Critical Issues

Tiller Meets the Reaper

Posted on by John W Gillis / 2 Comments

dead_tiller So, “Tiller the Baby Killer” has met his demise – assassinated this morning during church services. I can only groan over the anticipated avalanche of righteous indignation cascading from the heights of the pro-abortion ranks. Like the proverbial mandatory pinch of incense for Caesar, everyone who is publicly pro-life will be required to preface any and all remarks on the matter by condemning the assassination. I am not an advocate of violence – assassination or otherwise – so I have no personal  problem with condemning the act, but I do have a problem with the screwball notion that apologists for the legal and shameless murder of literally millions of “unwanted” innocents can somehow paint as morally irredeemable anyone who fails to sufficiently condemn the extra-judicial killing of a mass murderer. That is simply perverse. I’m sorely tempted to say “I’ll condemn his murder as soon as you condemn his daily murders-for-profit.”

There is no doubt, however, that abortion proponents will quickly and loudly hoist the flag, charging hypocrisy against not simply the man who carried out this act, but the pro-life movement as a whole. This is an absurd assertion, for even if the entire pro-life movement endorsed assassinating notorious abortionists (as opposed to just the tiny fringe who do see their way clear to such lethal vigilantism), it is surely faulty logic to assert that it is hypocritical to resort to murdering a mass murderer in order to protect countless further innocent victims.

Bonhoeffer, for example, is not considered a hypocrite for his involvement in the attempt to assassinate Hitler, but is rather admired for his courage and conviction – regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the act itself. Furthermore, history hardly finds fault with him, despite the gross violation of legal and moral norms his actions represented from the perspective of the Nazi system of thought. He (rightly) saw Hitler as a mass murderer and lethal threat to civilization, and (rightly or wrongly) determined that the best way to deal with him, under the circumstances, was to assassinate him. Was he right?

There is a vicious war being waged against the innocent unborn, and it should come as no surprise that some folks are tired of talking about it; tired of waiting for a political solution that never seems to really get any closer, but often seems to be permanently hardening into the kind of legal insanity that turned Bonhoeffer’s Germany into the textbook example of evil that it serves as today. Frankly, given what is at stake, I think it is a real testimony to the moral quality of the pro-life movement that this sort of thing is not much more commonplace.

This killing may not have been righteous, it may not have been wise, it may not have been prudent, it may not have been faithful to the spirit of the pro-life movement, it may have been an instance of despair triumphing over hope, but it sure isn’t a sign of hypocrisy. The basic pro-life principle is that human life is sacred, and must be defended from exploitation and destruction. That means that exploiters and destroyers must somehow be stopped. The ends cannot justify the means, but we should not be conned into believing (let alone declaring) that the killer has violated the core principles of the movement – therein confusing the guilty and the innocent. It is sufficient to say that there is a better way.

Hypocrisy? …The murder of unborn babies is a “personal choice” matter that we should all be able to disagree over amicably, while the murder of a notorious abortionist is beyond the pale? I don’t think so… talk about hypocrisy!

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Media & Culture

Ziegler’s Death of Free Speech

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

I had the radio on in the car one day, a couple months ago, when I caught part of an interview with a filmmaker named John Ziegler, who was promoting a film on the 2008 U.S. Presidential election called “Media Malpractice,” which he purported would demonstrate decisively just how in the tank the popular media was for Obama. I’m not sure a documentary is really necessary to make such a point, but the guy sounded funny, so I figured I’d check the local library system to see if there was a copy available I could request.

ziegler_deathoffreespeechThey didn’t have a copy of the documentary, but they did have a couple copies of a book Ziegler had written a few years ago, called “The Death Of Free Speech: How Our Broken National Dialogue Has Killed The Truth And Divided America,” so I requested a copy, and gave it a read.

The essence of the book is a demonstration of how the irrational moralism we call “political correctness” has eroded our culture’s appreciation for – and even understanding of – freedom of speech. I would add that it has also contributed significantly to a serious dumbing-down of our dialogue, as well as of a loss of respect for the truth – neither of which claims would be disputed by Ziegler. However, as much as I would have liked to like this work, it is simply not a good book.

