In yesterday's post, I published a photograph of lovely Christian gentleman and his informative sign listing all of the groups of people who will be judged harshly by God. Here, again, is a closeup of his sign:
In my previous post, I helpfully turned this poster into an easy-to-read list and my readers responded--by determining how many of these categories are going to contribute to their own eternal damnation.
However, as you may recall, there were two groups that Fosco couldn't quite read. With the help of some new bionic eyes (and some other pix of this guy from other sources), Fosco is pleased to announce that he can now complete the list:
ADDITIONAL People Who Will Be Judged (Presumably Unfavorably) By God
Thieves
Ankle Biters (what does that even mean?)
Do these additions cause any revisions in your personal number, readers? (Especially if any of you are small dogs...)
Unless you live in a college town, you may not be familiar with yesterday's 4/20 holiday (it's "clever" because yesterday's date was 4/20). It's that day of the year when pot smokers come together at 4:20 PM to celebrate "cannabis culture" by smoking up--often in public. It is a particularly popular holiday at two major US public universities (as noted in this article in the NY Times): University of Colorado at Boulder and (wait for it) Fosco's own University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). In fact, the holiday has become so closely associated with UCSC that a picture of UCSC's 4/20 event is used to illustrate the 4/20 entry on Wikipedia. (And yes, the above picture is of UCSC's mascot, the Banana Slug, smoking pot.)
The event has always been unsanctioned by UCSC, of course. However, as the holiday has become larger and more public in recent years, the UCSC administration has become more concerned about the questionable PR. This year, UCSC sent an email to the parents of all first-year students asking them to discourage their sons or daughters from participating. As the email suggested (with keen insight into the mind of today's youth):
"I encourage you to talk with your student about his or her plans for 4/20. Ask direct questions about the choices they make and express your expectations regarding marijuana, alcohol or other drug use. Although students may not initiate discussion on this topic, your opinions and expectations can influence their behavior."
"Golly, Beaver, I sure hope you aren't planning to take the pot on April 20th. Remember that anyone who offers you drugs is not a true friend."
But that was just Prong ONE of UCSC's two-pronged attack on 4/20. Prong TWO was to essentially shut down the campus for the whole afternoon, in an attempt to prevent easy access to the Porter College Meadow (traditional home of the gathering). This meant shutting down the bus routes, closing the West Entrance to campus, and beefing up parking enforcement. Of course, there was added benefit of inconveniencing any non-pot-smokers who remained on campus: "Can't get home? Blame the potheads!"
Normally, Fosco would strenuously avoid an event like this, considering that he considers any group larger than twenty-five people to be an unpleasantly large crowd. And when that group is made up of pot-smoking hippies... well, let's just say that Fosco has aesthetic objections to "cannabis culture." However, this year found Fosco in class at Porter College until 4 PM on 4/20. Essentially, Fosco was a within an easy quarter-mile walk of the whole gathering: could his inner anthropologist resist a glimpse of the spectacle? Would a giant crowd of pot-smoking hippies be enough to convince Fosco to stay on campus for an extra half hour?
Yes, of course, I went to look. You would have too. And this is what I saw...
By 4 PM, the people walking toward Porter Meadow had become a steady line (see Monterey Bay in the background?).
It's kind of like watching pot-loving ants, no? And look at the smoke cloud.
Here's a view of the line looking back from the Meadow:
One thing I didn't mention yet: this was the hottest day we've had this year. It was 97 fucking degrees. (And yes, even with my canteen of water, I was regretting the quarter-mile walk by this point--anthropology is hard.) Of course, the heat did give the Santa Cruz Sentinel the opportunity to use the "twice-baked" pun in their coverage, so I suppose it was worth it.
One option for beating the heat was to smoke in the woods that surrounds the meadow:
Other heat-beating options I observed: umbrellas, parasols, shirtlessness, sweating profusely. These photos were taken around 4:05 or so--note the giant crowd and smoke cloud.
For the first time in the history of UCSC's 4/20 event, there were some party-crashers: local Christian nutballs showed up with signs to protest. Seriously!
Don't these guys have something better to do? Like picketing AIDS funerals? Or throwing blood on abortion doctors?
This guy was my favorite:
Who would have thought that God could hate so many things! Luckily, this guy has made a list for us. Can we go to a closeup? Yes?
Let's just take a moment and convert this sign into a list.
People Who Will Be Judged (Presumably Unfavorably) By God
All Non-Homemakers (wow, I bet these guys get lots of dates)
Party Animals
Drunkards
Jesus Mockers
And Catholics...
Whew. I don't know about you, but that's the kind of God I could really get into. Watch out, Sports Nuts.
Anyway... the golden moment, 4:20 PM PDT, finally arrived and the smoke got even thicker:
These pictures don't quite capture the moment adequately--for one thing, you can't hear all of the drums. Consequently, allow me to offer the brief video that I recorded (and uploaded to YouTube):
Sadly, I cannot make this experience available to you in "Smell-O-Vision" because, as my college roommate David noted, the whole thing "must have smelled unspeakably awful." I cannot disagree.
All in all, I managed to stave off incipient heat-stroke until about 4:30 when I gave up and walked back to my car at Porter. I wasn't the only one leaving:
Caption: "We'll always have these stupid memories."
