Posts

Posted on

Hold the Dressing, Please

Our brothers on the left have been throwing pies at unsavory capitalists and right-wing politicians at least since the days of Abbie Hoffman, but the frequency of such incidents has been trending upwards in the last decade. Perhaps it’s frustration at having our message so thoroughly locked out of the mainstream media, or maybe we’re becoming a bunch of sweet and tender hooligans. Last week was a busy one for the freedom food fighters. The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol got hit in the smacker with an ice cream sandwich at Earlham College on Tuesday, and two days later, Pat Buchanan got a face full of Ceasar dressing at Western Michigan University. The dressing came courtesy of a comrade in the Socialist Party, Sam Mesick.

Perhaps I’m just indulging my general bias against salad dressing (I mean, if I can’t stand having my greens drenched in the crap, I can only imagine how odious it would be to have my person drenched in it; this really is a Golden Rule issue for me), but I don’t think that this was the most effective means of furthering the cause.

Nevermind the fact that the vast right-wing conspiracy is already targeting academia as the last bastion of leftist thought in Bush’s America, and that incidents such as this will just be used to argue that the kids have been brainwashed by those ivory tower commies and they’re all running amuck! No, that’s to be expected. What’s worse is that these incidents make us on the left look like a bunch of incoherent brutes who are trying to shut down speech that we disagree with, without really offering our own alternative. Now, I’ve never met Cde. Mesick, and I’m sure he meant well, but if he managed to actually get on the stage with Buchanan, why couldn’t he have done a banner drop, or heckled or loudly rebutted the speaker. Anything that was more verbal would have gotten a message across better than “Viva La Cause.” What cause? Socialism? Fascism? Paul Newman’s salad dressing? What message was the audience supposed to come away with from that?

This incident reminds me of a visit that George Bush the Elder made to the campus of the University of Hartford in 1999. Two other comrades from the party, Jeff Rabinovici and Scott Jarzombek, took the opportunity to challenge the former President on his decision to invade Iraq and continue the economic sanctions during a Q&A session. Of course, their mic was cut and they got roughed up by the Secret Service for their trouble, but at least there was no mistaking their message, which was articulated clearly and loudly for all to hear.

I wish my brother Sam Mesick a long life on the left and many more opportunities to speak truth to power. I just hope he takes those future opportunities to verbalize his opposition.

Posted on

Popeapalooza!

As the round-the-clock Pope Deathwatch coverage on the cable news channels shifted from Friday night to early Saturday morning, and the Pontiff stubbornly lived a little longer, I am a little surprised that CNN didn’t change their news banner from “Pope Nears Death” to “Pope: Not Dead Yet” or “Pope: Any Minute Now.”

However, as soon as he passed on (a day after April Fools, alas), the news channels and websites immediately rolled out their long-in-the-can obituaries, and sidebars on pomp and ceremony and Papal bookmaking.

The best so far?

The London Guardian’s obituary notes that the original author of the obit died long before Karol Wojtyla, in 1994 to be precise.

Fox News inevitably credits John Paul II with bringing down Communism. It’s amazing how many people it took to “single-handedly” defeat the Red Menace. Actually, Lech Walesa only gives him half the credit:

“Fifty percent of the collapse of communism is his doing,” Walesa told The Associated Press on Friday. “More than one year after he [visited Poland], we were able to organize 10 million people for strikes, protests and negotiations. Earlier we tried, I tried, and we couldn’t do it. These are facts. Of course, communism would have fallen, but much later and in a bloody way. He was a gift from the heavens to us.”

The Washington Post, in the most incisive and even handed analysis of the promises, disappointments and contradictions of John Paul’s papacy that I have read so far notes:

But over the years, it became less clear if his popularity translated into moral authority. Communism in Poland was an easy, familiar target and his victory was clean. But later in his pontificate, John Paul began to focus on more difficult targets such as capitalism. And here, the will of the people was not always on his side…Ultimately, he was hard to categorize in the American context. The terms liberal and conservative “just don’t apply to him,” said Mary Anne Glendon, the philosopher. He opposed abortion and the death penalty; he was equally passionate about the role of the male priesthood as he was about workers’ rights. Conservatives accepted his teachings on morality but played down his emphasis on social justice and the limits of the free market. Liberals did the opposite. “But you can’t pick and choose,” Glendon said.

Posted on

The Pope Is Dead

It has been an ignoble death, stretched out over these many months. From the endless teevee news diagrams of his feeding tube to that NY Press cover to all that Pope Watching at the hospital, it has not been a prime example of death with dignity. The Pope still breathes tonight, although he has reportedly received Last Rites.

As the Pope has lost the ability to speak for himself, the spokesmen at the Vatican have offered transparently ridiculous descriptions of a mute, bedridden pontiff directing the affairs of the Church through his Bishops and advisors. The truth is that the Catholic Church doesn’t need the Pope to continue operations. He’s mostly a figurehead. It is my dark belief that the Vatican has kept John Paul II alive only so long that he wouldn’t die on the same day as Terri Schiavo and have to share the covers of all those American tabloids. Instead he gets to die on April Fools Day. Much more appropriate.

As irrelevant as the Holy See is to the daily operations of the Catholic Church, he’s even more so to the beliefs of the vast majority of American Catholics. Don’t get me wrong. Catholics love the Pope. He’s such a cuddly old bigot. But a narrow-minded bigot he is. How many Catholics agree with the Church’s prejudice against gays? How many Catholics use birth control? Who actually listens to the Pope? (Heck, I wish more people would listen to his strong words against capital punishment!)

It reminds me of a funny joke from the BBC comedy, “The Young Ones,” in which two cops are idly discussing their weekend. One of the cops had spent the weekend meeting his girlfriend’s parents. The dinner went well, he reported, until he started criticizing the Pope. “That’s stupid,” his partner retorts, “You know she’s Catholic.” “Yeah,” he says, “but I didn’t know the Pope was.”

The anticipated passing of John Paul II is cause for real concern. Over the course of his two and a half decades in Rome, he has basically appointed all of the Bishops and Cardinals who currently serve the Church and who will choose his successor. Almost to a man, they are reactionary, arch-conservatives. While many of the world’s religions have been busy pursuing a narrowly conservative political agenda, the Catholic Church has mostly abstained from direct politicking. The next Pope might change all that.

Posted on

Springtime for Hitler

“Downfall” is a genocide movie with an ostensibly happy ending: Hitler offs himself and the Nazi regime falls to the advancing Soviets. Made in Germany, the film provoked some controversy there for its humanizing portrait of Adolf Hitler. Swiss actor Bruno Ganz is mesmerizing and utterly convincing as Hitler as he slowly comes to grips with the end of his regime and his life. Still the film does not make him out to be a warm or attractive character, although Ganz does evoke some of the (waning) charisma of a man who convinced a nation to follow him into mass murder and world war and who inspired such insane loyalty from his top lieutenants that they follow him into the abyss and take their kids with them.

Rather, the film portrays a more personal monster who sends children into hopeless battle against Soviet tanks and demands that his generals never surrender, while he plots his own suicide.

The most devastating scenes in “Downfall” deal with the suffering of Berlin’s civilians, who must contend with both Allied bombs and marauding SS vigilantes lynching “deserters.” Ganz’ Hitler grumles “there are no civilians in a war like this.” Tragically, every army that has followed has agreed with that sentiment. For that brief moment, “Downfall” holds a mirror to a much more personal monster: all of us who are complicit in our nations’ war crimes.