No small part of the problem with the book is that it is really, first and foremost, about John Ziegler, and his trials and tribulations as a misunderstood and oppressed talk radio character. Furthermore, the entire book is just a series of anecdotes – some of which may be interesting, but the sum of which fail to constitute a rewarding whole, in much the same way a platter full of Twinkies would fail to constitute a rewarding meal. It might be unfair to criticize him for not writing the book he didn’t write, but when a book’s subtitle purports to tell “how” something comes to be, a little analysis might not be an unreasonable expectation. There’s simply not much there, despite ample subject matter. This book even has an index, though it is such a light-weight work that its inclusion seems unnecessary, if not a tad contrived.

Then there is the matter of the writing just not being very good. This guy’s not a writer, he’s a whiner, an agitator, and a wiseguy – and it shows. Even the editing is poor, with numerous sentences and paragraphs showing obvious traces of cut and paste procedures that nobody bothered to go back to clean up.

In truth, I was also put off by a number of his libertarian prejudices, as he perpetuates several of the hoary dogmas of the left as related to religious faith in the public square, such as the canard that “organized religion” is responsible for most of the world’s bloodshed. I’ve already returned the book, and cannot remember any specific examples off the top of my head except for one rather comical one.

Anyone who spends any time these days defending Catholicism in public is accustomed to having the recent clergy sexual abuse crisis hauled out by critics of the Church as a kind of talisman against having to take seriously anything someone in the Church says, regardless of how serious it might actually be. In discussing the outraged response of the Archdiocese of New York to an act of on-the-air sacrilege-for-entertainment within the sacred space of Saint Patrick Cathedral, Ziegler pulls out the obligatory talisman by saying something along the lines of “how can they waste their time complaining about this when THE CRISIS happened!” But then, incredibly, he goes on to claim that the clergy sexual abuse crisis is clearly the worst scandal in Church history!

Ignoring the irony that THE CRISIS as an issue specific to the Catholic Church (as opposed to an issue common to almost every institution during the “sexual revolution” and the rise of “therapeutic man”) is actually a product of the exact same anti-critical, obfuscating, politically motivated, media-driven left-wing group-think that Ziegler wrote this book to complain about, the claim that this is anywhere near the worst scandal in Church history just exposes a complete lack of historical credibility on his part.

In terms of scandal, a small fraction of priests committing grave sins and an episcopal bureaucracy that bungles the response would hardly seem to hold a votive candle to the spectacle of the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” presenting three rival claimants to the papal throne, to use just one of many possible candidates from the first half of the second millennium. Many other examples abound, and the current situation is really just a blip on the radar screen in the big picture – as outrageous as that undoubtedly feels to the happy consumers of “politically correct” moralism – where nothing is more important than having properly defined victims, except having appropriate scapegoats put in their place.

What might be unprecedented in history, though, is the public disregard for truth that simmers under the surface of Ziegler’s book, like volcanic lava threatening to erupt onto the surface of society with devastating toxicity and lifeless scorching ore. It’s just not clear to me whether Ziegler’s approach is more part of the solution, or the problem.

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Religion & Society

The Green Weapon

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

earthday2009sh2 Contributing to my continually growing suspicion that I am an alien who ended up on this planet by mistake, I observed the world observing Earth Day yesterday. This seems like a harmless enough celebration, and at one time I probably thought it sounded like a good way to recognize the importance of acknowledging humanity’s responsibility as steward of creation, but somewhere along the line (and quite possibly right from the start), the notion of earth-stewardship was co-opted by hucksters of an astounding variety of stripes.

Everywhere I turned yesterday, there were people trying to sell me “green,” be it in the form of cynically marketed products, paternalistically proffered political ideology, or simply as a fashionable assertion of social conformity – lest I come to the abominable conclusion that some party wasn’t sufficiently “green.” But the pitch that takes the cake came in an email at work, from a newsletter aimed at selling professional services to project managers. Why this one? Because it simply cuts through the bull, and gets to the point:

The term "eco-friendly" shouldn’t make people roll their eyes anymore.they should see dollar signs.

I took the title of this post from the heading on the article blurb that began with the above sentence (punctuation irregularities in original). Really, I couldn’t agree more with this sentiment. In the end, this “movement” is nothing but another scam; another opportunity for the clever to despoil the gullible. But marketing scams are a dime a dozen, and I fear this one traverses some dreadful terrain before it cashes in.

My deeper problem with the “green” movement is in the way it is passed off by the cultural illuminati as a form of morality. It serves as a substitute for a serious moral vision, placing no demands upon individuals except to practice acts of cheesy piety, such as recycling or buying green-blessed goods, yet offering the illusion of having satisfied some grave public – and perhaps even cosmic – need. This would be comical if there weren’t so many people jumping on the bandwagon, because the illusion of goodness, being the essence of idolatry, is a much more formidable enemy to the genuine good than bald evil is. “Green” certainly has become nothing if not a weapon against sound reason.