Walking back, I passed the only official UCSC presence at the event:
And what did I learn? Well, for one thing, I thought there would actually be a more communal atmosphere at this thing. I had envisioned people passing joints and conversing. Instead, everyone just broke up into their own friend groups--and most of them weren't actually very nice about it. I had kinda been expecting to be offered some smoke (not that I would have indulged), but that didn't seem to be the vibe. I've been to much friendlier football tailgates. And I've had more pot offered to me at concerts.
For another thing, I wonder how many actual UCSC students were there. Walking down, I was in front of a group from Berkeley. In the Sentinel coverage, they interviewed students from everywhere but UCSC: UC Berkeley, UC Davis, CSU-Monterey Bay, Cabrillo College. N.B., some kid from Berkeley was named in the Sentinel coverage as "Skittles." Delightful! Also suprising: I didn't see anyone I knew there. I've been at this school for three years and have a pretty large circle of acquaintances: colleagues, grad students, current students, former students, etc. Of course, it's possible that my students saw and avoided me...
Random 4/20 observations:
You could not pay me enough to eat the vegan food being sold onsite by the Hare Krishnas.
Hippie guys are not very attractive.
God is surprisingly wrathful. That's probably bad news for my afterlife plans.
Too many people brought their dogs (which are prohibited on campus). And too many of them were pit bulls.
I thought there would be more music (of the non-bongo variety). Where were all the people I saw walking with acoustic guitars?
It was SO FUCKING HOT.
All in all, I think I learned some important lessons. And I hope that I have created a precious anthropological record--especially for those of you who wonder what undergrad life is like nowadays.
For your Sunday enjoyment, here's a gorgeous church picture. This is the Hallgrímskirkja, a Lutheran church that dominates the skyline of Fosco's beloved Reykjavík, Iceland.
Years ago, Fosco and his college roommate lboom visited this church. Strangely enough, that's a statue of Leifur Eiríksson in front (who you may know from elementary school as Leif Ericson or from your teenage years as Liv Tyler).
Should you ever visit Reykjavík (and I recommend that you do), you should consider staying at the Hótel Vík. As they say, "you must try it."
Happy Valentine's Day, my readers. I hope that you are staying warm and dry in the embrace of someone you love/like/paid for.
In case you were wondering, St. Valentine is indeed the patron saint of those in long-term relationships; however, if you are still looking for someone, you would do better to address your prayers to St. Raphael, according to this article from the BBC. The piece notes that
St Raphael is the patron saint for happy encounters
Which means that I unknowingly prayed to him a lot during my "bathhouse years" in the late 1990s...
And what about those of you who are looking for someone special this year? A spokesperson for the British Catholic Church has some advice:
"There is a lot of evidence to suggest that young people who have tapped into prayer groups have found partners," she said.
"Those who have exhausted traditional routes like online dating should try spiritual networks.
"Why not come along to a prayer group - it could be your lucky night."
Isn't it funny that online dating is now considered a "traditional route"? How things have changed in the last fifteen years!
As for meeting someone at a prayer meeting or church service, Fosco encourages it--especially if you're ugly. Interestingly, several of Fosco's homelier cousins met their mates that way. In fact, those types of gatherings may be some of the last situations in our society where physical attractiveness is irrelevant. After all, god loves your insides, right? The only problem is that most religions then encourage the production of numerous ugly children...
I know that Christmas is the last thing you want to be thinking of in the middle of February, but stay with me here. You may remember Fosco's hoot-out in favor of Owl City yesterday. Well, today he has one more titbit of Owlish pop goodness to offer you. This is Owl City's Christmas song (do yourself a favor and listen to it):
Fosco doesn't quite know what to make of the strange Jesus reference--is Adam Young a crypto-Christian? (The answer is yes, apparently. When did Christians start making listenable music?). Even so, Fosco is willing to overlook it (as he overlooks the Christianity of his beloved Sufjan). You may remember Fosco's pre-Christmas list of great Christmas songs--well, this one just went to the top of it.
Catholicism just keeps getting weirder (well, not special underwear weird, but close). It seems that the Pope has revived that old medieval curio, Madonna the Papal Indulgence. If the term sounds vaguely familiar and slightly sketchy, you might be remembering your Lutheranism. Apparently, opposition to the sale of Papal Indulgences was one of the sticking points for Martin Louis the King Jr.Martin Luther in that whole Reformation thing. Well, now indulgences are back--and just as powerful as ever!
According to this article in the Times, the Catholic Church has quietly begun to offer indulgences to its congregation. Essentially, an indulgence offers a reduction of punishment in Purgatory. As the Times notes:
According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still face punishment after death, in Purgatory, before they can enter heaven. In exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament.
There are partial indulgences, which reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years, and plenary indulgences, which eliminate all of it, until another sin is committed. You can get one for yourself, or for someone who is dead. You cannot buy one — the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1567 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day.
It has no currency in the bad place.
Before we talk more about the theology here, I have to think about that last sentence. What an amazingly cryptic statement! I can't believe the Times editors let that line stay in the final copy. What could it mean? Is "the bad place" hell? (And lest you think that the sentence is merely the topic sentence of a longer, more explanatory paragraph, allow me to assure you that the final sentence stands alone in the article as its own complete paragraph. How odd!)
