For the record, I opposed the New York Philharmonic’s trip to North Korea in 2008, and I think it’s fair to say that many of those in the music world thought it was a splendid idea (Terry Teachout and Norman Lebrecht being notable exceptions). My reasoning included the fact that, although Lorin Maazel mouthed some platitudes about music remaining apolitical, Maazel himself politicized the event before embarking, equating North Korea’s human-rights record with our own:
“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw bricks, should they?” Mr. Maazel demanded. “Is our standing as a country — the United States — is our reputation all that clean when it comes to prisoners and the way they are treated? Have we set an example that should be emulated all over the world? If we can answer that question honestly, I think we can then stop being judgmental about the errors made by others.”
Now comes this report on Clare College Choir’s planned trip to Israel.
The College Choir plans to visit Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Karmiel, performing J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, during their tour, which will last from December 23rd to 29th. On Christmas Eve they will be singing in the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, followed by Midnight Mass in Jerusalem.
Some are condemning the tour:
Concerns revolve around the tour’s potential political implications. Signatory Dr Raymond Deane, an Irish composer and political activist, told Varsity, “Those of us involved in culture can’t stand back and pretend that we inhabit some ethereal realm remote from the real world. Tours by artists such as the Choir of Clare College will be exploited by the lavishly funded Israeli propaganda machine as proof of the ‘normality’ and ‘acceptability’ of the Israeli rogue state - which is neither normal nor acceptable.”
What’s the difference between this trip and the New York Philharmonic’s trip to North Korea? Just to name a few: (a) performing a Christmas concert in the Holy Land has a bit more cultural grounding than performing Beethoven in Pyongyang; (b) Israel, a democracy with a free press, can express varying views on the visit whereas only one account of the Philharmonic’s visit would emerge from North Korea; (c) the Israeli government fosters a free exchange of cultural offerings.
But this is likely to be one of those instances in which people who opposed the New York Philharmonic trip to North Korea will support the Clare College Choir trip to Israel, and vice versa. And some will note that I am one of those people.
Quite right. While I generally support artistic exchanges, I think there is a fundamental difference between touring a democratic state with which the free world has diplomatic relations and touring a slave state with no diplomatic ties. I am happy to part company with the nihilists who can’t see that distinction, and to part company with those who would deny Israel a right to defend its citizens from the never-ceasing terrorist campaign aimed against it.
I might even change my mind about North Korea, if it were to host a performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in a Christian Church at which its citizens were free to worship. But unlike Israel . . .
November 30th, 2009
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Fitzroy |
Music, Politics |
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In the ongoing effort to normalize the public display of everything sexual, Adam Lambert has caused people to pause (probably only briefly) to consider whether this is a necessary or even good thing.
Lambert argues that he is subject to a double standard since same-sex kisses and other displays of intimacy among female entertainers have been broadcast by the TV networks.
Reuters reports that ABC received 1,500 complaints from Lambert’s recent antics – a pitifully small number. That may reflect the size of the audience, but it probably says more about the nature of the audience. A vast swath of normal people from almost every demographic has surely tired of the increasingly feckless efforts of the entertainment industry to shock us.
Long ago broadcasters stopped giving us any reason to tune in, and they are now running out of ways to convince their dwindling audience to tune out.
Lambert says he didn’t mean to offend anyone by sticking his co-performers’ heads in his crotch. And his protestation rings true to an extent. He wants his own peculiar amusements to be perceived not as offensive, but as normal.
On the other hand, when the public display of such things becomes truly normal, entertainers may have to rediscover art as a means of attracting and holding an audience. And therein lies Lambert’s problem. Is he an artist or just a queer? Can he offer his audience something they value, or is it all about him?
In short, do Lambert’s talents extend to music? People who happened to be homosexual have made tremendous contributions to the arts. Their art is widely celebrated; their homosexuality is celebrated only in college classrooms.
