Copyright © 2007 Frank Lynch.
Copyright © 2007 Frank Lynch.
Me: Frank Lynch Home These are my mundane daily ramblings. Email: |
"Why does God need a starship?" Thankfully, the prospective developers of a Bible theme park in Tennessee aren't claiming that God "needs" a Bible-based theme park, and so far as I can tell from the article they're not even going so far as to claim He's flattered by the idea, nor smitten, nor even thankful. (Hmmm, God being thankful to man... there's a concept...) The entire idea is provocative, though, and it's interesting that community opposition is not just broad but for a variety of reasons: appropriate growth for the area is one reason (we have similar reservations here in Brooklyn about an arena, so I can relate to that!), but also reservations about tax incentives and whether or not it cheapens the Bible. I think all these reservations are valid, but I think the last one most interesting. To me, no longer a Christian, I think the Bible has incredible value in its remoteness of time and place — insofar as it allows the follower to approach it through their own imaginations of the context in approaching the large truths which are found in both testaments. To me, having it all dramatized, either through a Mel Gibson movie or a special on Discovery or in a theme park makes it less vivid. It's not a "cheapening" in my mind, per se, so much as an inappropriate demystification. I have trouble with the idea of driving the car for a few hours with the stereo blaring and so on and going directly into Bible World. It's like there ought to be some kind of decompression chamber before you cross into Bible World. But like I said, I'm not a believer; I'm sure many others feel differently, as the gross revenues of Mel's movie testify. I guess it's a logical design, but I was struck by this part of the plan:
Like, if you wanted to avoid Jewish people, you'd know which part to stay in... Of course I'm being unfair, Christians recognize the importance of the Old Testament, and so did the Evangelists when they mined everything they could out of the OT to support the idea that Jesus fulfilled the predictions of the OT. (But I'm also reminded of my first class in "Introduction to the Study of Judaism" at the University of Florida: Professor Mesch characterized the running theme would be the history of God's covenant with the Israeli people, and so we should get a Bible, in which the details can be found. Recommending "The New American Bible" and holding it up, he said, "as a special bonus they throw in this thing called The New Testament.") But returning... Entirely absent from the article is any supposition whatsoever of what God would think of the project, even if you assume He's not flattered-smitten-thankful. Do the developers think He's even appreciative, or glorified by it? This serious theological question is worth answering about this project: would God be more glorified by a theme park or by people acting on His lessons? And if the latter, is a Theme Park the best way to achieve it with anyone? Apparently there is some kind of hope along these lines: we've all heard stories of people who've made pilgrimages to the Holy Land and come back feeling more spiritual:
My hesitancy over this concept is that I think it takes a
special mind-set initially to go on a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land. (Well, actually, Schlesinger's bio of RFK suggests he
went there without a special mind-set, but it was all part of a
Grand Tour.) I have the feeling that the proximity of Tennessee,
in lowering the bar, will invite more visitors who are less
attuned to the same experience as an American traveler to Israel;
so I wouldn't expect a very high proportion of people claiming to
come away transformed. Unless the t-shirts are really cool.
You don't need a Weather man to know which
way the wind blows. That is, unless you're the type that
does. And if you need someone else to tell you why Libby
doesn't deserve a pardon, here's Kevin Drum channeling Andrew McCarthy. The
whole concept of Libby receiving a pardon is laughable; the whole
concept of anyone calling for it is laughable; and the whole
concept of anyone needing to explain why it's laughable is, well,
just sad.
