No Education Without Books

She turned and said with a thoughtful manner, she always had a thoughtful manner, “Books are no longer the literature of our culture. Movies are now way the masses receive truth.” So a seminar speaker, long ago, introduced me to the idea that perhaps literacy is a thing of the past. We are, she proclaimed, “a post literate people.”

If I accept this, I still wonder at accepting it. For some reason, we are to rejoice in it instead of combating it. This is deemed progress so it must be opposed, but there is nothing progressive about it. It is simplest to see it as a return the slavery of illiteracy.

Even the phrase “post literate” is nonsense. Christians have always taught people to read. God, after all, sent a book not a video. We did not let the pagan Irish wallow in their symbols of other gods rudely painted on stone walls. Why should we let the pagan Americans sink back to pictures flickering on modern walls?

(more at Middlebrow…)

Nessie versus Dracula

My fifteen year old son starts blogging and settles this age old question: Who would win a fight: Nessie or Dracula?

I love you L.D.!

(more at Middlebrow…)

Ned Lamont: Not Just an Empty Suit, but a Polyester Horror

My mother bought it and it lives in my memory like an evil dream. It was lemon yellow and made of polyester that would not die. It was a leisure suit for boys and it could not be destroyed. An Adult Leisure Suit

At last I outgrew it, but it could have lasted forever looking just as lemony with orange glowing buttons. It lives still in my memory, but I may recover with some fashion therapy. What it could do was throw off little pills of itself. . . each an indestructible piece of itself that could not be detached from the whole without destroying it. But if you did cut it off carefully with a clever tool that K-Tel would sell you on late night television, the pill would glow on its own in the waste can. You can be sure that all the leisure suit pills in the world still exist buried out of sight in the dumps of the world.

It is a frightening thought.

It has become fashionable on the blog-o-sphere to call Mr. Ned Lamont, slayer of Jewish Senators, an empty suit of clothes.

And there is some virtue in it, for Ned Lamont is an empty suit filled with the hot air blown his way by Michael Moore, the Daily Kos, and whatever leftist tripe he still remembers from college days. His thoughts are not just undigested, for he seems to lack the internal mental organs needed to digest thought, but almost random. If his wine-and-cheese crowd friends suddenly supported the War, Ned Lamont would support it with a change so intellectually effortless that it would be nearly impossible to notice it.

That is not what is interesting about Ned Lamont since Ted Kennedy has spent a lifetime without thinking for himself the scion of a rich family who pretends to have made it on his own. Half the Democrat Senate consists of rich white men who are sorry for being rich, white, and male in a superior self-satisfied way.

No instead what is frightening about Lamont is his potential staying power. His naive views are ugly, in a world where anti-Semites run nations they are even dangerous, but come packaged in a sunny exterior that appears capable of discharging little mental pills into our political system for decades.

He is young and has the rich kid health and confidence that means he can go forever. Send Lamont to the Senate this time and we may see him there for the rest of our lives. . . slowly evolving into the Teddy Kennedy of the twenty-first century.

He is Leisure Suit Lamont and he may live forever in the Senate.

Below is one pill discharged from the leisure suit mind of Ned Lamont. . . with my comments in italics. Long after his Michael Moore/Daily Kos creed will have been utterly out grown by the body politic, he will go on glowing in the Senate discharging his fuzzy warm wisdom to us.

(more at Middlebrow…)

Evangelicals and Judaism

One of the oddest notions now alive on the ‘net is that Evangelicals support Jewish persons because they want to bring on the End Times. Says the leftist hater of Evangelicals to obvious evidence of Evangelical love of all things Jewish, “You cannot give Evangelicals credit for their support of Israel, because they really want all Jews to become Christians or die at the end of the world that Evangelicals are hoping to trigger.”

Now this is just a lie, or at best guilt by association, but it is the kind of lie that leads a great many Americans to dislike their religious neighbor. A Stereotype“Those Evangelicals are all Ned Flanders! So weird and such clever anti-Semites, pretending to love Israel and Jews so that they can kill them!” While figures like Flanders are funny, and often deflate Christian wind bags, such stereotypes become harmful when they are almost the only media image of Evangelicals . . . and then slander is mixed into this pop culture version of forty percent of the population: Evangelicals are shallow and scary!
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Americans Have Doubts about Evolution: Oh the Horror!

U.S. Lags Behind Europe, Japan in Acceptance of Evolution
Thursday, August 10, 2006

. . . as usual my comments are in italics.

The following is a delightful Fox story shot through with evidence that those arguing for Darwin still don’t get it. They keep trying the same “our opponents are stupid” and “mainstream religion is for Darwin” arguments. . . but have made little progress.

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Our Brave Allies

One ally, the United Kingdom, foiled a terrorist plot that could have killed thousands of Brits and Americans as they traveled.

Another ally, brave Israel, fights for her life against terrorists and Iran.

(more at Middlebrow…)

Romney in the Dock

Romney in the Dock:
Or Are Traditional Christians in the Dock?

Mitt Romney is nearly a picture perfect Republican candidate for President. With a long family Republican heritage, he is a popular and successful governor and that is the job that has been the best stepping-stone to the Presidency in my lifetime.
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Wallace Puts in a Good Word for Satan!