On a somewhat related topic, I was intrigued by the ironic title of Mary Eberstadt’s recent article in First Things: “How Pedophilia Lost its Cool.” The article demonstrates, however, that the title is not ironic at all. In fact, pedophilia was recently making a play for mainstream acceptance among self-appointed sophisticates. For example:
In 1998 the prestigious Psychological Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association, printed a subsequently notorious study called “A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples.” In it, three researchers took issue with “the common belief that child sexual abuse causes intense harm, regardless of gender.” The authors further criticized the use of conventional terms such as victim and perpetrator and recommended that “a willing encounter with positive reactions” be labeled “simply adult–child sex.”
Roman Polanski’s arrest pushed this issue to the forefront and highlighted the isolation of those who jumped to Polanski’s defense. Only Hollywood, it seems, failed to understand that art is not a defense to child abuse.
So there is something to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day. We can hope that the world took a look a pedophilia and indeed decided that it was not cool. We can hope that the entertainment industry, despite having an enormous megaphone for its opinions, truly is out of touch with society.
We can hope that Adam Lambert will either discover aesthetics and find an audience, or be largely forgotten – merely a social commentator with nothing much to say.
November 26th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Media, Music |
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Christopher Badeaux compares Obama’s foreign policy to Carter’s in Obama’s Foreign Policy: Shakedown 1979.
The usual people who don’t understand foreign policy – which is to say, the sorts of people who are well-received, if not employed, by the State Department (which hasn’t understood foreign policy since Kissinger, or perhaps Dulles) – are of course charmed by the President’s playacting on the global stage. This is probably because the kabuki-dance of Metternichian diplomacy, though likely to allow untold millions to die of starvation, rape, genocide, torture, ethnic cleansing, and imprisonment, is more visually appealing than war and open conflict – not least because all of that starvation, rape, genocide, torture, ethnic cleansing, and imprisonment tends to happen in countries that don’t allow cameras near the atrocities.
This terrible conflation of form over substance elides the fact that Baron von Metternich developed the balance of power system he did to avoid a repeat of the devastation of Napoleon, and that ultimately, that very system of diplomatic communiqués, bows, negotiations, dinners, and playacting not only failed to avert the First World War, it positively accelerated and worsened the Second. In other words, the modern system is a shell of a remnant of a means of preventing a disaster that has long-since passed, and that failed miserably both times it was really well-tested.
The Obama Administration’s unwavering commitment to the trappings of diplomacy is not in the service of any discernable foreign policy goal. Badeaux goes through the list and finds nothing that would qualify as a guiding principle – except this:
If its foreign policy approach is merely the revenge of the rabbit-stalked, its grand strategy appears to be providing President Obama chances to appear before cheering crowds composed of non-Americans. Concrete effects simply do not matter, because they are not the goal. The President is the message; the President is the medium; the President is the goal. It is not coincidence that the word “I” appears more often than the words “a,” “an,” and “the” combined in the President’s speeches abroad; it is not coincidence that the only things anyone noted of the President’s tour were his bow to a figurehead Emperor and his announcement that he is the first Pacific President.
November 25th, 2009
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Fitzroy |
Politics |
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Michael Goldfarb notes the rich irony of the New York Times declining to publish the Climategate emails. Never mind that the people writing the emails have had an inordinate influence on environmental policies around the world, created a global industry, and bamboozled millions with false data. It just wouldn’t be fair to report the fraud that they didn’t intend to make public.
Of course, when the choice is between publishing classified information that might endanger the lives of U.S. troops in the field or intelligence programs vital to national security, that information is published without hesitation by the nation’s paper of record. But in this case — the documents were “never intended for the public eye,” so the New York Times will take a pass.
November 23rd, 2009
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Fitzroy |
Media |
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Today is National Ammo Day, which seems like a cause worth noting.
Belt of 7.62mm linked ammunition.
The purpose of National Ammo Day is to encourage people to buy ammunition and empty the store shelves. This year, that has already been accomplished. It seems the Obama administration has already provided so much encouragement that the store shelves have been empty for quite some time.
