Prometheus Unbound

Look, I like Rosemary’s Baby  too.

But in the Washington Post yesterday, the acclaimed historian of Soviet era gulags (in other words, a serious person), Anne Applebaum, offers a bizarre and full throated defense of Roman Polanski’s giving a 13 year old girl alcohol and Quaaludes, and then, against her will, sodomizing her in Jack Nicholson’s Jacuzzi! Talk about being a “live and let live” kind of person! Applebaum, in her high-sophisticate generosity toward the boorish ways of this particular man (he is so gifted afterall!), thinks it’s an old crime, and water under the bridge, and so we should just leave the elderly director alone. Here’s part of her cloying defense (and with a dash of armchair psychoanalysis):

He could not return to Los Angeles to receive his recent Oscar. He cannot visit Hollywood to direct or cast a film. He can be blamed, it is true, for his original, panicky decision to flee. But for this decision I see mitigating circumstances, not least an understandable fear of irrational punishment. Polanski’s mother died in Auschwitz. His father survived Mauthausen. He himself survived the Krakow ghetto, and later emigrated from communist Poland. His pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered in 1969 by the followers of Charles Manson, though for a time Polanski himself was a suspect.

Irrational punishment? Using the Holocaust to arouse compassion for a child rapist? WTF?! I wonder if Applebaum would make a similar argument for John Demanjuk? You see, Demanjuk is an old man and the Holocaust was a long time ago. I mean, hell, you do stupid things when you’re young.

How could anybody make such cynical and nihilistic arguments against long overdue justice? Oh, Andrew Sullivan has the answer. It turns out that Anne Applebaum’s husband is lobbying for Polanski’s case to be dismissed! Apparently, it’s the “Cheney Daughter Syndrome.” Defend the man you love, and especially double-down on that defense when his behavior is at its most reprehensible:

Anne Applebaum created a firestorm over her passionate defense of Polanski and her failure to disclose that her husband, a Polish foreign minister, is lobbying for the dismissal of Polanski’s case.

In other words, stand by your man!:

Oh, and here’s a lovely quote by Polanski (from 1979 and offered to Martin Amis in an interview) bemoaning his persecution by hypocritical Puritan Americans:

“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!”

Ah, yes. Polanski is the consumate Renaissance Man. Give us that old time Greco-Roman “man-child love” religion. Next, look for a vigorous aesthetic defense of his behavior forthcoming from Camille Paglia.

As a white person, I’m sick of the white hate being directed at President Barack Obama. It’s indecent, and I’m not going to be silent in the face of it.

Aaron Wiener of the Washington Independent notices that the far right march on Washington today basically consisted of like, well, all white people erecting their hate on Barack Obama:

The turnout to today’s Tea Party was indisputably high — likely in the hundreds of thousands (though organizers claimed it reached 1.5 million). But racially diverse it was not. And according to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), that’s the fault of the event’s timing and the media coverage. “If anyone does a fair analysis of the crowd, it’s a cross-section of the population,” he said in a phone interview. I agreed that it was a geographically and economically diverse crowd, but I mentioned that the protesters were at least 99 percent white — in fact, in my four-plus hours at the event, I’d only seen three African-American demonstrators.

And some of the signs and flags being carried conveyed racial hatred, projective paranoia, and general maliciousness and hysteria:

I’m a white person and I love Barack Obama. I’ll say it loud: I’m white and I’m proud to be a supporter of Barack Obama. The people in those streets carrying racist and fanatical signs and flags do not represent me. When I see Barack Obama, I see the hope represented in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and I wish him more than well. I wish him success and a long and happy life. He represents what’s best about my country, and I want him to go down in history as a great man.

This blog post is my counter-protest to those racial haters and xenophobes on the streets of Washington today. I respect the protesters’ right to protest, and I believe that their grievances and fears should be heard, and I want them to exercise their rights. But here at this blog I’m going to have my say too. Barack Obama represents extended human brotherhood and the expansion of human dignity and freedom in the world (not its reduction). The Rush Limbaugh right does not speak for me, and it is treating a good man badly and unjustly, and I’m angry about it.

This video reminds me why I voted for Obama. It’s nice to have a calm and intelligent man in the White House with some environmental and liberal vision:

God, this was so refreshing. So non-Orwellian. And on Fox News!

Virginia Woolf (from A Room of One’s Own ):

“All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn . . . for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.”

Here are some lines of poetry from Aphra Behn:

And Reason over all Unfettered plays,

Wanton and undisturbed as Summer’s Breeze;

That gliding murmurs o’er the Trees:

And no hard Notion meets or stops its way.