So let's get the theology straight here: even if you confess a sin and are absolved, you will still be punished for that sin in Purgatory. Unless you manage to gain a plenary indulgence, which buys you out of that purgatory time. And the person who decides if you get to skip purgatory is some creepy geriatric like Pope Cowboy XVI here? Hmmm. Who comes up with this stuff?
Not to mention that there appears to be fine print:
offer only good until next sin.
limit one coupon per customer per day.
And people wonder why Fosco is an atheist. Does any of this actually sound like the will of a supernatural being? Or does it sound more like the cheap thrills of an authoritarian bureaucratic apparatus?
Pompous blowhard Pastor Rick Warren (who, as Fosco has noted, is only getting younger) has been laying low lately, hiding from the roaming gangs of gay bullies who want to prevent his Inaugural Invocation. Warren (seen at right, walking on water) has announced his reticence in a statement explaining that he plans to "let his [Inaugural] prayer speak for itself." That's all well and good, but what else of interest does his statement say?
Well, in case you had doubts, Fosco can assure you that Rick Warren's self-esteem remains intact. As he notes in his statement:
his desire is that his prayer and preaching can be pastoral and that he and President-elect Obama can model civility as men of consequence in these difficult times. [emphasis added]
Wow, somebody sure likes himself. A lot. And it certainly does put all those gays of inconsequence in their place.
You know, it's not like he even needed the phrase "as men of consequence" for the sentence to make sense or read well; but, it's like he couldn't resist
Fosco's art education is a bit sketchy, especially when it comes to Italian sculpture. Even so, how did it take him this many years to encounter the absolutely ravishing face of Bernini's Saint Teresa? Here are a couple of views:
That is just amazingly beautiful.
Of course, Fosco wasn't completely ignorant of the existence of the statue. Seeing the face reminded Fosco that he had read about it once before in the Seminar of Jacques Lacan. As Lacan notes, in his discussion of feminine jouissance:
[I]t's like for Saint Teresa - you need but go to Rome and see the statue by Bernini to immediately understand that she's coming. There's no doubt about it. What is she getting off on? It is clear that the essential testimony of the mystics consists in saying that they experience it, but know nothing of it.
Fosco always thought Lacan was just being silly here; but look at her face! She is indisputably having an orgasm! Don't believe me? Take a look at some of these (mildly NSFW).
Ideas are resilient things; they never die. Even when an idea goes out of style (no matter how deservedly) it will always return at some point in the future. Otherwise, how to explain the popularity of things like leeches or swing dancing? While this may be comforting news to someone like Fosco who loves out-of-style ideas like Baked Alaska and Communism, it also means that all of history's bad ideas are (at most) only a decade or so away from revival.
Even though Fosco (mostly) believes this theory, he wasn't exactly expecting the recent return of Calvinism. (For those of you who are godless heathens, that's theological Calvinism, not illustrational Calivinism.) Theological Calvinism maintains, among other things, that (and Fosco is no theologian here, so please cut me some slack) individual salvation was determined in advance by God and there is nothing that a human being can do to affect their eternal fate. Some are predestined for heaven; some are predestined for hell. And there's nothing anyone can do about (including understanding why God would even do such a thing).
Calvinists arrive at this conclusion through the belief that there is nothing at all redeemable about humans, that they are corrupted through and through. So naturally, there is no way that a human could ever do anything that would result in pleasing God. Ergo, anyone who ends up in heaven must do so contingent on God's unknowable pleasure, rather than as a reward for anything that could be done on earth. It's kind of like a supernatural lottery. Actually, it's exactly like a supernatural lottery. And as religious faiths go, it's not exactly one of the warm and fuzzy ones.
You might think that such a faith would be radically out-of-touch with any but the most annoying of contemporary Christians. Well, you're right. But it seems that there are a lot more of these annoying people than you expected. According to a profile in Sunday's NYTimes Magazine, Calvinism is making a comeback, especially among youth in major urban centers like Seattle. According to the piece, one of the stars of the movement is Mark Driscoll:
Driscoll, who is 38, is on the cutting edge of American pop culture. Yet his message seems radically unfashionable, even un-American: you are not captain of your soul or master of your fate but a depraved worm whose hard work and good deeds will get you nowhere, because God marked you for heaven or condemned you to hell before the beginning of time. Yet a significant number of young people in Seattle — and nationwide — say this is exactly what they want to hear. Calvinism has somehow become cool, and just as startling, this generally bookish creed has fused with a macho ethos.
A macho Calvinism? What the hell would that look like? It's worse than you think:
On that Sunday, Driscoll preached for an hour and 10 minutes — nearly three times longer than most pastors. As hip as he looks, his message brooks no compromise with Seattle’s permissive culture. New members can keep their taste in music, their retro T-shirts and their intimidating facial hair, but they had better abandon their feminism, premarital sex and any “modern” interpretations of the Bible. Driscoll is adamantly not the “weepy worship dude” he associates with liberal and mainstream evangelical churches, “singing prom songs to a Jesus who is presented as a wuss who took a beating and spent a lot of time putting product in his long hair.”
Ummm. Okay. Fosco would just like to point out that, based on all the pictures we have, Jesus' hair is a bit too long for product--you really can't style hair of that length. As if product would have held up in that heat, anyway!