Is this group think, political pressure,
or myopia? Or maybe Thomas Ricks just got it wrong? If you
read Ricks' book Fiasco, you came away with a feeling that Petraeus
was one of the few people on the ground who was able to think
beyond the rigorous myopia of the Pentagon and have a sense of
how best to deal with the challenges we faced in Iraq. (Did you
read it? Do you agree?) And while I thought our ongoing efforts
in Iraq were probably hopeless, I was willing to check my
pessimism and see what might happen if Petraeus really thought a
Even when Petraeus offered September up as a soft opportunity to look at the progress of the "surge," I knew others were chomping at the bit when they latched on to it as some kind of concrete assessment. Petraeus never put it that way; those who latched on to it were like the drowning at sea, who had spent too much time believing in the President, seeking for a way out. Petraeus didn't really offer one, but they were eager to seek one. So, even though I take a softer interpretation of the meaning of "September" as a measurement point, I'm still befuddled by a statement from Petraeus suggesting that the surge hasn't even really happened yet. The surge most clearly has happened: it's been months since the additional troops were deployed. OK, let's do some back flips and give him the benefit of the doubt. Let's say that in his mind that not enough troops have been there long enough for a long enough time for him to say the "surge" has really happened. Allow him that, just for rhetorical purposes. And proceed: go back to Congressional testimony (that occasion which caused so may Republicans to look for that September fig leaf): at what point would Petraeus have expected to say that the "surge" had "happened"? When Petraeus says (see the link ) "Let me have a few months," how does that fit in at all with the idea of a quick dip stick to check the oil? Petraeus' equivocation is disappointing even for me — remember, I'm saying I took a softer interpretation of whatever read he hoped to get in September. It sounds like there are a lot of very human factors at work without impugning dishonesty. It's possible that Petraeus was overly optimistic about the potential for the "surge" when he spoke to Congress; it's also possible that he's still optimistic, or in a state of denial. None of this suggests "lying." But at the same time, it's also possible that Petraeus has become a victim of group think, the same phenomenon which sent us in to Iraq in the first place: a lot of people at the table want to believe, and everyone wants to be part of the group, and a bias develops. I don't think there's an easy remedy, if that's what we're seeing. And I don't think Ricks' assessment of Petraeus was wrong, it was right for Petraeus in the position Petraeus held. But under the spotlight, pressures and ambitions are different, and thinking differently becomes even more difficult than it was before. I have no interest in casting Petraeus out to sea; but if
anyone (myself included) thought him our last, best hope, his
prevarication is a wake-up call. We are in a situation, again,
where the goal posts are either moving or being re-shaped. And
this is no way to be decisive. As I've said before, we not only
have to have standards for victory, but also standards for
failure, and we have to have the moral courage to say when those
standards have been met.
It was about time: now moving, the wheels of justice. Louisiana's Representative William Jefferson has been indicted, and I'm glad, because now we can proceed to learn the truth about the bundles of cash he'd supposedly hidden in his freezer. He of course deserves a presumption of innocence until found guilty, as do we all. I think that steps like this are important, for all the obvious reasons, and I think no less of it because he's a Democrat. Powerline's John Hinderaker has an odd perspective, though: he's glad that the announcement of the indictment is happening after most of the corrupt Republicans have been washed out to sea, because when Jefferson's scandal was first announced he thinks people might have thought Jefferson was a Republican. Now that's clever reasoning: your party was so corrupt that you think people assumed that every corrupt politician was from the GOP. Maybe that's so, but you can't pin that one on Jefferson, only on your own. If the GOP had minded itself better, and didn't let people like the Bugman get away with so much, and better reprimanded people like Foley, well, there'd be no confusion about Jefferson, would there? (Not sure there was anyway, or if this is just Hinderaker licking his wounds.) Hinderaker's lack of recognition of responsibility is telling:
Note that Hinderaker talks about the "'culture of corruption'
attacks" (emphasis mine) instead of the genuine corruption
which was rife. Now, there may be some mud that lands on the
Democrats due to Jefferson, but to suggest for a moment that the
Republican's didn't deserve the focus is being worse than
disingenuous. Because of the overall tone of his paragraph, I
can't grant Hinderaker the benefit of the doubt and believe that
he merely believes that it is solely Jefferson's mud which will
land on the Democrats.
Dick Cheney's blowback. Ah, remember
the days when the Bush Administration controlled all three
branches of the government, and Vice President Dick Cheney could
tell Senator Patrick Leahy to go "f**k himself" with impunity?
Well, not only have the Republicans lost control of Congress and
the Democrats put Cheney and Bush under greater scrutiny, but
Cheney's obscenity has come back to haunt him. A federal appeals
court in New York cited Cheney's vulgarity overturning FCC rulings against broadcasters over
decency. Nice, don't you think? Even if it gets overturned
later by the SCOTUS, at least it's in the federal judicial
records that the Bush White House is not the epitome of good
graces as they try to restore honesty and integrity to the White
House. So what will we tell the children, gang?