It Pierces, Conquers and Compels,

Beyond poor Feeble Faith’s dull oracles.

Faith the despairing Soul’s content,

Faith the Last Shift of Routed Argument.

And here’s a drawing of Aphra Behn at age 33 (made by one of her 17th century contemporaries):

Aphra Behn died in 1689 and is buried at Westminster Abbey.

If patriotism is, as Samuel Johnson put it, the last refuge of the scoundrel, is faith the last refuge of a “routed argument”?

That was 17th century female British writer, and now feminist icon, Aphra Behn’s, cutting observation in some startling lines from her poem, “To Mr. Creech (Under the Name of Daphnis) on His Excellent Translation of Lucretius”. In 1682, Thomas Creech did the first full translation (into English) of Lucretius’s ancient atheist masterpiece, De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things ), and part of Behn’s poem reflects on reason’s implications for religion (lines 55-58):

It Pierces, Conquers and Compels,

Beyond poor Feeble Faith’s dull oracles.

Faith the despairing Soul’s content,

Faith the Last Shift of Routed Argument.

In other words, when vigorous skepticism “Pierces, Conquers and Compels” your “Feeble Faith’s” not very convincing claims, and you really have no good reasons for believing something, but you are nevertheless committed by prejudice to go on believing it, you can always declare that your belief simply belongs to the realm of faith, and hence abort from others their critical scrutiny. Faith is, when one has exhausted rational justification, ”the Last Shift of Routed Argument.”

Here are some additional lines from Behn’s poem, in which she expresses a kind of Enlightenment pagan—and even atheist—longing for the governance of reason, which, as an unfettered breeze, wantonly rules in an eternal and idyllic summer, with nothing to resist it (lines 51-54):

And Reason over all Unfettered plays,

Wanton and undisturbed as Summer’s Breeze;

That gliding murmurs o’er the Trees:

And no hard Notion meets or stops its way.

There is an irony in that last line, for were reason to meet “no hard Notion” or skeptical resistance to itself, it would seem not to be a very vigorous or self-critical form of reason at all. And is a reason that does not lay bare its own metaphysical and epistemic prejudices and assumptions a rigorous reason? Might such an all-encompassing reason devolve into a machine for totalitarianism and spellcasting akin to religion, as “over all” it “Unfettered plays”? In other words, might such a reason, over time, take over from faith the traditional mystifications of “miracle, mystery, and authority”? 

Just asking.

Nevertheless, Behn’s sentiment for the bucolic “summer breeze” rule of reason over humanity is admirable, and would seem to be the utopian vision of contemporary atheists like Richard Dawkins. And I do confess it: I too think that the rule of secular reason would probably make a better world—though absent the critique of it by religion, it would be in constant need of generating its own self-critical awareness. 

Here’s a drawing of Aphra Behn at age 33, made by one of her contemporaries:

A one man American white male ignorance and resentment pride parade:

And what the hell was that chest pounding gesture at the end about? True-heart conservatism has the courage to mouth hatred towards liberal women and Hispanics? He’s proud of that, apparently—for having the courage to do it publicly.

Rush Limbaugh: the daring white male rhetorician of the radio airwaves strikes again!

Mega-dittos?

In solidarity with the brave and non-violent people, old and young, of Iran. And they want us to.

Here’s a twitter comment from Iran yesterday:

MOUSAVI APPEALS TO THE WORLD TO PARTICIPATE IN SEA OF GREEN IN ALL CAPITAL CITIES THIS SUNDAY

A most interesting interpretation of Genesis 1:27 (“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them”).

Adam (the first human) was an hermaphrodite! (“Male and female created he them”).

That’s the interpretation that the famous atheist Enlightenment thinker, Baron d’Holbach, gave to Genesis 1:27.

His reasoning was based on the assumption that some of the ancients, particularly the Egyptians, had hermaphrodite gods at the beginning of creation. And so it was, in d’Holbach’s estimation, a sign of Egyptian influence on the Hebrew text of Genesis that the first humans were created “male and female.”

I stumbled on this curious interpretation of Genesis 1:27 while reading Martin Priestman’s excellent book, Romantic Atheism: Poetry and Freethought, 1780-1830  (Cambridge 1999).