Sick of this guy yet? It gets better:
The mainstream church, Driscoll has written, has transformed Jesus into “a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ,” a “neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that . . . would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell.”
Richard Simmons! (Incidentally, Richard Simmons is another man whose hair is not amenable to product.) You know, I tend to think that if Jesus was worried about comparisons to Richard Simmons, He probably wouldn't have kept forcing his disciples to weigh in while telling everyone to "love your neighbor as yourself, girl!" I think it's also worth pointing out that Richard Simmons has already sent fifteen people to hell (mostly drifters). But seriously, just when you think Christianity can't get any more homophobic, some nuts go and "out" Jesus.
Of course, all of this macho Jesus shit is going to sound just a little familiar to any of you who have studied Victorian culture. Back then, it was called muscular Christianity and it celebrated physical activity and manliness as Christian virtue. It was also an influential movement in the US. As far as Fosco knows, it wasn't a particularly Calvinist thing; however, in the same way that ideas never die, they also endlessly recombine to form stupid new remixes.
Next week's stupid remix: Jews for Jesus. Oh wait, that's real. Ummm. How about compassionate Conservatism? Oh really? That one's real too? Gee. Maybe "lesbians who love being teabagged"? Does that work?
While Fosco is indeed an atheist, he's not too big on the recent trend of public advertisements for atheism. Here is the new bus campaign in England:
I guess I just find it hard to believe that a person's religious belief will be adequately shaken enough by such glibness to produce any change. For most people in society (i.e., those of us raised in a religious tradition of some sort), atheism tends to be the fruit of a long scholarly path and a period of serious intellectual honesty, not something that one adopts because of a bus ad.
Now if the ads were aimed more at questioning the role of religion in public discourse, I think they might be more useful and have more clear effects. Something like: "God Shouldn't Be Our Prime Minister" or "Jesus and I Should Stay Out of Your Personal Life" (oh dear, those are terrible, aren't they?). I think people's attitudes about what is appropriate in public discourse are more easily swayed, mainly because I think the norms of appropriate public discourse are currently in transition.
That being said, I do like the part about "Stop Worrying and Enjoy Your Life." That's good advice for atheists and nonatheists alike.
Even though Fosco is getting to this kind of late, he can't let it pass that today is the birthday of Ste Jeanne d'Arc, born in 1412 in the village of Domrémy in Lorraine. Fosco's favorite representation of Joan of Arc is this 1879 painting by Jules Bastien-Lepage (found in the collection of the Met Museum in NYC and adored by Fosco on his recent visit).
This painting dates from a French revival of interest in Jeanne after the disastrous Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). If you look carefully at the left of the canvas, you can see ghostly shapes of Saint Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret giving Joan her holy charge. Sometimes Fosco wishes we had a historical record of what happened to Joan after that. Oh well.
As Fosco noted in passing in a previous post, there seems to be evidence that Obama's favorite mega-pastor Rick Warren might be living the hair-plug driven life. Take a look at this comparison and judge for yourself:
Rick Warren, circa 2006:
Rick Warren, circa June 2008:
The hair dye is obvious (and so are the contact lenses). But I also think it's pretty clear that his hairline has moved somewhat closer to his forehead. It's not drastic, but it's still noticeable. Alas, it looks like what we have here is a case of garden-variety vanity or pride (wait--isn't that one of the seven deadly... somethings...? I'm blanking...).
Of course, there is also the possibility that this man is actually just getting younger? And if that's the case, I want to worship his god!
In case you missed it while you were playing Rock Band 2 all weekend, Frank Rich had an excellent op-ed piece in the NYTimes about the whole Rick Warren inauguration kerfuffle. Fosco, like a lot of gays, has been trying to come to terms with Obama's choice in a way that doesn't minimize its hurtfulness without overplaying its importance (and Fosco will be first to admit that he has yet to find the right balance). Luckily, Frank Rich's column does all of Fosco's work for him.
[Before we begin, I have to know: do the older pictures of Warren (like the one above) raise the issue of whether he's now sporting a hair transplant?]
But back to Rich's column...
One of the questions raised by the Warren choice is that of the extent to which people with repugnant viewpoints should be allowed "at the table" as it were. To what extent can Obama maintain something like a "big tent" of political opinion without actively banishing large sections of the US populace (like the Christian right)? In this case, a distinction needs to be made between "at the table" and "at the head of the table." Rich is right on here:
But there’s a difference between including Warren among the cacophony of voices weighing in on policy and anointing him as the inaugural’s de facto pope. You can’t blame V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop and an early Obama booster, for feeling as if he’d been slapped in the face. “I’m all for Rick Warren being at the table,” he told The Times, but “we’re talking about putting someone up front and center at what will be the most-watched inauguration in history, and asking his blessing on the nation. And the God that he’s praying to is not the God that I know.”
Similarly, we have to raise the question of the balance between all the good that Rick Warren does (focusing on climate change, poverty and AIDS, for example) and his evil (comparing gay marriage to incest, pedophilia, etc.) Once again, Rich gets it:
Warren, whose ego is no less than Obama’s, likes to advertise his “commitment to model civility in America.” But as Rachel Maddow of MSNBC reminded her audience, “comparing gay relationships to child abuse” is a “strange model of civility.”