The new DMZ will be in Iraq? I seriously think that the most disheartening news I read this week was the new thinking that the role we've had in Korea for the last fifty years seems to some in the Administration a good model for how we're going to be in Iraq. Zbigniew Brzezinski has challenged the idea, pointing out key differences between South Korea's tolerance for our presence and what we all know from regular polls, that Iraqis want us gone yesterday. I'd like to think that cooler heads will prevail on this one, and that the Republicans who show tentative support for the President's policy will draw the line on this one. But since they have so far seemed willing to wait until September for assurance that a Plan B exists, I can't put much stock in that hope. What I think I'd like to see is a careful review of the 2002 authorization to use force against Iraq, found here on the White House's Web site. Anyone who looks at it will see that the language in it is vague and not very limiting, for instance,
...since Bush is a broken record about the ongoing threat from terrorists in Iraq and how we can't afford to allow the region to be de-stabilized. But the language says "Iraq," not "terrorists in Iraq." And anyone who reads the authorization in its entirety knows that the resolution was about the regime then in place, Saddam Hussein's. It was not about what might fill the vacuum after Hussein was removed. Theoretically, the regime wasn't a threat once it was toppled, and it's not too much to claim that the authorization was void once that regime was toppled. Will anyone in the Congress look at the contract that was signed? Or will they be so ashamed that they were swindled by a used car salesman in a plaid suit as bold as anything Lindsay Nelson ever wore that they'll continue to play along with the naked Emperor? I guess I shouldn't ask a question so seemingly rhetorical:
Atrios doesn't read this blog, but if he did it would be an
instant "stupid question." There may be some, like Russell
Feingold or Dennis Kucinich who will point this obvious disparity
out, but I'm pretty confident they won't be on any of the Sunday
morning circle jerks.
How DARE you call me
"outspoken"? It's now an insult. Did you have
any idea?
Windbag speculation hour. 25 years ago when I was in a post graduate b-school program (no, wait, make that 26 years ago) technologies like split cable were being hailed as a new way to better test advertising: your neighbor down the block, with similar purchase habits as yours, would see variation A of the ads on cable, while you would see variation B. And marketers would pool the responses of those seeing the variation B ads versus those seeing variation A, and know which worked better. And as the Inter Web advanced (I am indebted to For Your Consideration for that), we learned about all those intelligent models which would offer you "more relevant" ads through the technologies of collaborative dipsy- whigs, and offer you ads for children's books because you once went to Amazon and bought a children's book. Thankfully, Amazon has gotten better at that and no longer chomps at the bit to push stray items I once ordered. But the fact remains that Information Technology was supposed to make marketing more successful, thanks to the application of data mining techniques, modeling, and such. "Collaborative filtering" was supposed to be the elixir which would make marketing more efficient and turn lead to stone and shine floors and be a dessert topping, too. Remember that? Okay. So we read in the paper of record that the book publishers are seeing modest growth, yet still yearn for the volcanic death star which will dominate the skies. Oh, there a number of phenomena which these gold-rushers may not be acknowledging. First among them would of course be that they failed to latch onto my book proposal, and that would ordinarily end the discussion right there. But this being Windbag Hour, there are of course other issues. As Johnson frequently pointed out, attention spans are limited and brief: we are dealing with a fairly fixed pie. Blockbusters like The Bridges Of Madison County and The Da Vinci Code do come along here and there, but they are not such a regular occurrence that anyone can count on them. Be grateful when they are here (if you're the publisher) and still play the game as if they were not here. Secondly, rather than look at overall growth, mebbe the publishers should look (I'd love to know this one) if the marketing of books on horoscopes or horses' hooves or telescopes have decreased thanks to supposedly better technologies. Maybe growth shouldn't be measured in volume (there are only so many people, and they will only read so much) but in terms of marketing efficiency. That is, have the promises of new technologies come to naught?
Or is it as it in Ecclesiastes: nothing new under the sun?
Publishers looking for the next new thing could be chasing the
wind: for books to grow their industry, year after year, requires
a cultural shift: book clubs help, and the supplemental materials
at the back of the paperback editions help that, but all that can
only go so far. People have only so much time.
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