WriteWithFire

ODDS 'N SODS

June 28, 2009

• END OF BEAUTY... The other evening, in a municipal parking lot in downtown Royal Oak, I came across a new 2011 Buick LaCrosse. I was impressed again that no one does curves in sheet metal like General Motors. Like its cousin, the Buick Enclave, it possesses the portion and beautifully carved channels usually found in more expensive German cars. And yet, Buick continues to struggle in this country (though not in China, where it competes with BMW and Mercedes). A recent article noted that the average American buyer of the brand is 68 years old. Although due in part to General Motors' past neglect of Buick, something else is at work. The generations coming up (X and Y as the media calls them) do not value beauty. It's not totally coincidental that their "Bug" does not have the curves of a 60s and 70s Volkswagen Beetle, but is the little box/big box, slab-sided Scion Xb. Their clothing is frayed and loose, but without the accompanying colors of their parent's Woodstock aesthetic. They read manga -- sketchy, Saturday-morning cartoonish, adrift from the ambitious representationalism of the 50s, 60s, and 70s comic books. Their movies are flat, casually composed -- no Kubricks here -- without visual are literary ambitions. Their heroes fight the great identity wars -- that is, everyone has identity but their own middle class selves. Whatever religious sentiments remain, are reflected in an inherited liturgical ugliness. Do they go to museums to see Sargeants or Monets or Rembrandts? Not to hear them talk. Occasional visits to the symphony are unlikely to encounter them. Poor old Buick obsesses about connecting to "new media," but is blind to the content of websites, twitters, facebooks, etc. Not to mention their "reality" TV and slim literary minimalism.

• TOM LONG'S APPARENCY... ap*par*ent: Appearing as such, but not necessarily so, American Heritage Dictionary. From his first glib reference to the Iranian Tourist Board to the final compound libel of the producer's previous film, THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, the Detroit News' Tom Long performs his usual ideological triage when reviewing THE STONING OF SORAYA M. The movie tells the true story of an Iranian woman's death by stoning, or as Mr. Long describes it. a practice that "apparently goes on in cultures around the world." Note that careful Wildeian sidestep of the word "islamic" to describe said "cultures." So discreet -- if missing anything like Wilde's wit. Then there's that "apparently." As is in: the APPARENT enslavement of women and children in the Sudan; the APPARENT past genocides in Western Europe, the Soviet Union, Rwanda, Biafra, Cambodia; the APPARENT venereal epidemics among "adolescent women 12 to 25" as the New York Times reported the story in numb prose a while back; the APPARENT lynchings in the Jim Crow South; the APPARENT use of small children to pull off car bombings in Iraq; the APPARENT mutilation of young girls in tribal cultures; the APPARENT "genocide of minds" in urban schools around the country; the APPARENT abuse of children in the foster care system (even unto death). As if we needed another example of a conscience cauterized by ideology. And, by the way, the review, although published in the June 26th edition of the Detroit News, cannot be found at its website...

Maybe the paper is still capable of human shame.

• AUTOBLOG RED... If you need anymore proof that even suburban middle and upper middle class schools are doing their part to destroy young minds, look no further than Autoblog's "Autoblog Green" site within a site. I opened my mailbox the other day to find notices of three responses to a comment I made about Elon Musk's remark that gas should be $10/gallon. Fine for a guy who, according to WSJ Radio this morning just received ove 600 million dollars from President Obama to build electric cars for the super rich. The universal response, except from one thoughtful commenter who called himself "redeemed" was one word: rethuglican. I hadn't heard that one before. But I had mentioned in my comment that if the Republicans had any brains they would make "The Democrats Want You to be Poor" their 2010 campaign slogan. Ten dollars a gallon would pretty much beggar the working and middle classes. And to what end, when you have nuclear energy; more natural gas than we can use in one hundred years; and still more big oil discoveries and new technologies to make old discoveries economical and environmentally safe. I commented on the comments by suggesting that they read a recent New York Times Magazine interview with the supersmart Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Studies (Mr. Dyson once lived next door to another member of the institute, Albert Einstein) who challenged "climate change" orthodoxy. This week, I responded to criticisms of Manny Lopez, a News' auto writer who had, apparently, gotten the exact number of Mr. Musk's welfare check wrong by a few million (million, a denomination almost unheard in government spending these days; a number as pathetic as what I put in the collection plate on Sunday). The next day there were three more notices of comment in my mail box. I'm afraid to look...