Here’s how Priestman puts it:

“d’Holbach argues that . . . Moses’ account of the birth of Eve from Adam’s rib reflects a belief he had picked up in Egypt that humans were originally hermaphrodite, like aphids. He explains how “Moses, who was educated among these Egyptians” wrote in Genesis that ‘”in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them”‘: “It is not therefore presuming too much, to suppose, as the Egyptians were a nation very fond of expressing their opinions by hieroglyphics, that that part which describes Eve as taken out of Adam’s rib, was an hieroglyphic emblem” (p. 16-17).

Isn’t that a trippy reading? It’s probably fallacious, but I like it.

d’Holbach reconciled Genesis 1:27 with Genesis 2:21-22 in a rather creative fashion.

Maybe Micah 6:8 in the King James Version.

It has the quality of an elegant mathematical formula, a reduction of religion to elements that I, as an agnostic, can absorb and endorse:

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

My agnostic translation: Do justly, love empathy, doubt.

And in doing justly I think it’s fair (and empathic) to say that I don’t like the author’s flagrant male gendering of the addressor (God) and the addressee (man). And in keeping with humility before the cosmic mystery, how does the author know that God is male? Or what God has shown us? Or even that God exists?

Okay, so the passage, on analysis, breaks down under its own weight. But that’s part of the verse’s beauty (and even its power). The author’s very admonishments invite upon themselves the same gestures implored, and are instructive. The verse is a kind of ouroboros, a snake or dragon that bites its tail (see above). And it would thus seem that the verse—if, indeed, it is inspired by God—has the purpose of teaching justice, empathy and doubt via feminism. In other words, this seemingly patriarchal God of the Hebrews might be some camp Oscar Wilde posing  to lead people to feminism. If one is, afterall, to do justly, to love mercy, and doubt the way that you think that God has ordered things, then one is driven (by the passage) to grapple with feminism.  

Okay, I know that part of my interpretation of the passage might be a bit of a stretch. But I like it. And who knows how subtle and ironic the Higher Power is in communicating with us ultimate things (if there is, in fact, a Higher Power there)?

Justice, empathy, doubt. The E=MC2 of religion?

And might God look something like Oscar Wilder, and share his humor?

Just asking.

This today in Time magazine:

[A] new Gallup poll finds that most conservatives — 58% — now support openly gay people serving in uniform (nationally, 69% support the change; when Clinton assumed office, a Gallup poll found 53% of those polled opposed lifting the ban). Perhaps even more surprising, 58% of self-described Republicans, and 60% of weekly churchgoers, also support gay men and women serving openly in uniform. “While the Administration to date has not taken action on the issue,” the polling firm reported last Friday, “the Gallup Poll data indicate that the public-opinion environment favors such a move.”

Would it have been murder to kill Auschwitz’s Dr. Josef Mengele?

Here’s what Scott Roeder, the man suspected of killing Dr. George Tiller, posted on an Operation Rescue affiliated website:

It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the “lawlessness” which is spoken of in the Bible. Tiller is the concentration camp “Mengele” of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgement upon our nation.

Salon today reminds us that Bill O’Reilly equated Dr. George Tiller with Nazi-levels of immorality also:

Tiller’s name first appeared on the Factor on February 25, 2005. Since then, O’Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as “Tiller the Baby Killer.”

Tiller, O’Reilly likes to say, “destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000.” He’s guilty of “Nazi stuff,” said O’Reilly on June 8, 2005; a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaeda, he suggested on March 15, 2006. “This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao’s China, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union,” said O’Reilly on November 9, 2006.

Would it have been murder to kill Auschwitz’s Dr. Josef Mengele?

Salon today reminds us that Bill O’Reilly equated Dr. George Tiller with Nazi-levels of atrocity:

Tiller’s name first appeared on the Factor on February 25, 2005. Since then, O’Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as “Tiller the Baby Killer.”

Tiller, O’Reilly likes to say, “destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000.” He’s guilty of “Nazi stuff,” said O’Reilly on June 8, 2005; a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaeda, he suggested on March 15, 2006. “This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao’s China, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union,” said O’Reilly on November 9, 2006.

The Kansas abortion clinic physician, Dr. George Tiller, was murdered today in a church. It’s hard to imagine a more animalistic and nihilistic gesture than to enter a church to murder someone, and it put me in mind of a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Claudius, testing the resolve of Laertes to murder Hamlet, asks for suggestions as to how, and Laertes enthusiastically responds, “To cut his throat I’ th’ church” (4.7.144). The implication of the line is one of both horror and comedy, for surely one could not be more absurdly hell-bent and overwhelmed by an irrational passion than to murder someone in a church.

But today, a man was murdered in a church.

