Eric The Blue

Family values

Swamped at work, and, on the home front, a pregnant wife who, in the after-5 part of the day, either sallies off for her own work shift or else retires to the couch with Jane Austen while I cope with the dirty dishes, the dirty clothes, and a loquacious 4-year-old who is often herself in need of a rinse.  Thus I explain, to my legions of loyal but impatient fans, the recent dearth of posting.

Last Sunday, while mom was working, the 4-year-old and I bused downtown, where we dithered hither and thither before taking in the second half of the gay pride parade along Hennepin Avenue.  Unless it's a segregated parade, with the brow-arching exhibits all at the front, I'd say that what began as a spoof of 4th-of-July wholesomeness has gone native.  There were more politicians (all Democrats, granted) than drag queens and a liberal admixture of marching church members who indicated, by means of oblique signage, that they are the real Christians.  The parade began at 11 so they must have hustled right over there.  A bad day for Perkins, probably.

Anyway, the presence of these tolerant churchies reminded me of my unusual, if correct, take on the contrasting claims of the various contenders at the homosexual-Bible-religion nexus.  It turns out that everyone but me is at least part wrong.  All the stentorian spokesmen for the alarmed Family Councils are right about the Bible condemning homosexuality.  You cannot get around that, even if a lot of cuddly Christians would like to.  It is right there in the Old Testament, crowding the instructions on what to do with menstruating women and the enumeration of circumstances under which one might enjoy with lunch a glass of milk, and also in the New, although only in the part written by Paul, who was not really a homophobe but, more generally, a thoroughgoing opponent of all sexual congress. 

The homosexual-haters are right about what the Bible condemns (homosexuality) but wrong about the scripture-approved alternative (heterosexual marriage and the family).  Jesus, who says nothing about homosexuality, never married, spoke rudely to his parents, and railed against ordinary ties of familial affection.  Paul seems a more extreme case.  He is famous (though not among Family Council spokesmen) for asserting that it would be best if all were like him, an inveterate bachelor, and that marriage might be recommended only for those who otherwise would be unable to think of anything but getting off. 

In both the gospels and the Pauline corpus, family life is regarded as a dangerous distraction from the consuming religious devotion demanded by the times.  The kingdom of God is at hand!  Repent, and don't worry about getting home for dinner.

The kingdom of God was not in fact at hand but that does not mean the withering critique of familial affection was withdrawn.  Where do the cub scout grads get the idea that the New Testament endorses devotion to family?  One theory, admittedly not a  revolutionary one, is that their interest in the Bible is slight compared to their dislike of homosexuals.  The purpose of their biblical hermeneutics is not to develop their understanding but to gather their ammo.  They won't take advice from an outsider but here is mine, dressed up so as to be impressive to them.

Bloomsday

Yesterday, June 16, was Bloomsday, so called because it is the day that the action of James Joyce's Ulysses, concerning a day in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom, occurs.  It is sometimes said that the action of the novel is confined in its entirety to Thursday, June 16, 1904 (chosen by the author for its personal significance, the day he met his wife) but the famous conclusion transcribes the two-in-the-morning, stream-of-consciousness reverie of Bloom's unfaithful wife, Molly.  (Ulysses is, among other things, a mock-heroic epic, the various episodes modeled on those of Homer's protagonist on his way back to Ithaca after the war, and so you would not expect Molly to be cut from the same cloth as Penelope.)

I have marked the last several Bloomsdays by re-reading "The Dead," the concluding story of Dubliners.  Yesterday, however, the day at an end with no start having been made on that long story, I opened my paperback The Portable Joyce and read in bed Harry Levin's introduction, then "The Sisters," the opening story of the collection.  The stories in Dubliners chart the consciousness of progressively older people, so in "The Sisters" a young boy is accompanied by his aunt to pay their respects to the deceased Father Flynn.  They kneel at the coffin with one of the priest's elderly sisters and

I pretended to pray but I could not gather my thoughts because the old woman's mutterings distracted me.  I noticed how clumsily her skirt was hooked at the back and how the heels of her cloth boots were trodden down all to one side.

