Religion, The Press

D’Scandal of D’Souza

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Oh bother. Another scandal among evangelicals (although the principal figure here is actually a Catholic, I believe). It involves Dinesh D’Souza, bestselling author and current president of The King’s College in New York City, which is owned by Campus Crusade for Christ. World Magazine reports:

About 2,000 people gathered on Sept. 28 at First Baptist North in Spartanburg, S.C., to hear high-profile Christians speak on defending the faith and applying a Christian worldview to their lives. Among the speakers: Eric Metaxas, Josh McDowell, and—keynote speaker for the evening—best-selling author, filmmaker, and Christian college president Dinesh D’Souza.

D’Souza’s speech earned him a standing ovation and a long line at the book-signing table immediately afterward. Although D’Souza has been married for 20 years to his wife, Dixie, in South Carolina he was with a young woman, Denise Odie Joseph II, and introduced her to at least three people as his fiancée.

When event organizer Tony Beam confronted D’Souza about sharing a hotel room with Joseph, he learned that D’Souza had filed for divorce (that very day, as it turned out), and that he felt he’d done nothing wrong.

I first read this story at Anthony Sacramone’s Strange Herring blog, where Sacramone asked the reasonable question, “What was he thinking?”

But the question that occurs to me is a different one. It seems to me we see this sort of thing more and more, not only among “Christian celebrities,” but among ordinary Christian leaders in local churches. And I get the impression that, for a lot of younger Christians, it’s just not a big deal anymore. The world’s attitude toward sex seems to be taking over. “Everybody does it. No big deal. As long as we’re in love.” It’s no surprise many Christian youth from good churches have no problem with the issue of gay marriage. They don’t even see the point of waiting until marriage.

I’m old, and I know I’m the more bitter sort of puritan. But still I see this as a sign of spiritual death. In my mind, I’m seeing what Revelation describes as “the lampstand being taken away.”

The Press

Can Journalists Be Objective (In the Way They Define It)?

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Glenn Greenwald writes:

In fact, one could reasonably make the case that those whose thinking is shaped by unexamined, unacknowledged assumptions are more biased than those who have consciously examined and knowingly embraced their assumptions, because the refusal or inability to recognize one’s own assumptions creates the self-delusion of unbiased objectivity, placing those assumptions beyond the realm of what can be challenged and thus leading one to lay claim to an unearned authority steeped in nonexistent neutrality.

Greenwald discusses objectivity in light of the vice-presidential debate.

Fiction, Reviews

Mantis, by Richard LaPlante

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One of the benefits of the e-book revolution for authors is the opportunity it gives them to bring out-of-print books to the public again, and wring a little new income (and attention) out of works the publishers have abandoned, sometimes for fairly shortsighted reasons.

That seems to be the case with Richard LaPlante’s 1993 novel, Mantis, which launched a series starring Philadelphia police detective Bill Fogarty and forensic scientist (and martial arts expert) Josef Tanaka.

The set-up is interesting. Fogarty and Tanaka, though different in ages and cultural heritages, have many similarities. Fogarty is burdened with guilt over the deaths of his wife and daughter in an auto accident when he was driving—an accident which left him with burn scars on his face. Tanaka is haunted by the memory of permanently paralyzing his older brother, whom he idolized, in a tournament competition. They are drawn together in the hunt for a serial killer—a deeply twisted martial arts expert who believes himself to be guided by the spirit of the praying mantis.

The writing is good, the characters strong. Author LaPlante seems to be attempting to do the Hannibal Lector thing here, creating a villain at once evil and sympathetic. Frankly, that part didn’t really work for me. I felt sorry for what I read of the killer’s childhood sufferings, but his cruelty was so perverse, his inhumanity so profound, that I lost interest in him.

There was also an element rare in conventional thrillers—a supernatural, psychic side to the story. I’m old-fashioned enough about my mystery stories to generally resent the introduction of the supernatural. If I want magic, I’ll go to the fantasy aisle.

On the other hand, the story has a fairly strong moral center. It is made clear that both Fogarty and Tanaka go wrong when they allow their passions to push them over the line of legality in their investigation. Though that line gets crossed again, come to think of it, in the story’s climax.

To wrap it up, I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I hoped to, and wished it over well before the end. I wouldn’t call it a waste of your money at the price, but I can’t recommend it wholeheartedly. Cautions for language, sex, and deep perversion.

Uncategorized

Rainy Norway

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Been there and back again, by which I mean my trip to Norway, Michigan for the Leif Erikson festival. I scrounged a ride with my friends Ragnar and Helen once more, not being entirely sanguine about taking Mrs. Hermanson on long trips just now. I got up at 5:00 a.m. on Friday to be ready to be picked up. The weather was beautiful, the state of Wisconsin still retaining some of its autumn glory.

It was obvious from the start that the organizers had learned from their first year experience, and were doing an even better job of organizing their festival. We participated in a “Viking Funeral Feast” in a school gymnasium Friday evening, where we were more or less the guests of honor (in costume, of course).

The funeral was purportedly for some guy name Eldywick (don’t ask me where the name came from; it was new to me). Before the program the planner showed Denny a sheet of Viking riddles she’d like somebody to read, and Denny immediately passed it to me, knowing where the ham was to be found amidst the eggs.