The ammunition manufacturers want everyone to buy 100 rounds today. Good luck finding it.
Image by Micha Niskin - Creative Commons
November 19th, 2009
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Fitzroy |
Ammo |
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China is building a new fighter jet to compete with F-22. Unfortunately, there won’t be an F-22 for it to compete with. Obama killed the F-22 project, saying that we had no need for it. Why? Because, as the administration explained, no other nation was developing a competing fighter.
CNN reported on July 21:
[Defense Secretary] Gates said Monday he’d heard no “substantive” argument for keeping the jet for national security reasons, pointing out that China has no planes that can compete with the more than 1,000 advanced fighter jets the U.S. will have by 2020.
And so Obama threatened to veto the entire defense budget if it included money for the F-22.
Obama went to China last week with a message of “strategic reassurance.” Beijing took the occasion of Obama’s visit to announce its new fighter. Nice touch. According to Aviation Week:
Beijing’s fighter announcement suggests a serious failing in U.S. intelligence assessments, mocking a July 16 statement of U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates that China would have no fifth-generation fighters by 2020.
And what was Obama’s rationale for killing the F-22?
“At a time when we’re fighting two wars and facing a serious deficit, (expanding the F-22) would have been an inexcusable waste of money,” Obama said shortly after the vote.
Hmm, fighting two wars renders weapons an inexcusable waste of money. . . . Okay, we’ll never make sense out of that, so let’s try the deficit argument.
On that score, the massive stimulus funding and the imperative to create jobs simply didn’t apply when it came to defense. We killed real existing jobs at Lockheed to create pretend jobs elsewhere. Just yesterday, in fact, the administration announced on its slick new $18 million web site that it had created a grand total of 30 jobs in Arizona’s 15th congressional district (at a cost of $ 25,380.67 each). Only there is no such place as the 15th congressional district of Arizona.
So, there’s nothing to worry about. Any administration that can create a whole congressional district from nothing won’t have any problem creating regiments and fighter wings from nothing . . . when the need arises.
H/T: RedState
November 17th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Ammo, Commerce, Politics |
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Archbishop Cranmer (a British blog that has graced our blogroll from the outset) has three posts in succession on the topic of legislation favoring homosexuals.
First comes news of a heterosexual couple denied the right to enter into a civil partnership. The law establishing civil unions requires that the couple be of the same gender.
The Conservative Party attempted to add an amendment to the Civil Partnership Bill; one which would have granted siblings the same rights as homosexuals. Cheryl Gillan was concerned with such instances as two spinster sisters who have lived together all of their lives, or a bachelor brother and spinster sister who care for elderly relatives. The amendment was defeated, since the sole purpose of the legislation was to grant a state-recognised union to homosexuals alone.
Second, the EU is taking measures to punish Lithuania for passing a law that “prohibits promotion of ‘homosexual, bisexual, polygamous relations’ among children under the age of 18.”
Astonishingly (or perhaps not), the European Parliament has considered ‘Article 7’ action against Lithuania, which could have resulted in Lithuania’s suspension from the European Union. And all because they have dared to confront what they deem to be insidious homosexual propaganda. . . .
[T]he European Parliament voted 349-218 to condemn the new law because they say it contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights. They insist that the law should therefore be repealed: it is inconsistent with EU membership.
Finally, Cranmer has a video clip of Lord Waddington. It is tempting for Americans to presume that some equivalent of the First Amendment protects free-speech rights in other Western countries. Yet the Waddington Amendment has been unpopular and controversial because it puts limits on the proposed “hate speech” law and permits people to criticize the homosexual lifestyle. The amendment states:
In this Part, for the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred.
Of course, the amendment and those who support it are criticized in the vilest terms. The criticism is frequently accompanied by the argument that those who fail to acknowledge homosexuality as equally good to heterosexuality are merely ignorant religious bigots who should be drummed out of polite society.