I sat in a traffic light in Wellesley tonight on my way home from work, behind a station wagon bearing a bumper sticker that said: “Be responsible: shut your car off while waiting.” Also emblazoned on the car were various peace stickers, and an Obama campaign sticker. And then there was the pro-choice slogan. If this kind of “morality” is not the height of whitewashed bourgeois acceptability and self-satisfaction on the face of an inferno of injustice and inhumanity, then I don’t know what is.

Yet this inhumanity seems to be a part of the very paradigm of the green movement. Whether it be Malthusian hysterics, anti-technological eco-puritanism, or the wildly popular “global warming” apocalyptic, humanity always seem to get painted as the problem that must be overcome in order to “save the Earth.” About a year ago, I read a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe from a leading local executive of either the United Church of Christ or the Unitarian Universalist Association, making the astonishing claim that global warming is the most important moral issue of our time. Never mind the dubiousness of the “crisis” in and of itself, can any sane person really imagine that man-made climate change is the most serious moral issue in a world still staggering from the bloodiest century in its history, still armed to the teeth with weapons of unfathomable terror, slaughtering its own children in a frenzy of sexual idiocy, and recklessly embracing immoral political ideas that attack the very foundations of human community?

But this is not the isolated view of a single left-wing whack job. The Worldwatch Institute held an interfaith symposium on global warming back in September 2006, during which Episcopalian priestess Sally Bingham expressed the emerging view: “Global warming,” says Reverend Bingham, “is one of the greatest moral issues of our time, if not the greatest.” And these supposed thought leaders are only following Prophet of Environmentalism Al Gore, who had earlier claimed that global warming was a moral issue, not a political issue.

Well, as recent history has proven yet again, hang on for dear life any time a politician starts claiming that a pet issue is not a “political” issue. But the most sublime symmetry is provided to this claim – that global warming is a moral, and not a political, issue – by a web petition sponsored by the National Council of Churches Eco-Justice Program, which sought to generate political support for the belief that global warming is a moral issue. Ah, serendipity. Alas, though, they fell short of their goal of 10,000 signatures. That only would have taken one signature from every ten congregations from among their member communions, according to the parent organization’s web site. Perhaps their membership was overly confused as to what it means to vote on whether or not something is a moral issue? I think the notion would have perplexed me.

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Bible Study Tools

WORDSearch Releases HCSB Reverse-Interlinear

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

HCSB Reverse Interlinear from WORDSearchWORDSearch released a reverse-interlinear based on the HCSB last week, further extending their original language capabilities with this translation. I wish I liked the HCSB better as a translation, because I really like WORDSearch as a study environment, and this looks like a very useful tool.

As far as I know, this is only the 3rd interlinear commercially released in a “reversed” format, which orders the text according to the translation rather than the manuscript, making it easier for novices, in particular, to work with the interlinear text. It joins the two very popular reverse-interlinears released by Logos a couple years ago (the ESV, and the NT of the NRSV). The Logos tools, however, are only available as part of base packages (although they’re included in almost all of them now, which I don’t think was the case before – I could be wrong). The WORDSearch HCSB reverse-interlinear is available as a stand-alone purchase, and is very nicely “upgrade” priced for those who own the standard WORDSearch Greek and/or Hebrew interlinears. The list price does seem quite pricey for those who don’t qualify for an “upgrade,” however, though it’s pretty common to have some “sale” or another going on.

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Church

Part of the Difference Between Mission and Agenda

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

While Pope Benedict XVI is busy bracing the winds of ill-will to find a way to heal rifts of schism within the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion continues to rush breathlessly toward implosion. Harvard’s Episcopal Divinity School announced today the appointment of the Reverend Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale as the new president and dean of the seminary, a woman with apparently no academic credentials whatsoever, but who luckily happens to be an ordained lesbian Episcopalian priestess. Not only that, but she is a stalwart supporter of the legal right to kill prenatal children, and executive director of a self-identifying “progressive” organization, Political Research Associates, devoted to saving the world from conservatism – which includes, says their homepage, reports explicitly aimed at “debunking” the value of marriage in combating social ills such as poverty! Yes, God save us from marriage, and other right-wing conspiracies – by all means.