Sam Macomb

CLEAN FOR GENE

June 14, 2009

Not that Gene. Today is Gene Barry's 90th birthday. Who's Gene Barry? Most babyboomer's remember him as Amos Burke of BURKE'S LAW. He played a millionaire/playboy detective livried about in a Rolls Royce by wise-cracking chauffeur with a Brooklyn accent (apparently more common in LA than Brooklyn, given its ubiquity on 1960s/1970s TV shows). He wore Brooks Brothers suits, always with a vest. With an expensive cut that Randall Kennedy or Rev. James Wright would envy. (Please see book jacket covers.)

Mr. Barry was last seen in Steve Spielberg's remake of WAR OF THE WORLDS. That's him waving from the porch of a Boston brownstone in the final scene. A nonspeaking role that links the film to its 1950s predecessor starring Gene Barry. He plays the hero's father-in-law. Overall, not as much fun as the original, but entertaining in its own way -- I still don't understand the trashing it took from movie reviewers, I mean "cinema critics." If the film aroused memories of September 11th, so be it.

But I remember Gene Barry from the opening of a Sealtest plant (milk, ice cream -- does the brand even exist now?) in Louisville, Kentucky. Probably around 1958-59. I was in first grade and was no doubt the only member of a family of girls who actually wanted to be there.

Mr. Barry was then the star of BAT MASTERTON. A western loosely based on an historic wild west character. Bat Masterton carried an elegant black cane with a silver crown (hence the name, Bat, I guess). I remember looking up at him but never attaining eye level. I only recall the silver buttons of his vest. (Now that I remember it, his characters always seemed to wear vests -- it must have been in his contract. That is, look like you actually give a damn how you look.) That day he wore his trademark black western suit and tie with that silver-buttoned vest (similar to another elegant black-attired gunslinger, Paladin in HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL -- that was printed on his business cards!).

I also seem to remember taking home a toy version of his famous cane. Back in those days, of course, plants and shopping centers opened almost every day and TV personalities were in great demand to preside over a golden era of robust commerce when we actually made stuff, here, in America, sometimes in the very town you called home.

At home, I had toy six-gun that shot "greenie-stickum-cap" plastic bullets (those caps simulated the sound of lethality). The belt buckle held a small toy derringer that I used to take to school. (No metal detectors at the schoolhouse door or political activists on the faculty back then.) Some days I was Bat, some days Paladin. I liked a well-dressed gunslinger. In the 70s, the tradition of shaven, clean-cut hero with the well-cut suit continued with James West in WILD, WILD WEST.

These days, like most Americans, I go to work looking like that poor kid from Nirvana. But on Sunday mornings, when I go to mass, I wear a coat and tie -- and not with jeans either. I explain to friends and staring parishoners that Catholics have their sackcloth and hairshirts; Anglicans the jacket and tie. (I'm a recent convert to the Church.) Either they think I'm a Episcopalian snob or a great sinner. These days, discomfort achieves parity with suffering and devoutness. Given some of the looks, I wonder if I'm in for a lecture on scrupulosity the next time I go to confession. Only ushers and lectors wear ties. I suspect on orders from monsignor.

So, happy birthday Mr. Barry. You gave me a lot of entertainment value and another blue-collar aspiration. Look like you actually give a damn. We could have done worse. Given the universality of transgressive pop-culture slouchwear, we now do.

Sam Macomb

AN IMPLACABLE DESCENT beneath America's caring classes

June 11, 2009

In a new Intel commercial, an unseen person enters a company cafeteria (remember those?). The employees have that startled, hungry look that Americans apparently get when a celebrity enters the room or a midtown elevator. They pull out paper and pens, holding them out for autographs or maybe just the touch of his hand.

The object of all this attention is a non-descript man who would not be noticed in any room except, perhaps his own living room. The man is, in fact, a real person and an employee of Intel. He is the inventor of the USB port (look on the left side of your laptops). It's a funny parody of American star lust. But it is more.

Because that nondescript man is also, obviously, from the Indian subcontinent. Or, his parents or grandparents were.

For a brief moment, during a commercial sponsoring a Sunday morning public affairs show, America hovered above the diversity obsession to embrace individual achievement.

I came back to earth while grazing the June 5th issue of the Michigan Catholic. Who reads MC? Probably older Catholics like me. And new converts, like me.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops sponsors something called the Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church. The executive director is Jesuit Fr. Allan Figuerosa Deck. Fr. Deck is also a founding member of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the U.S. In the issue of MC, Fr. Deck was praising Pres. Obama's choice for US ambassador to the Vatican. Several choices had been rejected by the Holy See, in part because the candidates were pro-choice. The candidate is Miguel Diaz, a professor of theology (hispanic theology?) at St. John's University in Collegeville, MN. Prof. Diaz arrived in America as a child when -- the article doesn't elaborate -- his parents left Havana. Prof. Diaz is 45 years old, so it is a good guess his parents weren't fleeing the American mob.