Below is a video of Dr. Tiller briefly talking about his experiences as a doctor who has spent many years, in the teeth of active resistance, supporting women’s constitutionally protected right to terminate their unwanted pregnancies:

And since many in the Republican Party these days claim to be influenced by the libertarian philosophy of Ayn Rand, here’s Ayn Rand on abortion:

Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives. The task of raising a child is a tremendous, lifelong responsibility, which no one should undertake unwittingly or unwillingly. Procreation is not a duty: human beings are not stock-farm animals.

The authoritarian theocratic wing of conservatism has once again done something at cross-purposes with the professed message of its libertarian wing. And Bill O’Reilly has, for years, been maligning and demonizing Dr. Tiller. It will be interesting to see how Fox News and America’s far-right radio noise machine treats this tragic news story, or fails to treat it by simply ignoring it (which would be, in itself, telling).

Homerun for President Obama.

Sonia Sotomayor is smart (she graduated at the top of her class at Princeton), she’s cool, and she’s got that feisty Judge Judy Bronx accent.

And as Republicans attack her and try to demonize her, and their poll numbers sink even further into the toilet among Hispanics than they already are, she’s going to set off a predictable round of intraparty fits and recriminations among them. 

What’s not to like?

President Obama’s first Supreme Court pick is a Puerto Rican woman who rose from poverty. Judge Sonia Sotomayor grew up in the Bronx housing projects, and has curiously similar life experiences to Obama. But it will be ugly watching the Republicans spit and froth at the first Hispanic to be nominated to the Supreme Court. I can’t imagine that attacking and demonizing a Hispanic woman for the next several weeks, or even months, is good politics for them.

But they can’t help it, can they?

Money quote from the New York Times today:

Judge Sotomayor’s father died when she was 9 years old and she was raised by her mother, who worked six-day weeks to earn enough money to send her and a brother to Catholic school. She got into Princeton University, where she once said she felt like “a visitor landing in an alien country,” but graduated summa cum laude. After Yale Law School, where she was editor of the Yale Law Journal, she worked for Robert M. Morgenthau in the district attorney’s office in New York and later was in private practice.

Barack Obama:

“The reason I’m pro-choice is because I don’t think women take [abortion] casually. I think they struggle with these decisions each and every day. And I think they are in a better position to make these decisions ultimately than members of Congress or the president of the United States.”

What President Obama faces at Notre Dame today is embodied by Randall Terry, a leading figure in the protests. Salon.com describes Terry’s anti-abortion activism history this way:

The Operation Rescue zealot turned off a lot of working-class people who were nervous about whether abortion might have become “too easy” years back, by unleashing a few thousand die-hards who began chaining themselves to clinic doors and barging into operating rooms in the ’70s to “save the babies.” The idea that anything goes in fighting abortion died along with five abortion providers and one clinic escort shot to death between 1993 and 1998. Unapologetic, Terry recently converted to Catholicism, and was arrested at Notre Dame walking around with a stroller occupied by a baby doll covered in blood.

Terry continues his firebrand ways. Here’s what he said on May 4th, in the run-up to Obama’s speech:

The Obama/Notre Dame harlotry is the “consummation” of Catholic America’s godless marriage to moral relativism, lukewarmness, and unholy pacifism.

Pacifism is unholy? He certainly reads the Sermon on the Mount differently from me.

Venus of Hohle Fels, 35,000 years old:

Venus of Willendorf, 24,ooo years ago:

Boooom! Fertile, fecund, and ample. Humanity’s oldest art object (yet discovered). In southern Germany, at least 35,000 years ago, someone hung this headless alpha-female body pendant around his or her neck. No honoring of the mind here, just Earth Mother goddess with her animal sex and reproductive power-loins comin’ to town! The person wearing this was certainly no slave—except perhaps to his or her own appetites. And you definitely knew that the bearer of this goddess was heading your way—even before he or she actually got there! I couldn’t help but think of Lucille Clifton’s 1980 poem, “homage to my hips”:

these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!

Hear Lucille Clifton read her poem here.

According to Wikpedia’s brief article on pendants, a pendant tends to function in one (or more) of these ways:

• as ornamentation
• as identification (i.e. religious symbols, sexual symbols, symbols of rock bands)
• as protection (i.e. amulets, religious symbols, Medusa-like freight heads)
• as self-affirmation
• as ostentation (i.e. jewels)
• as award

I wonder how the above fertility goddess was used. (Evil to him whom evil thinks.)

And for a good academic book that reflects on the sexist decapitation of women—reducing them to their bodily natures in myth, religion, art, and history—see here.