opinions on us than I do on them. Or so I used to think.

Lately, though, I'm starting to wonder if I'm wrong. Perhaps the problem isn't with the fact that some people of faith (ie. Osama bin Laden, Jerry Falwell) want to impose their views on society as a whole. The problem is that the beliefs these people hold so dear are so ridiculous, so blindingly stupid, and so backward, that I question why we need to treat them with respect at all. Consider this.

"A steady stream of the faithful and the curious, many carrying flowers and candles, have flocked to an expressway underpass for a view of a yellow and white stain on a concrete wall that some believe is an image of the Virgin Mary."

A stain. A fucking stain. I know this kind of thing happens all the time, and that there are other, far more egregious and offensive exercises of faith than this, but I think this pretty well sums up the problem with religious belief: it inevitably leads to stain worshipping. Okay, maybe not in a literal sense, but the point is once you start with a logically unsound belief (that is: belief in a personal God), no belief is too outrageous to consider. If you believe some unknown, unseen being created all life and has a vested interest in the day to day activities of we puny humans (in particular, it seems, what we do in bed and whom we do it to), then it's only a hop, skip and a jump towards believing said being would opt to communicate with his flock through a smudge of salt on a concrete wall under Chicago overpass. In fact, it makes perfect sense.

You have to kind of admire these stain worshippers for their wholesale commitment to the absurd. No half-measures for them, unlike other more mainstream and less orthodox members of the flock who believe in God, but with a host of qualifiers and restraints imposed by the real world. Not so the People of the Stain.

But the problem is the media (isn't it always?) Reading the CNN story or any other coverage of the stain and its all very fair and balanced. The views of the Stain People are respected and, while skeptics may be given a say, there's no indication that the people queuing up under the overpass are anything but earnest and pious people "expressing their faith." You'll not find anyone saying the obvious, which is that these people are dunderheads. A stain is fucking stain and is no more a miraculous act of god than someone finding a potato that looks like Abe Lincoln. If you believe otherwise, you're a moran

The problem with cutting religion and religious expression, no matter how offensive or ridiculous it may be, so much slack is that it validates it. And once you open that door, there's no telling who else will get in. Seeing as how its only a baby step from belief in God to belief in stains by God, it's an even smaller step towards, say, shooting abortion clinic doctors or this. (Ever notice how similar the rhetoric of U.S. Christian fundies and the Taliban-types are?)

And yeah, I'm aware that some of the worst, most inhumane regimes in history have been secular. But that doesn't change the fact that there are people who would love to see the street run red with the blood of the non-believers if they got the chance.

"But wait," I hear you say "Doesn't that violate the principles of tolerance and understanding that are the heart of post-Enlightenment progressive thought." Well, kinda. But here's the thing. I'm not advocating we herd people into re-education camps or force them to give up their horribly ignorant beliefs. I'm saying we need to stop treating them with kid gloves. In other words, we need to mock them. Loudly and mercilessly, as they mock those who disagree with them. It won't stops them, to be sure, but it's would hold a lens up to them for the rest of us to look at. And who knows? If it takes ridicule to make just one person realize worshipping a grease spot is really, really stupid, then it'd be worth it.

Ein reich! Ein volk! Ein Pope!

Much is being made in some circles of the new Pope's past membership in the Hitler Youth. I don't know if it's relevant or not except from a "Holy fucking shit, the new Pope used to be a Nazi?" perspective. But I think it's worth exploring a little bit.

John Allen Jr., journalist for the National Catholic Reporter, supplies some background on Ratzinger's World War two service in his 2002 biography, the warm and friendly-sounding "The Vatican's Enforcer of the Faith".

As a seminarian, he was briefly enrolled in the Hitler Youth in the early 1940s, though he was never a member of the Nazi party. In 1943 he was conscripted into an antiaircraft unit guarding a BMW plant outside Munich. Later Ratzinger was sent to Austria's border with Hungary to erect tank traps. After being shipped back to Bavaria, he deserted. When the war ended, he was an American prisoner of war.

Under Hitler, Ratzinger says he watched the Nazis twist and distort the truth. Their lies about Jews, about genetics, were more than academic exercises. People died by the millions because of them. The church's service to society, Ratzinger concluded, is to stand for absolute truths that function as boundary markers: Move about within these limits, but outside them lies disaster.