Rick Warren may be saying the right things on lots of different issues, but that doesn't change the fact that he has openly lied about gay marriage. It is one thing to say that his religion leads him to oppose gay marriage; it's another thing to raise fear and hatred by comparing gay marriage to the bogeymen of incest and child abuse. Once again, it is possible for us to condemn Rick Warren without condemning all religion.
The other big question here is why Obama, a strong supporter of (most) LGBT rights, thinks this is a good idea in the first place. Hint: there's hubris involved...
Much more to the point is the astute criticism leveled by the gay Democratic congressman Barney Frank, who, in dissenting from the Warren choice, said of Obama, “I think he overestimates his ability to get people to put aside fundamental differences.” That’s a polite way of describing the Obama cockiness. [...] When Obama defends Warren’s words by calling them an example of the “wide range of viewpoints” in a “diverse and noisy and opinionated” America, he is being too cute by half. He knows full well that a “viewpoint” defaming any minority group by linking it to sexual crimes like pedophilia is unacceptable.
Obama would love to be able to force a reconciliation between the gays and the evangelicals based solely on the power of his (admittedly commanding) personality. Unfortunately, however, there are conflicts that can't be mended through the power of personality or through the strategy of extreme inclusion. There are indeed issues on which we cannot "all just get along" and these are the issues that Obama, as someone who aspires to some version of progressivism, needs to take a stand on.
Of course, in the end, none of this will really matter much if Obama repeals "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," opposes a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and works to pass ENDA. On this point, Rich quotes historian Timothy McCarthy:
McCarthy added that it’s also time “for President-elect Obama to start acting on the promises he made to the LGBT community during his campaign so that he doesn’t go down in history as another Bill Clinton, a sweet-talking swindler who would throw us under the bus for the sake of political expediency.” And “for LGBT folks to choose their battles wisely, to judge Obama on the content of his policy-making, not on the character of his ministers.”
If Obama does this, I'm willing to give him a pass on Rick Warren. So now let's get back to Rock Band.
So Barry O has chosen Bear icon Rick Warren to pray at the Inaug. I suppose this isn't a huge surprise, except to those of us who briefly confused the word "progressive" with the word "pragmatist." Realistically, same-sex marriage is still seen as an issue on which it is possible for reasonable people to disagree and Barry is certainly making a fetish of "disagreeing without being disagreeable." Barry is sharp and he knows the best way to "govern from the center" is to kick the gays in the crotch. It's probably the right move politically.
For those of you who don't know, Rick Warren heads the Bareback MegaChurch in SoCal. He's written some book (about marine biology, I think) called The Porpoise Driven Life. He was an outspoken (and mendacious) supporter of Prop H8. Apparently, Rick Warren is some kind of "new evangelical" who is willing to take on climate change and global poverty. That's fine with me, as far as it goes. I guess that's an improvement over some evangelicals.
But at some point, wouldn't it be nice to see the words "new" or "change" applied to a movement that doesn't have the "same" "old" attitude toward the gays?
Although he earlier poo-pooed the idea, Fosco is calling in gay to Fosco Lives! tomorrow. In fact, Fosco is swearing off the entire web for the day. Alas, he would love to avoid email as well, but he has a responsibility to his students...
Why the change of heart? Fosco read this excellent post, which included some convincing options for people (like Fosco) who can't skip work tomorrow but who want to make an impact nonetheless. The idea here is to efface one's presence economically:
Here are 5 ways you can make an impact tomorrow: 1. Volunteer your time and services after work 2. Do not buy anything 3. Do not watch TV or use your cell phone 4. Do not go online (yup, don’t even visit this site tomorrow)… Online advertising is everywhere and a simple page load could cause money to be spent. 5. Do not buy lunch (and don’t go out today to get what you need for lunch tomorrow), find something you already have and pack your lunch.
Fosco is going to try all of these (with an exception for his work-related email). In other words, Fosco is going to become as invisible as possible for the day. And he sure as hell won't be shopping at Urban Outfitters (but I guess that kinda goes without saying).
So what are you to do without new content on Fosco Lives! for a whole day? Well, without Fosco here to hector you about Prop H8, how will you keep up to date? Never fear: here's some Prop H8-related reading to do in your free time on Wednesday:
The must-read article of the week is Newsweek's cover story on the relationship between religion and gay marriage. Guess what: religious fundamentalists may be misreading the bible (no! yes!). How so?
The argument goes something like this statement, which the Rev. Richard A. Hunter, a United Methodist minister, gave to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June: "The Bible and Jesus define marriage as between one man and one woman. The church cannot condone or bless same-sex marriages because this stands in opposition to Scripture and our tradition."
To which there are two obvious responses: First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman. And second, as the examples above illustrate, no sensible modern person wants marriage—theirs or anyone else's —to look in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes.
In fact, Lisa Miller (the author) concludes that
Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married—and a number of excellent reasons why they should.
Good, good stuff.
A great article in the NYTimes about the new gay activism (a very heartening piece, actually). Apparently, gay youth are taking Prop H8 as a wakeup call to abandon the timid rhetoric of traditional gay rights organizations in favor of a more confrontational approach. This seems like a reasonable conclusion. The appeasement/assimilation strategy of groups like the Human Rights Campaign has clearly reached its limit. It turns out that people aren't just going to give full civil rights to gays as long as we act harmless enough. We are going to get our full civil rights when we demand them and when we do so with enough power and strength to make people listen.