I reckon that, at this point, that’s about all the credentials you need to be charged with the formation of the ECUSA’s intellectuals and divines. I’m tempted to say “last one out please shut off the lights,” but I have a hunch carbon footprinting is probably the highest priority moral issue in those environs these days, so there’s probably no need. I’m sure I sound cynical, but, well…

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Religion & Society

Religious Coping Superstitions

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

A couple weeks ago, I came across an article on Boston.com that really struck me as being foreign to the world I live in. "Patients with strong faith more likely to get aggressive end-of-life care" looked at a Journal of the American Medical Association article that explored the influence of religious faith on end-of-life medical decisions by terminal patients.

What startles me in the writing is the apparent assumption that religiosity among these men and women was not something constitutive of them as persons, but a selected process of "coping." The clinicians quoted in the story seem fascinated by what they call "religious coping," expecting that some kind of objective analysis of the phenomenon will yield a "better understanding" of how it factors into decision making. These patients, essentially, were viewed not as persons of particular personal character, but as a sample of concept-consuming human laboratory rats who "used religion to some extent to cope with their illness."

Aside from the sadly comical image of clueless empiricists standing around a scene of deep human meaning with clipboards, kind of like they’re trying to measure changes in friction, for example, to explain human sexuality, I’m left with the disturbing realization that these people see "coping" as the fundamental human act. Everything is a tactic to be utilized in a complex story of universal manipulation. Even the human being as a subject is nothing more than the object of external phenomena that must be "coped with," for there is, in this barren and shallow worldview, no truly interior life.

Of course, the belief that reality can be manipulated is the very heart of superstition…

Even the chaplain gets into the act, finding “diverse choices” associated with “high levels of religious coping.” This makes her almost a dissenter to these “findings.”

I’m sorry, but I just can’t imagine entrusting someone I love to these imbeciles during his or her final days. I just don’t know how I’d cope.

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Politics & Economics

What’s the Going Price for the Rule of Law?

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Bostonians were entertained this past week by a bizarre news story about a prominent, wealthy  – and married – businessman in his sixties out for a “last hurrah” (his words), who had spent a year and a half engaging the services of a young prostitute, and who had then begun paying hush money to the woman when she threatened to go public with the details of their relationship. This charming fellow had had quite enough by the time the woman made her third demand for cash, and so he hired a high-powered lawyer to secure the assistance of the authorities in entrapping the woman in the act of committing blackmail.

The bizarre thing is that the prosecutors appear to have made protecting this criminal businessman their top priority in the case. Firstly, of course, they set up a sting to trap the woman accepting what she thought was another payoff – protecting him financially from continued extortion. Clearly, that’s righteous enough. Having accomplished that, however, their primary concern as the case proceeded appears to have been to guarantee the anonymity of this man who had begun the whole sordid affair.

If this is not a case of bald favoritism toward some well-connected wealthy guy (which would be bad enough), then it is a troubling display of lack of respect for the rule of law at an even more fundamental level. That the guilty businessman wants to keep his identity hidden is no surprise, but that the government would not only accept the validity of his wish, but make it the centerpiece of its concern, is astonishing. The fact that this man is guilty, not only of soliciting a prostitute, but of paying bribes to conceal his crimes, seems to have become lost here.

The prosecutor claimed that protecting the man’s anonymity was important to maintaining an atmosphere that encourages extortion victims to come forward without fear of public humiliation, but why is this guy’s criminal character being glossed over in order to paint him as a victim? That seems grossly simplistic, if not disingenuous. Protecting innocents from the fallout of their victimization is certainly a noble aim, but why are the prosecutors concerned that the potential for public disgrace might discourage criminals from coming forward to report colleagues trying to blackmail them? Why not let them swing in the breeze to choose between coming clean to the law, or digging themselves an ever deeper hole by knuckling under to extortion? How about we instead use the influencing capacity of public disgrace to actually discourage people from committing crimes like soliciting prostitutes (and paying bribes) to begin with?

I think I prefer a society that promotes the living of a virtuous life as the proper means of maintaining a good public reputation, rather than one that offers to secure a good name through the ratting out of one’s criminal co-conspirators before they rat you out. Victim, my foot. I was admittedly not surprised when, by the end of the week, US District Court Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf had somehow come to grips with those concerns that troubled me, and had adopted the logic of the government:

"While that businessperson created his own vulnerability, he is nevertheless a victim," said Wolf. He added that the man deserves the protections of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act of 2004, which says victims have the right to be treated with "fairness and respect for [their dignity] and privacy.”

Created his own vulnerability? That’s a quaint way of putting things.