There are a few problems with this account. The timeline is odd, for one. According to Allen, Ratzinger deserted during in April 1944, two months before the D-Day invasion and at a time when desertion would have meant imprisonment or death. Yet somehow he managed to avoid getting caught for over a full year, and was still made a P.O.W at the war's end. The most likely explanation, given that Allen doesn't say precisely when Ratzinger deserted, is that he deserted in April of 1945, a month before V.E. Day when writing was on the wall for the Nazis and Germans were quitting the field in droves. So, his desertion can hardly be viewed as a bold act of conscience. Rather, it seems to be the actions of one saving one's skin.

Ratzinger's wartime experience makes an interesting contrast with his predecessor’s ant-Nazi activity in occupied Poland during the war and is another stain for the Church already facing so many questions about its actions during the war (wartime pontiff Pius XII is accused in some circles of turning a deaf ear to the Holocaust while the Vatican Bank is rumoured to hold 200 million Swiss francs confiscated by the Nazi puppet Ustasha government of Croatia and sent to the Vatican "for safekeeping"). However, they are neither here nor there. What's far more interesting is the second half of the quote above, which lays the ground work for Ratzinger's doctrinaire attachment to the Church's hard line stances.

Ratzinger has been outspoken in opposition to homosexuality, gay marriage, abortion, contraception, the ordination of woman, the revocation of celibacy vows and ecumenical (interfaith) dialogue. He was one of the primary foes of liberation theology, the movement whose adherents believed that the church should be involved in the struggle for economic and political justice in the world (Latin American practitioners of liberation theology, such as Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero , took the side of the poor and oppressed against oppressive regimes. The Church hierarchy, led by the last Pope, sided with the elites and the military juntas in the name of fighting Communism.) Ratzinger is also a big fan of the creepy, cult-like Opus Dei sect. In short, the new Pope shares the last Pope's reactionary thinking and fetish for centralization, but lacks the warm and friendly public personae of John Paul II.

Now, let's visit the rest of that quote from Allen’s Ratzinger bio:

Later reflection on the Nazi experience also left Ratzinger with a conviction that theology must either bind itself to the church, with its creed and teaching authority, or it becomes the plaything of outside forces -- the state in a totalitarian system or secular culture in Western liberal democracies.

Here's the rub: rigid devotion to dogma is not a response to totalitarianism: it is an instrument of it. Every single totalitarian, despotic, tyrannical and fascistic regime the world has known has required the strictest ideological rigidity possible in order to succeed. The Nazis were every bit as convinced of the absolute truths of their cause as Ratzinger is of his. Historically, absolute conviction and belief in the cause (whatever it may be) is what enabled people to herd other humans into gas chambers in Germany, slaughter political opponents in Stalinist Russia, denounce parents and teachers in Maoist China and on and on. And don't even get me started on the Spanish Inquisition.

I guess all of that is just window dressing. I think the real upshot of the election of another rigid ideologue to the Papacy is that the Catholic Church will continue to slide into irrelevance. A reformist Pope willing to bring the Church into the 21st (hell: 2oth) Century could have made the institution meaningful again to the millions of people who have turned away over the years precisely because of the rigidity that Ratzinger stands for. However, one must consider that, in any human institution, corruption will grow directly in proportion to the power the institution wields, the wealth it holds and the duration of its existence. Therefore, an ancient institution like the Catholic Church would be the most corrupt of all. It's pretty clear that behind the opulence and glitter, the piety and solemn rituals, the Vatican is merely a hierarchy of old men desperately clinging to whatever vestiges of power they have here on earth. I doubt there's anyone who could change that.

No Mod no mo'

I'm fed up with XXXX, my usual Friday night destination. This past weekend was a mob scene that strongly resembled a night at any one of this town's many
other establishments. In short, it was douchebagpalooza, complete with a line up, an asshole doorman, bad tattoos, cocked ball caps and Dieselwear everywhere. The only difference was the music.

Now, I recognize how juvenile it is to get pissy and territorial about a stupid bar, but I've been going there on a regular basis since this night started a year ago. I was going when the place was drawing under 100 people a night and struggling. I was there. Then, all of a sudden, Franz Ferdinand and the Killers got on the radio and the tourists started trickling in. Now, that trickle has become a flood which is washing away most of the old guard. I'm not alone in not wanting to fight my way through a crowd just to get a drink, or stand on a dancefloor that's too packed to even move.

I guess, in a way, you cold look at it as a triumph of musical democracy: there's no scenes anymore. The brown girl with the 50 Cent CD in her car stereo is now rocking out to Bloc Party. And that'd be great if it were true. But it's not. Music is like fashion in that it operates through trickle down. You got yer tastemakers* and yer followers: the former sets the tone and the latter pick up the scraps. That's what's happening at XXXX. Last year, the only people who were on the scene were the music nerds, the fashonistas and the hipsters. Their tastes have gradually filtered down through the masses, which means the people infesting the dancefloor now are not the products of a digital downloading revolution that has swept aside musical barriers, but bandwagon jumpers and poseurs.