The other great thing about this article are the tantalizing hints of protests to come:
But many activists seem unwilling to wait for a legal solution and have planned a series of events to keep the issue in the public eye, including a nationwide candlelight vigil later this month, a Million Gay March in Washington next spring and continued protests at county clerks’ offices throughout California.
Fosco is so down for the Million Gay March.
Think domestic partnership is an acceptable substitute for gay marriage? Here's a heartrending story by a gay man who is caring for his partner's developmentally disabled brother (luckily, there are also some heartwarming parts). Thanks, Todd for calling my attention to this piece.
Did you ever notice how Mike Huckabee is a likable, penis-having (reputedly) Sarah Palin? He's just as crazy as she is, but he's actually appealing (and can string together complete sentences). He also seems to think that the gay civil rights struggle is not comparable to Black civil rights because Black people faced the threat of violence during their rights struggle (read the transcript). Sure, Huck... tell it to this guy:
On this Day Without Gays, take a moment to think about those gays who are not with us anymore.
In the NYTimes, Suketu Mehta offered his own explanation for the Mumbai attacks in an essay called "What They Hate About Mumbai." Mehta offers an eloquent tribute to "his city" as a "a mass dream of the peoples of South Asia." And yet, there are people who hate the city. For Mehta, the hatred of Mumbai is driven by religious fundamentalism, a fundamentalism that hates Mumbai's materialism and sensuality. The terrorists hate Mumbai because
being South Asian, they would have grown up watching the painted lady that is Mumbai in the movies: a city of flashy cars and flashier women. A pleasure-loving city, a sensual city. Everything that preachers of every religion thunder against.
It is the traditional fundamentalist hatred of pleasure and earthly gain that has led them to single out Mumbai (as well as cities of the Western world) for punishment.
And Mehta has watched this religious fundamentalism grow in his city. As he notes,
In today’s Mumbai, things have changed. Hindu and Muslim demagogues want the mobs to come out again in the streets, and slaughter one another in the name of God. They want India and Pakistan to go to war. They want Indian Muslims to be expelled. They want India to get out of Kashmir. They want mosques torn down. They want temples bombed.
For Mehta, Mumbai has become a front in the war of fundamentalism against Western life. And for him the appropriate response to the attacks is for the West to fight back even harder:
But the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever.
The key to winning the war against religious fundamentalism, Mehta says, is to have more fun.
Fosco has sympathy for much of Mehta's analysis. Indeed, religious fundamentalism does seem like a reasonable explanation for the Mumbai attacks (especially as we learn more). And far be it for a self-described "hedonist intellectual" like Fosco to put a limit on pleasure. But, even so, Mehta's analysis and his prescription sound eerily like those offered by George W. Bush after 9/11:
the best way to respond to the attacks is to go shopping.
Instead of recycling these lies/platitudes/idiocies, Fosco would like to suggest a more complex way of thinking about the causes of the hatred directed against Mumbai (and the West).
Part of Fosco's response to the news of the attacks (on Thanksgiving Eve here in the US) was colored by the fact that he was reading Mike Davis's remarkable book Planet of Slums at the time. Planet of Slums examines the hellish underworld of poverty that comes into existence simultaneously (but invisibly, to Western eyes) with the rise of glitzy Third World megacities. One of Davis's case studies is, of course, Mumbai, a city of 19 million people with 10-12 million of those people living in tenements or squatting (in fact, probably 1 million people in Mumbai live on the sidewalks). This is the Mumbai that Mehta does not talk about in his essay, the Mumbai where
breathing the air is equivalent to smoking two and a half packs of cigarettes a day.
in the Dharavi slum district, the population density is 18,000 people PER ACRE.
about half of the population does not have access to a toilet.
This Mumbai is indeed far removed from Bollywood dreams.
Now, I don't want to blame Mehta for glossing over this side of Mumbai; he is not trying to mislead--Mumbai is also the rich and glamorous city that he loves. However, I do want to follow Mike Davis in suggesting that there are consequences to the type of economic inequality that we find in Mumbai (and all over the Third World). When you consider that similar conditions of inequality hold in cities across India (Delhi, Kolkata) as well as in the cities of India's (frequently hostile) neighbors (Karachi, Pakistan; Dhaka, Bangladesh; etc.), you have to start to wonder about the political and religious consequences of extreme inequality. It should be no surprise that terrorism (especially religious terrorism) seems to grow best in the slums of places like Karachi, Kabul, and Baghdad (in fact, the dangerous Sadr City area of Baghdad is the largest slum in that country).
This is not to say that the Mumbai attacks had social inequality as their explicit motive. Nor is it to excuse the attacks in any way. However, it may be time for the rich First World to start asking itself whether the economic abjection of the Third World is breeding resentment, discontent, and ideologies of violence. Maybe instead of bombing the hell out of Pakistan (and other Third World slum societies), the First World should think about creating a livable existence for the global poor. This might be a case of how the right thing to do is also in our best interest...
You may have noticed that Fosco has had a Catholic bee in his bonnet lately. Mostly, this is because of Fosco's anger at Catholic support for Prop H8. While this current story is not about Prop H8, Fosco thinks it clearly illustrates the kind of coercive tactics that the Catholic Church now uses on its members in order to influence politics in the (supposedly secular) public sphere.
