Bored by propaganda
[D]rawing the extreme left and right into a fair and balanced cock fight is a great way to have a meaningful public exchange of ideas,
says daughter Maggie Bowman ironically, in an extended critique of “Agitprop-palooza.”
I've done my fair share of hollering about lefty causes. But as I've grown older, and my father's growing conservatism has forced me sharpen my debating skills, I've grown less tolerant of one-sided-leftist-landslide-here-it-comes-oh-yes-THE-MAN-is-wrong-ONCE-again-wouldn't-you-know-it media. And as I've developed my own tastes and styles as a documentary filmmaker, I am simply bored by agitprop films.
Breathes there a father with soul so dead, that never to himself hath said: I LOVE TO HEAR THAT SORT OF THING?
Good sample:
I DO care about Mexican women organizing for power in their sweatshops just south of the border. But I do NOT care to see another film about it, especially if the final message from the film is the same that it's been for the last 10 films: these women are being screwed by Sony. There is a more complicated and nuanced message that this topic deserves other than: Sí Se Puede.
Giving poor people cameras with which to film their own lives was "revolutionary" the first couple of times it was done. But let's face it: Born Into Brothels set the bar pretty high. Now, unless footage captured by the poor people gives unique access to their lives that the filmmakers could not provide and does it in a pretty beautiful way, then making the audience sit through hours of low-res footage from a 1-chip camera is not worth the gimick.
There’s more, more, more.
They can't all be railroaded
Editorial: Women in Prison
Although the number of women prisoners is far smaller than the number of men, the rate of incarceration for women is rising at a much faster rate than for men. Over 200,000 women are now behind bars throughout the country, most of them African American and Hispanic. And according to the nonprofit Sentencing Project, Hispanic women are incarcerated at nearly twice the rate of white females and black ... ( full text)
This from America (Jesuit) Magazine, whose leftist bent leads me to suspect the story is about unfair racial and ethnic discrimination, rather than about increased lawlessness among African American and Hispanic women. I could be wrong but doubt it and anyhow I can't access full text because not a subscriber.
However, not to pick on the poor Jesuits, this is the regular slant: increased incarceration means blame the incarcerators. Why is that? Apart from the drumbeat of mainstream media story selection in these matters, that is.
Ask your friend who's big on unlawful imprisonment and unfair prosecution why he is not also big on increased criminality. Rather, ask your friend who edits and reports why he's big on unlawful imprisonment and unfair prosecution. It's a fair question.
Woe is us
Talk about a pox on both your houses! Here’s the inimitable GK Chesterton on progressives and conservatives:
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types—the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins."
It’s from the ever interesting and varied “Patriot Post” from the Federalist Society.
This coarse course we have taken
Columnist Mona Charen has something for us all about taste, which you can argue, no matter what Horace said:
CULTURE
"[I]n our jaded era, decency is a snigger word. And that's too bad because decency is such an unassuming virtue. Here's the American Heritage Dictionary's second definition of decent: 'Free from indelicacy, modest.' Indelicacy. Now there's an antique concept... It may be impossible to rescue the word decency in this vulgar age. But perhaps we can campaign for the same thing under a different name. Taste will do. I'm assuming that millions of Americans feel as I do about this endless barrage of tastelessness, but how will the sellers know if we don't complain loudly and often?... This stew of smuttiness coarsens our sensibilities. It appeals to our lowest selves. It makes a mockery of words like delicacy, refinement and modesty." Mona Charen
It's from the ever rich and rewarding offerings of the Federalist Society's "Patriot Post," to which you can subscribe free of charge at http://patriotpost.us/
To deafening applause
John Leo gives his Sheldon Award, named after Sheldon Hackney, of U. of Pennsylvania "and a modern legend in looking the other way," to two college presidents this year, one of them Holtschneider of Chicago's own DePaul. The award is for violators of free speech on campus: Another heavyweight Sheldon contender is the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, president of DePaul, a Catholic university in Chicago. Though in office only 22 months, Holtschneider has already presided over three Sheldon-attracting controversies:
* A veteran, part-time teacher with a good record, Thomas Klocek, was suspended without a hearing after a verbal run-in with pro-Palestinian students at a school fair. He refused an order to apologize, and balked at the university's plan to put a monitor in his classes. Then he sued.
* The college Republicans were found guilty of violating a campus prohibition against "propaganda" after handing out fliers criticizing an upcoming lecture by radical professor Ward Churchill.
* Sponsors of a mock bake sale satirizing affirmative action were hauled on the carpet. The were found not guilty of harassment, but then censured because the university said their application for table space was faulty. Holtschneider denounced the sale as "an affront to DePaul's values of respect and dignity."
Judges agreed they had never seen two candidates as eminently qualified as Rawlins [of Wash. State U.] and Holtschneider. Calling the pair "the Ruth and Gehrig of modern Sheldonism," the judges awarded the golden no-spine statuette to both. Congratulations, Sheldon laureates 2006.
But Father H. had precedent at DPU, in the reverend dean who took a picture of St. Peter Claver SJ off a wall a few years ago because he had been tolerant of slavery a few hundred years ago. A black student demanded it, though Claver spent his life helping slaves and the Knights of Peter Claver have been an important black Catholic fraternal group for a long time. The dean said take it down, "it's only a picture." Go, Demons!