Where does that leave me? On the sidelines. If I'm gonna wade through the lower end of the clubland gene pool, I'll head back to the strip where there's at least one bar playing good music that manages to keep the twats at bay.


*I can see how someone reading this would think I'm an insufferable cock with delusions of cooldom. That's not the case. I know I'm a dork. I'm no trendsetter. I don't even own a fucking iPod. I follow the trends as much as anyone. My tastes happen to be just slightly more left field than most is all. That and I grew up in the suburbs: having spent my formativ eyears hating evrything about the 'burbs, I've no desire to have my evenings on the town marred by the weekend warrior set.

Car cult(ure)

This crossed my path today (via Wolcott and Kuntsler) and I felt that, even though its a few months old, its content more than qualifies it for "outrage of the day" status.

It took me a couple of tries to get through it, seeing as how I had to periodically walk away to avoid swallowing my own tongue in rage, but the gist is thus: the car is awesome (in fact its what make us great! Better than them Commies, anyway.) and central urban planning and smart growth suck because they are incompatible with the American Dream of a house in the suburbs.

I'm not interested in delving too deep into the shallow waters of Tierney's analysis (though I will mention that his paean to the horseless carriage omits one cost: each year the car kills more than 40,000 Americans and maims millions more. That and the whole "dependence on foreign oil" thing and the trouble that can cause.), so I'll just look at the last bit of his essay, the part entitled "The Car-Culture War".

It's interesting that Tierney would attack anti-auto advocates on a class basis. Tierney frames the car clash as a battle between elitist, intellectual "Gulfstream liberals" and hard-workin', car-drivin' suburban day traders. It's as if the working class doesn't even exist. That's because, in Tierny's suburbia, they don't. Or if they do, they don't matter. Tierney assumes that all city cores are havens of wealth and cultural elitism like his native New York. He's wrong. The fact is cars and car-friendly urban development is decidedly anti-poor. Anyone familiar with urban planning theory will probably know how sprawl leads to the "doughnut effect": as population moves from inner suburbs to the outer suburbs in search of newer, larger or more affordable houses, the urban core decays (Detroit's a good--or bad--example). The people who get left behind are the poor who have to contend with declining infrastructure and services. Here in Edmonton, a number of inner-city schools had to shut down because tight resources needed to be directed to new suburban schools. But to Tierney, these people don't matter, probably because they don't listen to Lou Reed and drive cars with leather interiors. In any case, basing an argument on class and then subsequently overlooking an entire category of people is pretty fucking stupid.

Another interesting tidbit can be found in the midst of his tirade against urban planning. Tierney suggests that "old-fashioned city neighbourhoods" were not the result of central planning, but of good old-fashioned free enterprise and, I daresay, gumption.

"...those old neighborhoods and their transit systems were not built by planners at regional authorities imposing their visions of how people should live and travel. They were built by housing developers and private streetcar and subway companies responding to their customers' desires in an era when politicians were content to guide development with fairly simple zoning codes. It was only later, in the middle of the 20th century, that urban planning became a bureaucratized profession with sweeping ambitions, like the ''urban renewal'' projects of the 1960's and 70's that mostly served to hasten the urbanites' flight to suburbs."

So what prompted this shift towards central planning, Johnny Boy? Why I do believe it was the automobile! Let's not forget the role of the auto and oil companies in crushing alternate bodes of transport like streetcars. Finally, let’s dispense with the nonsense that developers and auto manufacturers were (and are) just giving people what they want. The “American Dream” model of suburban life (big house, big yard, big car) is a product of the post war prosperity that allowed so many middle-class Americans the chance to access what was until then a primarily upper-crust, bourgeoisie lifestyle. The car companies and developers were simply packaging those aspirations and selling the lifestyle back to people, even if they didn’t know they wanted it. In other words, car-centric suburban development did not become the norm and, indeed, the only option for North American living because of mass consumer pressure but because the oil, car and development barons decided that promoting such a lifestyle would ensure they would make a handsome profit (curiously, do you ever notice how few super-rich people live in the ‘burbs? In my neck of the woods, the ultra rich live near the core in elegant old mansions, not cheap-ass showhomes. Hmmmm.)