FOXNews.com - Mike Wallace Says Iranian President an ‘Impressive Fellow’ - Iran
Let’s be clear:

We face a foe in ideological and radical Islam determined to destroy Israel and the US. People who buy this ideology hate us, have the support of millions of folk, and have money. One important nation, Iran, is now controlled by folk who think killing Jews is a good thing.

The President of Iran is such a man. Here is what a leading US “reporter” had to say in a Fox news report.
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Evangelicals and the Republican Party

I am sick of the simplistic idea, now repeated to the point of Gospel, that Evangelicals were Democrats and then became Republicans when Democrats embraced Civil Rights. Our LeaderThe idea is that Nixon made a deal with the Devil to get White Evangelical votes. He lost any shot at the historically Republican Black vote, but gained Evangelicals. In this story, Evangelicals are historically Southern, Democrats, and racists.

(more at Middlebrow…)

Why Lieberman?

Mel Gibson is evidently a fool with hateful views. Nothing justifies them and the fact that he has some power in my movement worries me. It also makes me sad that the good things he has done will have to be considered again in the light of his bad ideas.

(more at Middlebrow…)

An American in Paris . . . and Britain VII: Jane Austen, Bath Buns, and Being a Gentleman

There is no city in which a barbarian could feel less at home than Bath. It is not even a city in which a civilized gentleman can feel quite at home. This is a city built for ladies of the Old School . . . woman comfortable, even slightly superior in simply being ladies.

(more at Middlebrow…)

One Serious Party? Not Good

Lamont simply has no serious plan for the WOT. That disqualifies him from the Senate. . . the Senate is not the school board of some Yale-dominated exburb.

(more at Middlebrow…)

RedBlueChristian » Blog Archive » Democrats: Do you really ever want my vote?

Why did Democrat activists go after Joe, when Hilary is a the “leader of the future” and had a primary this year too?

(more at Middlebrow…)

Lady is a Lovely Mess

Box Office Mojo > News > ‘Pirates’ Loot Piles Up, ‘Lady’ Walks Plank

M. Night Shyamalan used to mean must see in our house. He creates films that make my family think, while giving us a good time. He has managed to create films that the morally traditional who are not prigs can enjoy. His best films (Signs! The Village!) frighten as Doyle or Poe would frighten with intelligent writing instead of CG effects.

It is no accident that Wheatstone Academy used “The Village” to discuss film and pop culture last year. It raised important issues of community and values that most other movies are afraid to ask. We will not be doing the same with “Lady in the Water.”

Why did M. Night Shyamalan think he could make a movie with a story that he was making up as he went along? The “Lady” has a script so messy, but is filmed so beautifully that when it ended I assumed I had missed something. Surely, no movie by M. Night Shyamalan could be this bad. It telegraphed its ending and it introduced plot twists without building up to them.

In the “Village”, you felt any plot surprise was natural to the story. In “Lady,” you could hear Shyamalan saying, “Cool. Let’s try this.”

Reviews on the web keep using terms like “self-indulgent.” I doubt that. It felt more “tired” as in “I am on a roll and my backers, and hungry family, want more movies from me. Better strike while the iron is hot, but I am out of stories to tell.” so M. Night Shyamalan decided to cannibalize his bed time stories to his children from plot. That works when you are Tolkien, but it turns out that Shyamalan is no Tolkien.

The acting in the film is very good. . . both Ron Howard’s daughter, Bryce Howard, and an eccentric Paul Giamatii are very good. Any given moment of the film is beautiful with Howard often looking like an icon of the Blessed Virgin and the Dante-like ending (Saint Lucy!) nearly redeeming the film.

But the Eagle that comes at the end of the film feels like part of a pointless universe, not like the Eagle of the Comedy with its mythic roots or even Bilbo’s Eagle in the Hobbit. M. Night Shyamalan looks like he is in search of truth, goodness, and beauty and has decided to find it in his own head.

Since his head is full of clever ideas and at least does not seem stripped of myth like most Hollywood types, even this film has merits. However, these merits are not worth the money for a first run viewing and only merit a “dollar theater” run if you want to see pieces of a good movie. Feel free to get pop corn, in this movie the sum is less than the parts.

The box office suggest I am not alone.

An American in Paris . . . and Britain VI: Warwick Castle, King Makers, Arthurs Grave, and Dissing Disneyland

We continue our journey through Britain and Paris by looking for Arthur, attacking Henry, and wondering about Warwick.

Thorn
When I imagine the sky, I always see it through the leaves of the Glastonbury thorn. The Southern California sky is too empty and the sun too bright for my weak eyes. The sun of England is not so strong and the gentle shade of the Thorn tree helps me see.

They say, in Glastonbury, that in ancient times Joseph of Arimathea traded in tin here and brought the young Jesus here for a time. After the Christ died, Joseph came and built a Church and planted the Thorn tree. He may, the stories say, have also hid the Grail somewhere in Glastonbury.

The Glastonbury legend may not be true, Jesus may never have walked to the top of Tor or lived near the mines of the Roman village, but it is still a sacred place. Hundreds of years of Christians built here, worshipped here, and tended the thorn tree . . . hoping to see it bloom on Christmas day. I am told that the Queen, God save her, has a cutting from the Thorn in the palace at the Christ Mass.

(more at Middlebrow…)