This mundane detail may serve as an introduction to the world according to James Joyce.  Not much happens in these stories.  There is, at the beginning and again at the end of "The Sisters," the suggestion of some kind of scandal surrounding Father Flynn, but that is not what the story is "about," and indeed it trails off at the end when it seems we might be on the verge of a full revelation.  But there is no revelation.  Instead, we behold a boy noticing the wardrobe malfunctions of the deceased priest's elderly sister while pretending to pray.

Sunday morning

Spent Sunday morning at home with a 4-year-old.  Mom was at work.  Between answering emergency calls for help, I performed kitchen duties, NPR providing the background noise. 

Why is "Speaking of Faith" played on Sunday morning?  You'd think the target audience would be away from the radio.  I find myself annoyed by host Krista Tippett, her evident earnestness, the tincture of pride.  By her own account she stands above the fray of the culture war, "addressing issues of value and meaning." 

My annoyance made me listen more closely, like a man picking a scab.  The topic was science and religion, that old favorite, and the talk was of "new perspectives," "new frontiers."  It's all very new, old wine in new skins you might say.  Tippett seems especially keen on physics:  quarks, for example, and other "things unseen," "signposts" pointing the way to "the deep structure of reality."  Surely the audience makes the connection and swoons appropriately.  The phrases in quotation marks are just signposts pointing the way to an effective emetic.

Having as a youth collected certificates for perfect attendance in Sunday school, I am used to grinding my teeth while listening to people theologize.  I've  never been able to respond in the approved fashion.  For example, there is in John 20 the story of doubting Thomas, who on hearing news of Jesus' resurrection declared (Revised Standard Version): "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe."  The sturdy monosyllabic march of his words seems to me now a welcome antidote to the effusions of Krista Tippett.  Thomas had something resembling the scientific spirit.  Of course he had to be the villain of the sermons and Sunday school lessons. 

"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe!"  It's the paradigm of the quarks!

How long till "Car Talk"?

Power outage

When online I sometimes check out the Powerline blog--for the same reason, I think, that in college I signed up for a course in abnormal psychology.  What has gone wrong with these fellows?  I don't know, but it sure is fun, in a creepy sort of way, to root around on their site, typing into their great search engine the names of eminent members of the reality-based community.  Today I tried "Hendrick Hertzberg," the New Yorker magazine's brilliant political writer, and learned, from John Hinderaker, that he (Hertzberg) is "wholly unmoored from reality," "an ill-informed idiot."

The occasion was a dust-up from last fall when the Minneapolis newspaper printed an editorial that appeared to have been lifted, in part, from a New Yorker piece of Hertzberg's in which he had declared, around the time of the election, that the Bush administration had: sought to suppress scientific truth, overseen a festival of bribery, subcontracted environmental policy to corporate interests, replenished the ranks of the poor--you get the idea.  Hinderaker huffs that if the newspaper is going to plagiarize it should at least try to find someone half-way intelligent, and he proceeds to rebut Hertzberg, point by point.  I say "rebut" but Hinderaker's performance is so lame that, unless he is unmoored from reality, he cannot possibly have persuaded even himself.  Take his punchy riposte to Hertzberg's claim that, under Bush, the ranks of the poor have been replenished.

"Replenished the ranks of the poor"? Poverty rate in fifth year of Clinton administration (1997):13.3%.  Poverty rate in fifth year of Bush administration (2005): 12.6%

Surely Hinderaker must understand that this "fifth year" comparison is completely bogus.  In fact he could only have selected it because it is bogus.  That has to be what attracted him to it.  The fact of the matter is that the poverty rate declined during each year of the Clinton administration, then reversed course upon Bush's ascendancy, and has risen every long year of the current occupant's incumbency.   The sinking Clinton line crosses the rising Bush line in the fifth years of their respective terms, and, in the world according to John Hinderaker, this absolves Bush of the charge that he has "replenished the ranks of the poor."