Which brings me at last to the fatal flaw in Tierny’s argument for the car. Smart growth and urban revitalization (in fill development) won’t work because people want the suburban lifestyle. So, because one model has been enshrined as the dominant one, all other options shall henceforth be disregarded (save those that simply make the status quo more manageable: wholesale change is not in the cards). The real problem here is taht change will come whether you like it or not. the current car-centric North American culture is fundamentally unsustainable. The tweaks Tierney and the car advocates propose are the equivilant of giving a band-aid to a cancer patient. When the system reaches the end of its tether and we are forced back to square one, Tierney and his ilk will wish they spent more time looking for real solutions and less time on high-tech toll booths and other stopgaps.

“… for most middle-class families, the ideal of city life conflicts with the reality of their own lives. Even if they're willing to do without a yard, how can they afford to live in a decent neighborhood within easy commute of their jobs? How will they go shopping on a rainy day with a child in tow? Where will the children go to school?”

This is what it boils down to: short-sighted suburban angst. Never mind that there’s no schools in the city because they had to close to fund the new ones in the suburbs. Never mind that there’s so few “decent” neighbourhoods because you fuckers took your jobs and bolted, leaving the cores to rot away. No sir.

The deficiencies of the city are directly related to suburbia and the automobile. And this imbalance is self-perpetuating.

"The answer is 'no'. Golden showers on the other hand..."

Kid's got guts.

"WHEN U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (above) spoke Tuesday night at NYU's Vanderbilt Hall, "The room was packed with some 300 students and there were many protesters outside because of Scalia's vitriolic dissent last year in the case that overturned the Texas law against gay sex," our source reports. "One gay student asked whether government had any business enacting and enforcing laws against consensual sodomy. Following Scalia's answer, the student asked a follow-up: 'Do you sodomize your wife?' The audience was shocked, especially since Mrs. Scalia [Maureen] was in attendance. The justice replied that the question was unworthy of an answer."

When these pricks use the power of the state to pry into people's personal lives, they open their own private lives up for scrutiny. And if history is any indicator, most of these perverts have soemthing to hide.

Vice Vice baby

This article about Vice Records (or whatever it's called) really singes my sack.

Where to start? Well, there's the fact that these cunts can piss and moan in true snide hipster fashion about "indie yuppies" while simultaneously trumpeting their own indie status...even as they take gobs and gobs of money from major label Atlantic Records to make their venture work. Would these man-shaped twats have ever scored acts like The Streets or Bloc Party (the "it" band of today's indie yuppies: I know because I are one)without the financial security their major label teat-sucking allows? Maybe, but I highly fucking doubt it.

Don't get me wrong: if some major label sucker came along and wrote me a blank cheque to run my label, I'd be leading the fucking hossanahs. What I would not do is play coy about what that formidable backing means to the label and try to hide behind transparent declarations of how independent I am. Nor would I whine about the "indie establishment" on one hand while selling songs to "The OC" on the other. Hey fucko: that "indie-yuppie establishment" you're complaining about? They're your bread and butter (well, them and the largesse of Atlantic: I just can't stress that point enough). I certainly wouldn't claim the independent record store-shoppin', blog-readin', MP3-downloadin', gig-goin', record-buyin' public as my "people" if I was so disgusted by their "boring music" (that from the cat who put out the sonic tribute to the colour beige that was the Stills' record). If I was so disgusted, I wouldn't be signing pop acts, but instead going after the Deerhoofs, Animal Collectives and other unlistenable rubbish bands of the world.

Upon further reflection, the one thing that stands out is that the Vice guys are positively terrified at not being "it" anymore and so they're trying to fashion themselves as elitist indie record store clerk types, even as they put out music that real elitist are turning their noses up at. The fact is, there's lots of music out there that "shakes you up a bit" and makes you "uncomfortable" but there's only, like, 12 record shop dorks nationwide who listen to it (because it's shit and the only people who claim to like it are only doing so to be difficult. I call such people "shitheads". But I digress.) Fact is, it's pretty hard to make a business successful or build an empire with those guys as your core market. So consider this article a final testament; the death rattle of an aging hipster who's suddenly realized there's no money to be made in genuinely marginal art, but he's got payments to be make on that Golf. But he just can't let go of the smarmy, holier-than-thou posture that he spend so many years during and after college building up.
'cause then he'd be old.

Best. Headline. Ever.

From the ever-reliable TMFTML:

ALSO, IF DRINKING WINE WITH ANOTHER GUY MAKES YOU GAY THEN WE'VE GOT ABOUT EIGHT DIFFERENT COCKS IN OUR ASS RIGHT NOW

Public Pervert (aka GOP Family values, aka the apple doesn't pass out far from the tree)

I know a few pervs who'll be pretty stoked about this.

Important Papal update!

Still dead.