As with other issues dear to the left, the debate is being declared over, and the last murmurings of opposition will be made criminal.
November 16th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Law, Religion |
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Post-traumatic stress disorder is real. Men in combat experience things that the rest of us can’t really imagine, and it affects them profoundly. Some are made stronger, braver, wiser – others more cynical, vengeful, or fearful. We used to extol the former. Now we diagnose the latter.
For those who have lost sight of the unique value and accomplishments of Western Civilization, there is no true cause to defend. They can only count the cost. For them, PTSD makes a nice narrative. It can be applied universally. Even the most courageous combatant suffers emotionally, so naturally he suffers from some form of PTSD whether he knows it or not. In fact, his apparent mental health can be written off as further evidence of his illness: a cloak of denial that must be stripped away in order to find the PTSD lurking below.
In this way, the left has refined its loathing of the military, choosing to paint individuals within the military as victims – nice people turned into murderous brutes by a sick society.
So instead of having John Kerry slandering his brothers in arms to a Senate committee as murderous brutes, we now have Dr. Phil and other chattering heads painting a murderous brute as misunderstood and driven by external forces to extreme violence. Those external forces are immediately presumed to be military ones. Dr. Phil paints this as entirely rational speculation. At the same time, he calls any speculation that Islam may have played a role as dangerous and irresponsible.
Under the new therapeutic approach, the ultimate evil is the same – the military – but the argument is couched with the false elegance and sensitivity that so enthralls leftists and characterizes their sophistry.
The square peg of Major Hasan, a physician, a mental health professional, who has never seen a day of combat, must be driven into the round hole of PTSD.
Let’s call it pre-traumatic stress syndrome.
I don’t profess to know what really drove Hasan’s rampage. But I do know that it is foolish (nay, calculated) to immediately blame the military for creating this monster while reflexively ruling out any connection to Islam.
November 8th, 2009
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Fitzroy |
Politics, Religion |
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November 4 was an interesting day.
At the White House, it was “Classical Music Day.” A day for paying attention to one of the cornerstones of Western Civilization. The other 1,460 days of Obama’s four-year term will apparently be free of such tedium. Obama seemed ill at ease with high art. Somewhat refreshingly, however, he turned his sights away from Bush and took a cheap shot at another former President, pointing out that John Kennedy also didn’t know when to applaud.
As everybody else in the country focused on the election returns and what they portend for the Democrat’s agenda, the White House claimed that Obama did not watch the election returns on Tuesday night. Are we to believe the President is less interested in politics than everyone else? Contrary to earlier reports, he did not spend election night watching an HBO documentary about himself. He had seen it a few days earlier. Despite having that pressing chore accomplished, Obama apparently still has not made a decision on Afghanistan or invited General McChrystal over for a chat.
People in Teheran noticed that November 4 was the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy and the taking of hostages. Protestors there continue to blame America for their problems, despite the administration’s decision to abandon belligerence in favor of sweetness and light.
Obama did have time to issue a “masterpiece of appeasement” as Michael Ledeen calls it,
and all but groveled in begging the leaders of the Islamic Republic to make a deal:
I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect.
He could not spare a single word for the plight of the people of Iran, who were being beaten, clubbed, stabbed and shot as he issued his statement. He went on:
We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran. We have recognized Iran’s international right to peaceful nuclear power. We have demonstrated our willingness to take confidence-building steps along with others in the international community. We have accepted a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet Iran’s request for assistance in meeting the medical needs of its people. We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.
NBC News reported the Iranian protestors chanting “Obama, Obama, either you’re with them or with us.” Somebody needs to tell them that quoting George Bush is not likely to win over the current White House.
Meanwhile, Joshua Bell accomplished what General McChrystal has not: he got quality face time with Obama.
Memo to McChrystal: think about taking up an instrument, and make sure there are no HBO paeans to Obama on the day you want to visit the White House.
November 5th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Music, Politics |
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