To his credit, Judge Wolf initially questioned the propriety of the government’s sentencing recommendation, which was essentially time served (the woman, apparently without means to make bail, has been jailed since August). Such skepticism was short-lived, however, and he soon acquiesced, citing the defense counsel’s assertion that the woman had “suffered enough,” having lost both her home, and custody of her daughter, while incarcerated. I have no gripe with a light sentence for this most powerless character in this affair, but I have my doubts that this decision, or any other in this matter, had her good in mind.

The prosecution really made no bones about it: they didn’t want the case to go to trial, because their primary concern was protecting the anonymity of the adulterous old bribe payer. And he got exactly what he wanted: the probation terms include a gag rule on the woman for the extent (three years) of the probation, which prohibits her from naming him. Incredibly, the government cut a deal with her in return for her silence, which is the very arrangement she was guilty of perpetrating. And the silence bought from her, on the other hand, is the public identification of criminal activity, which reason would suggest would be her civic duty to reveal! The State’s interest in this is what, exactly?

The only ray of light in all of this is that the probation period (hence the duration of the gag rule) is only three years, at which point she would seem to be legally free to name names. It’s entirely possible, of course, that she will continue to be surreptitiously rolled by the system, while our well-heeled fornicating philanthropist is out paying off even younger hookers to fill the empty, hidden shadows of his shame-filled life, but she may just have an opportunity to finally return the favor of his favors. Perhaps he’ll approach her and offer to buy her continued silence, and perhaps – instead of taking it – she’ll turn him in. I smell a rat.

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Politics & Economics

Shaping the Legal Meanings of Elemental Concepts

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margaret_marshall

"Where do the legal meanings of such elemental concepts as ‘birth,’ ‘death,’ and ‘family’ take shape?" she asked. "Largely in state courts.”

SJC chief justice says state courts are in crisis – The Boston Globe

Margaret Marshall, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, opining on the criticality of the state courts to the orderly functioning of society.

This is the woman primarily responsible for fabricating the legal right for homosexual couples in Massachusetts to call their partnerships marriages. I find it disturbing enough that she believes the courts competent to define (or, more correctly, to redefine) such “elemental concepts” when they present themselves for consideration, but to realize that she apparently thinks the proper role of the courts is precisely to meddle in such transcendent areas is mind boggling. What hubris. What arrogance. What inanity.

It’s been said that fools will rush in where angels dare not tread. Here, Justice Marshall is anxious for more money to be allocated to the courts, so that she can rush in to more redefinition of such elemental concepts. I’m afraid I’d rather see criminals roaming the streets than see Justice Marshall given any more opportunity to pervert and subvert the legal (and hence cultural) meanings of such elemental concepts as ‘birth,’ ‘death,’ and ‘family.’ If an economic crisis can manage to shut down this dysfunctional SJC, then I’m all in favor of economic crisis. The very last thing we need is a judicial system bent on corrupting the foundations of our civilization in the name of some moralistic (!) vision of nonsensical, self-indulgent hedonism. What a pox on society….

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Scripture

Leprosy: 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)

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healing-leper One of the themes that emerge from this week’s readings is the importance of communion, that is: the role of the Church in not only embracing all people in brotherhood, but doing so by means of bringing all people to a place of graced renewal, for the end, as Paul says in the second reading, “that they may be saved.” The device that is used to characterize this is the ancient scourge of leprosy.

The first reading, from Leviticus, skips over an extensive middle section of the Biblical text on the details of the disease, including regulations on distinguishing forms of the disease that would render a person ritually unclean (cutting them off from the community) from superficial skin diseases such as eczema. While in uncertain cases, one or more seven-day periods of quarantine were called for to see how the situation developed before a judgment of cleanness or uncleanness could be made, once someone was declared unclean, the law demanded that “he shall dwell apart” (Lev 13:46).

The Old Testament tells us of only two people cleansed of leprosy. Miriam, the sister of Moses, was stricken with leprosy when she enlisted Aaron to rebel with her against the supremacy of Moses (Numbers 12). Moses prayed for her recovery, that she “not be as one dead” (Num 12:12), and she was subject only to a seven day quarantine to repent in shame, and not a permanent exile. The other person cleansed was Naaman the Syrian, commander of the Syrian army, who is cleansed by the prophet Elisha (2Kgs 5.1-14). Naaman is mentioned by Jesus in Lk 4.27 as an example of how God’s gifts have always been available to gentiles.

