Double Black Diamond

Stanley Kurtz on Big Love & Polygamy on National Review Online: "Will Scheffer, co-creator of Big Love, wrote Falling Man and Other Monologues, a play about gay life, as a direct response to the public battle over same-sex marriage. Commenting on Falling Man, Scheffer said, 'The voice from the conservative right is getting louder and louder, so I think we have to state who we are in our lives, especially with the reversal of the marriage thing in California.' Scheffer sees Falling Man as an entry into the gay marriage battle, and he and his co-creator, Mark Olsen clearly see Big Love the same way.

Speaking to The Washington Blade, Olsen said he and Scheffer wanted to address our culture war over the family by trying to 'find the values of family that are worth celebrating separate of who the people are and how they're doing it.' In other words, family structure shouldn't matter as long as people love each other. Scheffer adds that what attracted him to the Big Love project was 'the subversive nature of how we deal with family values....I think what's really exciting about the show is the nonjudgmental look we have on our characters.' Now maybe cultural radicals are mistaken when they claim that they can change society just by shaping the movies, plays, and television we watch. But clearly this kind of cultural transformation is exactly what Scheffer and Olsen have in mind."

Blame America Only

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today: "This rhetoric about 'cycles' appears to reflect a theory of moral equivalence, but in fact it is something else. After all, if the two sides were morally equivalent, one could apply this reasoning in reverse--excusing, for example, the alleged massacre at Haditha on the ground that it was 'provoked' by a bombing that killed a U.S. serviceman--and hey, violence begets violence.

But America's critics never make this argument, and its defenders seldom do. That is because it is understood that America knows better. If it is true that U.S. Marines murdered civilians in cold blood at Haditha, the other side's brutality does not excuse it. Only the enemy's evil acts are thought to be explained away by ours.

Implicit in the 'cycle' theory, then, is the premise that the enemy is innocent--not in the sense of having done nothing wrong, but in the sense of not knowing any better. The enemy lacks the knowledge of good and evil--or, to put it in theological terms, he is free of original sin.

America ought to hold itself to a high moral standard, of course, but blaming the other side's depraved acts on our own (real and imagined) moral imperfections is a dangerous form of vanity."

Still treading water...

I'm still too busy to blog. I've started work downtown in Boston and I'm trying to slowly work through the pile of a month of moving since we left Colorado. Still working around the house as well. We love living in New England. But blogging continues to be light with a chance of increased activity on the horizon.

It's not pie...

...but it will do. 

Underground

It's been a long while since I've written here.

We moved. I unpacked boxes, shop vacuumed our flooded basement, built a mosquito bomb, set up internet, phone and tv service, met some neighbors and even had time to attend my first Red Sox game.

Right now I'm posting here: www.globallearncomm.blogspot.com

I have the privilege of documenting this event.

I'll be back in the swing soon.

Interviews: Garrison Kiellor - Christianity Today Movies

Interviews: Garrison Kiellor - Christianity Today Movies: "And in the name of Devotion they were doing these big set-piece prayers in which they were bringing in stories from Scripture and admonishing people—that's not prayer. But, when we kneel down and go through a list, and we begin with prayers for leaders of our country and for the nations of the world and then we come down to prayers for other churches and for bishops and priests, and then we come down to those who are in need and those who are sick and we think or we speak their names—to me this is prayer. This is prayer in which one throws oneself before God without a heroic pose."

Home

Today we officially became residents of Reading, MA.

TCS Daily - The Parent Trap

TCS Daily - The Parent Trap: "There's also the decline in parental prestige over generations. My mother reports that when she was a newlywed (she was married in 1959) you weren't seen as fully a member of the adult world until you had kids. Nowadays to have kids means something closer to an expulsion from the adult world. People in the suburbs buy SUVs instead of minivans not because they need the four-wheel-drive capabilities, but because the SUVs lack the minivan's close association with low-prestige activities like parenting, and instead provide the aura of high-prestige activities like whitewater kayaking. Why should kayaking be more prestigious than parenting? Because parenting isn't prestigious in our society. If it were, childless people would drive minivans just to partake of the aura.

In these sorts of ways, parenting has become more expensive in non-financial as well as financial terms. It takes up more time and emotional energy than it used to, and there's less reward in terms of social approbation. This is like a big social tax on parenting and, as we all know, when things are taxed we get less of them. Yes, people still have children, and some people even have big families. But at the margin, which is where change occurs, people are less likely to do things as they grow more expensive and less rewarded. "

This, of course, is why I view my minivan as a badge of honor, even in Colorado. Of course as Dan would say, I'm "confident in my weirdness".