The article describes Prof. Diaz as "pro-life," but also, "smart, willing to listen to others..." Pro life AND smart. Fr. Deck makes great claims for the "bilingual and biculutural," and by inference, Prof. Diaz (and, of course, Fr. Deck himself.) "The advantage is that our circumstances have allowed us to have feet in two worlds."

The current president of the Academy of Hispanic Theologians, Prof. Carmen Nanko-Fernandez, praises Pres. Obama's choice of Prof. Diaz as "recognition of the presence of Latino Catholics, which has been marginalized."

Marginalized.

Indeed.

At my election ceremony in April at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Detroit, Bishop Flores (a suffragan bishop chosen to minister to Michigan's growing spanish-speaking population) alternated between English to Spanish as he spoke to the catechumens. One half of the Cathedral was filled with Latinos. It was, by the way, an impressive talk by an impressive priest and bishop. A natural preacher.

Opposite the Diaz article was another piece: OBAMA NOMINATES NY LATINA TO SUPREME COURT. Judge Sonia Sotomayor's own words are absent from the article. But, it is clear from them that she shares the world view of Prof. Nanko-Fernandez and Fr. Deck. That is, cultural exceptionalism.

And also Prof. Diaz? Who knows? What is known is that he was a signatory supporter of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' nomination as Secretary of the Dept. of Health and Human Services. Although, a Catholic, Secretary Sebelius is a vocal supporter of reproductive rights. Operation Rescue's site displays several pictures of her at a campaign function in May of 2008 with Dr. George Tiller -- the recently murdered abortion provider. A WSJ article (not an editorial) reported that he had performed abortions on girls as young as nine years old and abortions as late as near birth.

If my own personal observations of America's legal establishment are any indication, you don't get where Judge Sotomayor is today by being vigorously pro-life. Chief Justice Roberts is a beneficiary of Pres. Reagan's two terms in office, as well as Pres. Bush's eight years in the White House. But the establishment itself -- from the ABA on down to the infinite variety of law student associations focusing on ethnic triumphalism as much as the law itself -- brook NO criticism of Roe v. Wade or reproductive rights as they have expanded over the decades. The Federalist Society as it actually functions in real law schools is not much better. Given the quietude of students, I have no idea what it means to be a Catholic law student in today's vigorously policed classrooms.

Not so long ago, it was popular to talk about "two Americas." One rich. One poor. In between extremes are tens of millions of middle class, working class, and working poor of equally diverse backgrounds. Many, especially the working class and working poor, straddle America with "feet in two worlds." Particularly if, like soon-to-be Justice Sotomayor, they have some glancing acquaintance with poverty and struggle. I can only speak from personal experience. Merely "anecdotal" as the educated like to say. But individual struggle does not always meet the academic standard of "cultural advantage." If only the English and American underclasses, as described by Murray and Dalrymple, could watch TMZ and Sabado Gigante with equal fluency.

Not diverse enough in their suffering, a growing number of working class and working poor are invisible in their long descent. Sparse attention -- with the exception of Charles Murray and Theodore Dalrymple -- means the inhabitants of this culturally disadvantaged class are strange and unknowable like the creature in Edward Gorey's "The Sinking Spell." Little education and health care; more fatherless; poorer; abandoned to addiction and disease. Like so many others in corrupt and dysfunctional and value-free America. At the Dixieland flea market north of Pontiac, they mingle with blacks and hispanics in an underclass denied even its "diversity."

Academic America, and some precincts of the Church, seem to subscribe to his cultural exceptionalism that makes the pitiless distinction between historic and individual hardship. Diversity has the cynical appearance of upward mobility by other means.

In the complacent world of ideological triage, one wonders whether God's Divine Mercy has not been reduced to the unimaginative zero-sum game of fiscal politics. What is meant by hispanic theology? (Fill in your culturally advantaged group here.) Is it suprising that the rhetoric of social justice equals high-church leftism to outsiders without bilingual and bicultural advantage?

Reading Dalrymple or Murray; wandering through Dixieland mall; or watching COPS or the ten o'clock news; I feel my own sinking spell over Invisible America.

"It is not merely sitting there,/But falling slowly through the air... It settled further in the night/And gave the maid an awful fright... The weeks went by, it made its way/A little lower every day... One wonders just what can be meant/By this implacable descent... It now declines in fretful curves/Among the pickles and preserves... It's gone beneath the cellar floor/We shall not see it any more."

-- The Sinking Spell by Edward Gorey

Sam Macomb