That's right, a parish priest is asking his parishioners to confess if they voted for Obama:
A Roman Catholic priest has told parishioners they should confess if they voted for Barack Obama because the president-elect supports abortion.
The Rev. Joseph Illo says his parishioners at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Modesto shouldn't risk losing their "state of grace" by receiving communion sacrilegiously. He delivered the message in a Nov. 21 letter and during mass.
"Father" Illo then goes on to note that voting for Obama would qualify as a "mortal sin." A mortal sin, as per Aquinas, is one that would exclude the sinner from heaven (if not confessed and repented).
First things first. "Father" Illo is a douchebag.
Second, let's take a minute and unpack this whole thing a bit. This is actually a remarkable move on "Father" Illo's part. Note, this is not the Catholic Church supporting a specific policy proposal (such as a ban on abortions or, say, gay marriage). While Fosco may disagree with the Church's position of these issues, he can understand how the Church may choose to urge Catholic voters to adopt the Catholic position in voting on these issues (of course, threatening any Catholic with damnation for their vote is repulsive). But this is not just about voting on a specific issue, rather, the Church here is weighing in on a candidate--a candidate who (like almost any political candidate) holds complex views on policy. "Father" Illo has essentially reduced Barack Obama to a pro-abortion caricature.
This is wrong for several reasons. The first of which is that Barack Obama is not exactly "pro-abortion." You can see that here. Obama (like all of us who support Roe v. Wade) would actually like there to be fewer abortions. And how do we reduce abortions? I think comprehensive sex education and improved economic opportunity might be a good place to start. Obama, like many of the rest of us, recognizes that we can reduce abortions by reducing unwanted pregnancies. Guess what, the Democratic party even has a plan!
So, if Barack Obama's plan to reduce abortion is not good enough for the Catholic Church, then John McCain must have been planning to outlaw abortion altogether, right? Well, not exactly. Apparently, McCain's entire plan was to appoint enough conservative justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, "returning the abortion question to the individual states." Hmmm. That doesn't actually seem like much of a plan, does it? I think we all know which states would outlaw abortion if RvW were overturned. And I'm guessing that most women, even those who live in the South, would be within one day's drive of one of the legal abortion states. Of course, overturning RvW would still cause a lot of pain and hardship for women in abortion-illegal states. And there would certainly be women too poor to travel for an abortion (although some might consequently risk their lives for unsafe illegal abortions). So this plan probably would reduce abortion as well. But overall, it's not entirely clear to me which plan would actually reduce abortion more: Obama's or McCain's.
But isn't the point of this sort of thought experiment that it is possible for intelligent people with a moral conscience to disagree about how best to reduce abortion? This is what "Father" Illo and the Catholic Church is denying here. They are being intellectually dishonest by ignoring the fact that there are numerous ways to reach goals that, in some degree, we all share. But clearly, disagreeing with the Church on the "right" way to reduce abortion means eternal damnation for your soul.
Do I even have to note that, by focusing on abortion in determining who to vote for, the Catholic Church is ignoring several other social justice issues that the Church used to care about? You know, issues like poverty and war. Does "Father" Illo really think that John McCain would save enough aborted fetuses to make up for the hundreds of thousands of people in Iran that he would kill? Although, come to think of it, those Iranians aren't Christians so presumably they count less...
The weather here was finally beautiful today. Fosco walked down to the beach. The waves were the color of tea and they were large. Lots of surfers. You can sorta see them in this video:
Fosco is a very enthusiastic amateur bird-watcher and so he was quite excited to see a new bird today: the Black Oystercatcher. Fosco couldn't get a good picture, but here's the picture he would have like to have taken:
There were three of these guys browsing the tidepools this afternoon.
This was a nice afternoon and that's what Fosco needed today. To be honest, Fosco has had some trouble feeling appropriately thankful this Thanksgiving season. In many ways, Thanksgiving felt like a bit of downer this year, even though Fosco spent the day with family and his boyfriend Oz.
Part of the problem is that Fosco is pretty ambivalent about the emotion of gratitude. What does it mean to feel grateful for something? And why should one feel that way? These questions are not that easy to answer if you think about them in terms of something like Thanksgiving.
Obviously, there are simple gratitude situations in everyday life. Say I'm 25 cents short at 7-11 (buying my favorite Chinese melamine chews) and the surfer dude behind me gives me a quarter. I'm grateful. Easy enough. Fosco is not a monster.
The problem is when a holiday like Thanksgiving comes around and the conventional wisdom is that you feel something we might call ontological gratitude--that is, gratitude for one's way of being in the world. By this, I mean feeling gratitude for one's essential position in the world, e.g.,
I'm grateful that I'm smart.
I'm grateful that I live in a rich Western society.
I'm grateful that I have a family and friends who love me.
There are two problems with this kind of gratitude as Fosco sees it. The first is that gratitude is an other-directed emotion. If you are grateful for a good thing, you are feeling grateful TO somebody/something for that good thing. Gratitude implies an agent who produced that good thing for you (like that dude who helped me buy my melamine chews). So who do you thank for one's talents, one's relatives, one's nationality, one's existence? I suppose that's where God comes in, but that's not very helpful for those of us living the post-God existence. The God substitutes don't really work well for Fosco here either--being grateful to "The Universe" just feels stupid.