My piece was supposedly a speech by “Tor,” Eldywick’s friend. I was to reminisce on how much he’d enjoyed riddles, and then pose four (most of them real Viking riddles, a la Tolkien) to the assembled diners.

With the instinct of the born show-off, I immediately knew exactly how to do this part. I adopted a serious Scandinavian accent (as opposed to the burlesque accent I use when I tell Ole and Lena jokes), and spoke in sonorous, overdramatic tones with broad gestures. The audience ate it up, and I got a good dose of that crowd feedback that is an actor’s meat and drink. Continue reading Rainy Norway →

Non-fiction, Publishing

Of the Books Written on Lincoln There Shall Be No End

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“There are so many Lincoln geeks that buy everything new that comes out,” Cathy Langer, the lead book buyer at the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, tells Stephanie Cohen of the Wall Street Journal. Cohen goes on to report Langer’s claim “that in her years as a buyer, she has rarely turned down a title about the 16th president.” One such book is Killing Lincoln, which has sold over two million since its release a year ago September. Cohen states some 16,000 books have been written about President Abraham Lincoln, and there’s more to come.

To illustrate the volume of existing Lincoln works, the Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership in Washington created a three-story, 34-foot tower sculpture out of Lincoln titles, meant to “symbolize that the last word about this great man will never be written,” according to the center.

Perhaps I should start writing a series of short volumes on the ignored presidents, like Polk, Hayes, Tyler, and Garfield. I could call them Thrilling Histories, e.g. The Thrilling History of James K. Polk. Or maybe they should be called the Presidential Insider’s Guides. Or maybe the What You Didn’t Learn series. (via Frank Wilson)

Uncategorized

I’m going to Norway… Michigan!

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Rasmus B. Anderson

Happy Sequence Day. I don’t know whether anyone else calls it that, but what do you call a day when month, day, and year are in sequence (ten-eleven-twelve)? This doesn’t work if you’re in Europe, of course, where they practice a far more logical dating system that proceeds from smaller to larger – day, month, year. I’d defend the American system with blustering chauvinism and outrage, except that I can’t actually think of an argument for it.

I won’t be posting again until Monday, Lord willing. Tomorrow I’m on the road to Norway, Michigan for the Leif Eriksson festival again, riding along with Ragnar and his wife. Early departure. No doubt I will not sleep tonight.

There’s a weird criss-cross sort of thing going on with this event. Leif Eriksson Day is actually Oct. 9, but we’re celebrating it on the weekend of the 12th, which is actually Columbus Day. Rasmus B. Anderson and his co-conspirators, who invented the Leif celebration, purposely located it a few days before the 12th to steal a march on the Italians. But they celebrated on Monday.

I heard a lecture on Anderson during the Chicago Vinland seminar a couple years back. A Norwegian-American author, educator, and diplomat, he worked tirelessly to raise consciousness of Leif Eriksson, and spearheaded the effort to get Oct. 9 made a national holiday, which only happened long after his death.

Oddly for a Norwegian-American (cough, cough), Anderson had some difficulty getting along with other people, eventually getting himself shunned by pretty much all his hyphenated countrymen. So he transferred his enthusiasm to Iceland, which worked even better for the Leif Eriksson stuff, because Leif was actually born there. Probably.

Leif Eriksson Day is an odd festival in any case. The weakness of the argument for Leif’s importance, historically, was always his relative unimportance. Leif came and went almost without leaving a trace. Columbus came and completely redecorated the place.

But nowadays Leif enthusiasts make that into a virtue! “Look at us! We’re not like those other Europeans! We don’t do anything! It’s as if we were never here!”

Anyway, have a good weekend.

Religion

Two kinds of atrocity: an ethical thought experiment

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Here’s what I’m doing. I’m thinking “on paper” here. Trying to work out a moral equation. If my conclusion satisfies me, and if your comments don’t demolish it, I’ll probably cross-post it over at Mere Comments.

How many times have you gotten into the Body Count argument? You know what I mean. Somebody brings up the tired canard that “most wars are caused by religion,” or “religion has killed more people than any other cause.”

It’s good to note that, at least according to one study, that’s simply not true.

And when they bring up the Spanish Inquisition (you know they will), the most efficient answer is to point out that it took the Inquisition nearly a century and a half to kill 3-5,000 people while the atheistic Reign of Terror under the French Revolution murdered about 40,000 in less than a year.

Still, at least for me, that’s not entirely satisfactory. Saying, “We’re not as bad as you guys,” isn’t quite enough when you’re talking about killing people in the name of Christ, whether in the Inquisition, or during the Crusades, or under a pogrom. The deeper problem, in my view, is how to think about Christians who act like the worst kind of atheists (for of course most atheists are perfectly decent people), and how to judge their acts.

It seems to me that, from a moral point of view, there are two kinds of atrocity. One is the utilitarian atrocity, which is hideously evil. The other is the “spiritual” atrocity, which is infinitely worse—but only in one sense. Continue reading Two kinds of atrocity: an ethical thought experiment →