Based on the way they read the Israelite King Joram’s reaction to the request from the Syrian King Ben-hadad to cure Naaman’s leprosy ("Am I a god with power over life and death, that this man should send someone to me to be cured of leprosy?” 2Kgs 5.7), the rabbis considered the cleansing of leprosy to be as difficult as raising the dead. This explains, at least in part, the expectation that the cleansing of lepers would be a symbolic manifestation of the messianic age. So, when John the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus to ask him if he was the “one to come,” Jesus answered him:

"Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.” (Lk 7.22)

As important a symbolic place the cleansing of leprosy might occupy in the Gospel (and it is surely no coincidence that Christ sends his disciples out to cleanse lepers in Mat 10:8), only a couple occasions of cleansing are actually related in the New Testament: the leper in today’s readings (the story being retold with somewhat less detail in Luke and in Matthew), and the ten lepers outside the gates in Luke 17.12-19 (only one of which returns to thank Jesus). Interestingly, they each present some kind of challenge to the Messianic mission.

In the cleansing of the ten, it is only a Samaritan (whom Jesus refers to as a foreigner) who returns to give thanks to God, which prefigures the rejection of Jesus as the Christ by the Jews, and the extension of the Messianic promise to foreigners (“Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.” Lk 17:17).

On the other hand, the leper in today’s reading was not particularly well behaved. He was not keeping himself apart as the law instructed, but, audaciously, came up to Jesus. After Jesus “sternly” told him not to tell anyone about his healing, but to go show himself to the priest, the man began telling everyone (and there is no evidence in the story of his going to the priest). This caused Jesus to have to avoid going into the towns – despite Jesus having said two just verses before this story: "Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also; for that is why I came out." Mark 1:38 (RSV). So, while the leper who would not remain apart publicized his healing, Jesus “remained outside in deserted places” (Mk 1:45).

It’s well worth considering how we use our gifts from the Lord, and it’s sobering to consider that we may choose to use them in such as way as to be an obstacle to the work of Christ, even as we focus on our own giftedness. It’s great to be brought back from exile and embraced, but Christ’s work doesn’t end with me.

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Media & Culture

Y.M.C.A.

Posted on by John W Gillis / 4 Comments

Rebecca invited me to a Father/Daughter Valentines Dance last weekend, put on by her Girl Scout group. It was nice to get out with her, even if she wasn’t feeling very well, but I have to say that I found the event disturbing in some ways. Like a lot of recent experiences, I found in it more signs of our civilization’s erosion. Not a news flash, I suppose, and open to accusations of overzealous alarmism, but I just can’t shake the sense that things are unraveling quickly. Part of it is the economic meltdown, but the pieces have been in place for quite some time, and have even contributed to the ridiculous credit situation that has the world of money staggering. If American culture can be seen as a living plant, I’m not at all convinced it has the roots to survive a significant storm.

This particular Girl Scout group is a Brownies troop consisting of girls from St Paul School, so all the people there had at least the school in common, although I’m sure there were any number of non-Catholics, as the school is hardly religiously homogeneous. A couple families, perhaps, were immigrants, but most everyone there were well-settled Americans, sharing what one could expect to be a common cultural bond. And there certainly was present, ultimately, that unifying glue we call culture, but it was epitomized in the insipid disco party anthem, “YMCA”. That song is what brought fathers and daughters together out onto the dance floor, and created a unified gathering out of the disjointed pockets of interest that had defined the event’s atmosphere to that point. There they were, grown men waving their arms around in the air in conformance with the prescribed movements of this ironic gay anthem become staple of social gatherings of all sorts.

What really troubled me about this was the realization that there really weren’t any alternatives available. It’s one thing to despise the ubiquity of such moronic kitsch, but it’s something else altogether to realize that there really isn’t any other common cultural currency to call upon. We have no folk music. We have no shared dance. Once we get past nursery rhymes, we imprison our aesthetic sensibilities in the generationally isolating fashions of pop music and the rest of pop culture, where most of what passes for art is targeted via profit motive at specific “markets” of audiences, being often incomprehensible to those outside the “in-crowd,” and leaving the kind of shared experience crucial to community either out of reach, or attainable only through a lowest common denominator of aesthetic infantilism.

And so what cultural treasure is it we possess that transcends the segregationism of pop culture chronology? A sly, winking invitation from a gang of gay cartoon characters to the pleasures of pederasty?

It’s fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.

It’s fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.

They have everything for you men to enjoy,

You can hang out with all the boys …

God help us.

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