The related problem here is the question of desert (and I don't mean dessert). I'm not sure that you can feel grateful for something that you don't feel like you deserve (even just a little). Can you feel grateful for dumb blind luck? Fosco can't. This isn't a problem for most everyday applications of gratitude--after all, there is certainly part of Fosco that feels he deserves his melamine chews at 7-11 (as he's already paid almost all of the purchase price) and the surfer dude who gives him a quarter is just helping him get what he deserves. But what exactly did you (or Fosco) do to deserve not to be born in the Third World? What did you (or Fosco) do to deserve to be born with all of your limbs?
What I'm trying to suggest is that there is something slightly obscene about being grateful that you are much less existentially miserable than most of the world. After all, if you are the person who misses a plane that crashes, are you grateful that you didn't make the flight? Or do you just feel stupidly, guiltily, undeservingly lucky? The difference here is that lucky (unlike grateful) is not an entirely pleasant feeling. With luck, there is always the recognition that there is no reason why you have good things. That's why no one keeps a "luck journal."
And so, how does one feel on Thanksgiving, when one has a table full of food and a safe place to live? Fosco feels lucky, not grateful. And while you can still enjoy the good things that are yours because of luck, you cannot do so without some ambivalence, without the recognition that you have those things over other people for no good reason. Happy Thanksgiving.
Fosco was always a little suspicious of the previous Pope's zeal for "interreligious dialogue." Not that "interreligious dialogue" is a bad thing--Fosco heartily supports it, as long as it doesn't mean Catholics and Mormons teaming up to beat down the gays. Reasonable religious dialogue might be nice, actually. Heck, it could stop some killing. It's just that Fosco never believed that any "dialogue" is possible with a religion (like Catholicism) that axiomatically believes that every other faith is incorrect.
Of course, this was the problem that puzzled all the commentators when old Pope Droopy II used to hold all those Interfaith Clambakes. After all, how can the Pope talk to non-Christians when it is the Church's infallible teaching that Jesus alone leads to salvation and that other religions are "objectively speaking [...] in a gravely deficient situation" (emphasis in original).
Can you imagine the conversation?
[CATHOLIC CHURCH]: Do you believe in Jesus? [ISLAM]: We are actually more interested in a God we call Allah. [CATHOLIC CHURCH]: That is gravely deficient. Would you like a cannoli?
How's that for dialogue?
Well, as Pope Buckaroo XVI (pictured above) continues his sprightly little dance on the grave of Vatican II, it seems the idea of Catholic participation in "interreligious dialogue" has finally been admitted as a sham.
According to an article in the NYTimes, the Pope has written a letter to an author of a book on Christianity's salvific uniqueness, a letter in which
the pope said the book “explained with great clarity” that “an interreligious dialogue in the strict sense of the word is not possible.” In theological terms, added the pope, “a true dialogue is not possible without putting one’s faith in parentheses.”
I'm not sure the Pope needed to resort to tricky "theological terms" such as "in parentheses" to make his point here. The ground of any "dialogue" is the essential possibility that one's position may change when one listens to what the other person has to say. If you rule out that possibility from the start, there is no dialogue (rather, it's a double monologue or something--at any rate, it sounds exactly like Fosco's conversations with his father...).
After a decade of life on the East Coast, near the centers of Intellectual and Cultural Life, Count Fosco is cast out. He takes up residence in California to begin anew. Fosco Lives! is the journal of Fosco's new life.
Fosco Lives! follows Fosco's pursuit of pleasures sensual and intellectual. His blog covers the breadth of his interests: gay life, food, books, art, popular culture, travel, music. Regardless of the topic, Fosco aims to share a perspective both humane and civilized. Join him.
Thoughts on Exile
Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, Said then the lost Archangel, this the seat That we must change for Heaven? (Milton, Paradise Lost)
"Exile must be a terrible thing," said Norton sympathetically. "Actually," said Amalfitano, "now I see it as a natural movement, something that, in its own way, helps to abolish fate, or what is generally thought of as fate." "But exile," said Pelletier, "is full of inconveniences, of skips and breaks that essentially keep recurring and interfere with anything you try to do that's important." "That's just what I mean by abolishing fate," said Amalfitano. (Roberto Bolaño, 2666)
Contact Fosco
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Jill is absolutely fabulous and so is Stella's Roar.
My friend and colleague Evan Calder Williams will blow your mind at Socialism And/Or Barbarism; or perhaps he will annoy you with X avec Y. Either way.
My friend and colleague Calvin McMillan blogs about Hong Kong film and related matters (like his smokin' hot girlfriend) at Ronin on Empty.
The title of this blog, Fosco Lives! is borrowed from a chapter by A. D. Hutter, which appears in the collection Reality's Dark Light. This is the only similarity that this blog bears to what is, frankly, a rather odd little chapter.
Information on the engraving in the title bar can be found in this post.
Uncredited direct quotations occur occasionally on this blog, but they should be obvious to the reasonable reader.
Most of the pictures have been shamelessly stolen using Google Image Search.
All other content on this blog is the product of Fosco!
In my previous post, I helpfully turned this poster into an easy-to-read list and my readers responded--by determining how many of these categories are going to contribute to their own eternal damnation.
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