12 easy pieces notebook

Religious Giving and Its Critics - NYTimes.com

Charitable giving in general is a strange beast to analyze. Alec MacGillis’ jibes at Romney’s giving, for example, seem to mask the fact the he thinks the charity isn’t up to snuff. He isn’t complaining about the $4m he gives, just who he gives it to.

But let’s look at the work of giving itself: it’s hard. It takes real commitment to whatever to take what you’ve got an voluntarily hand it over to any organization. Even for Romney, $4m is a lot of money.

Per MacGillis would be satisfied if Romney had given it instead to, say, the Humane Society. But someone would have complained that he gave so much to animals and did so little to help people. Or maybe the Red Cross, but then someone else would complain about… I dunno. I’m sure they’d find something.

Give Romney the credit for giving away that much money (by percentage, not raw amount). Critics are welcome to complain—and make judgements—about the recipient, but they should at least acknowledge that charitable giving itself is a Good Thing.

laphamsquarterly:

I’ll reblog pretty much anything that mentions the second-best bed.

If they made movies like these, I would have probably gone to see them.

There’s no chance that I’m going to ever sit down and spend the two hours necessary to watch Drive or The Hangover, but if they had actually been remakes, I might have enjoyed seeing the originals.

(Actually neither of these movies would have made the cut. James Dean couldn’t ever act, and Jerry Lewis movies have ever done anything for me. Inception, on the other hand, looks wonderfully. I only wish it were real.)

Reboot

It has been too long that I have ignored this place. I will commence writing again. Welcome back, me.

thenewrepublic:

canisfamiliaris:

“Trickle Down”

(via religiousragings)

Also, read TNR’s Timothy Noah on “When Did Trickle-Down Get Respectable?”

(Source: occupyallstreets)

Taking note: Marshall McLuhan's "Reading Style"

firstbook:

Our friends at Random House Children’s Books have generously agreed to donate one brand-new book for each new follower we gain on Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter this week. Those books will go to thousands of schools and programs serving kids from low-income families across the country.

Please Re-blog!

To learn more about First Book, please visit: www.firstbook.org

“The loss of a left worth engaging hurts the country, not because that left will answer the questions of the moment, but because the country needs the challenges only the left will (at the moment) provide. The mainstream right will not challenge those who’ll exploit the system for their own ends, and exploit others for their own profit, because so many have off-loaded their moral thinking to the market. Nor, not in a million years, will the Republican Party. That may be one of the worst results of the sixties, that the politics of gesture and emotion have been privileged, as the academics put it, which means a politics with no actual political content will drive a publicly successful movement like Occupy Wall Street—even though it is not going anywhere in particular.”

Occupy Wall Street’s Empty Anger | First Things (via ayjay)

In posting the quote above, Alan Jacobs commented:

I agree with this analysis completely. I sympathize with, and feel, the anger behind #OWS, but with every day that passes the various acts of “occupation” seem emptier, more pointless. How do we get from these gestures to legitimate political action?

Jacobs has been posting some great stuff lately, and this is one of them. The thing about the quote above that really gets to me is that the right is not immoral in regards to capitalism, but that they’ve “off-loaded their moral thinking.” And for an increasingly Christianized movement, as the Republican party is, to off-load their moral thinking anywhere is troubling. Adam Smith’s invisible hand which controls markets has become synonymous with God, both of which/whom work in mysterious ways.

I saw a bumper sticker the other day which read, “I believe in capitalism.” But of course that’s an incomplete statement. When one believes in God, it implies that she believes in what she does not see: it’s a statement of faith in God’s existence. But the existence of capitalism isn’t in question (is it?). I wondered exactly what the rest of the statement of faith about capitalism would be: “To protect the interests of the public at large”? “That it will grow indefinitely and infinitely”? “To fix the perceived problems of society”? “As an appropriate and virtuous force to govern society, and therefore really don’t need a government at all”? I’m struggling a bit with this: is there a reasonable way to finish that statement without sounding like an insensitive, privileged jerk?

Which is, I think, the problem on the right: that they’re not asking the questions that need to be asked about our relationship to The Market. But the problem on the left is perhaps more urgent, since the most visible wing of the left are currently spending four hours a day beating drums in NYC and spend their time doing performance art and wiggling their fingers as a form of absurdist democracy. They’ve gotten themselves stuck: there’s no easy exit at this point from #OWS because there’s no way to satisfy them. They’re mad as Hell, sure, but they’re mad at an idea. And ideas are eternal. If they want to get something done, get mad at something that can change, and then make it hurt until something changes. As it stands now, the easiest thing (and perhaps the only real workable response to #OWS) is to ignore it and hope it goes away.

more than 95 theses: a likely story

Below, Alan Jacobs writes movingly and compellingly about the anti-Shakespeareans’ misunderstanding about what defines Shakespeare. It’s lovely, really, his short essay here.

I need to correct only one thing. Jacobs describes the shocking twist/climax at the end of The Winter’s Tale, and he asks “is there a moment in theater more complexly glorious than this?” It is wonderful, that scene, and I presume the complexity he mentions is that the mother-father-daughter triad on stage are an incomplete family, because the boy, Mamillius, is still dead. I always mourn a little when productions skip over this, as if the death of the prince that was so significant earlier in the play is now utterly forgotten. It isn’t forgotten, and Mamillius’ absence is what gives the scene such depth.

But there is an even greater scene. In Measure for Measure, the nun-novice Isabella has had a rough go of things. Her brother and de facto sister-in-law are imprisoned for inappropriate sex, and her pleas for clemency on his behalf have been met with a sexual proposition in turn. Angelo, the surrogate duke and unequivocal voice of authority has told her that she must either submit to him, else her brother will surely die.

After an always-improbably-successful bed trick, Angelo reneges on his promise and accelerates Isabella’s brother’s death.

Later, nearly everything has been revealed. Angelo has been exposed for the debased, craven rat that he is, and the now-returned Duke has sentenced Angelo to death for his behavior. Angelo’s wife, Mariana, begs for his life, but the Duke is unmoved.

And here comes the powerful part. Mariana turns to Isabella and asks for her help. She asks Isabella, the victim of unsuccessful rape, Isabella whose brother has been murdered by Angelo, Isabella who was forced to choose between her eternal salvation and her brother’s mortal life, Isabella gets down on her knees and begs for the life of Angelo. For Angelo, who (she thinks) murdered her brother. Angelo who (imagined he) raped her. She is an archetype for victimhood, and yet she is also a model of Christian forgiveness, because she gets on her knees and begs for his life.

It is subtle, I think, and most of the time I need to explain to students just how much Isabella has to set aside before she kneels down. It is not a role I would be anxious to perform on stage, that’s for sure.

To Jacobs’ point: what about this powerful example of perfect forgiveness would require a noble background? What background could conceivably help reach this depth of emotion? There is, of course, no background that makes it more or less likely. Anyone, from any background, can understand despair and victimization and forgiveness.

ayjay:

“Is it likely,” the anti-Stratfordians often say, “that these greatest of plays could be written by a half-educated glover’s son from the provinces?” To which one plausible answer is, “More likely than their being written by a known hack like the Earl of Oxford.” But a better answer is: Of…