April 2005 Archives

I always feel sentimental when I hear Shostakovich's music for the Gadfly. During the summer of 1986, I lived with my grandmother in Washington. In the evenings, we would watch Mystery and Masterpiece Theatre together. Masterpiece Theatre was showing Reilly: Ace of Spies, and, appropriately in light of the series' Russian theme, the music in the credits was the Gadfly. Whenever I hear it, I think of my grandmother and our summer together.

Check out Poets.org, the site of the Academy of American Poets. I have only taken a quick glance, but the site includes biographies of poets, some poems, and a calendar of readings around the country.

Powells.com Interviews - John Irving

But we live in a prudish, stupid country. We live in a country virtually without a culture. And there isn't anything in the arts — film, painting, novels — that can be reviewed without the issue of good taste, so to speak, being brought to bear. Given the sexual explicitness of this novel, I can't imagine that half of the critics, the so-called good taste police, will resist calling it prurient or pornographic. But I don't think readers are going to balk at that.

It's not only a divided country because of Mr. Bush's war in Iraq; it's a divided country culturally, and this is an explicit and a dysfunctional novel. A lot of people will simply be turned away. Aren't we the only country in the world that could have been offended by that brief millisecond of Janet Jackson's breast? Aren't we the only country in the world that could engender a half-time show at a Super Bowl with an aging Beatle — my age! — because he couldn't possibly offend anyone? You're talking about a dog-stupid culture here.

Read the interview. To the end. You wouldn't want to miss the money quote on the Bush administration and gay marriage. In the meantime, Irving disses Joyce, compares himself to Ondaatje, and praises Vonnegut. (O.K., I admit I have not been able to put up with Vonnegut since I got out of high school.)

My one disappointment is that he did not discuss the World According to Garp, the first and best of his novels that I have read. I was on a college tour with a good friend, and we stopped at my friend's cousin's house in Exeter, where his cousin taught school. I threw myself on the couch and read Garp over the weekend, almost straight through. It had to be one of the most compelling books I had read.

ThinkExist.com Quotations

"No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins; no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches; no great Universities nor public schools / no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow; no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class / no Epsom nor Ascot! Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life."

Papal hopeful is a former Hitler Youth - Sunday Times - Times Online

Although there is no suggestion that he was involved in any atrocities, his service may be contrasted by opponents with the attitude of John Paul II, who took part in anti-Nazi theatre performances in his native Poland and in 1986 became the first pope to visit Rome's synagogue.

The Sunday Times has the most comprehensive treatment of Ratzinger's wartime service. However, the Jerusalem Post has a generally favorable article on Ratzinger's relationship with the Jews and Israel. There appears to be a Rashomon-like quality to the story of Ratzinger's youth.

Catholic World News (CWN)

[Ratzinger] was born in Germany on April 16, 1927, which was Holy Saturday that year, and baptized at the Easter Vigil services. His seminary training was interrupted by World War II, when he was inducted into the German army, deserted, and was briefly interned in an American POW camp.

Boston.com / News / World / Europe / Cardinals' detractors hang 'dirty laundry'

A Sunday Times of London profile on Ratzinger, saying his doctrinal watchdog role has earned him uncomplimentary nicknames like "God's rottweiler," reported on the cardinal's "brief membership" in the Hitler Youth movement and service, in the final stretch of World War II, in a German anti-aircraft unit.

In his memoirs, Ratzinger speaks openly of being enrolled in the Nazi youth movement against his will when he was 14 in 1941, when membership was compulsory. He says he was soon let out because of his studies for the priesthood.

Two years later he was drafted into a Nazi anti-aircraft unit as a helper, a common fate for teenage boys too young to be soldiers. Enrolled as a soldier at 18, in the last months of the war, he barely finished basic training.

Ratzinger's wartime past "may return to haunt him," the British paper wrote on the eve of the conclave's start.

Books

None of it is new. Back in 1985, on the eve of a bishops' synod convened by John Paul to discuss the implementation of Vatican II, two naive American journalists visited me at my hotel in Rome to check out a story they'd been fed: that, years earlier, Joseph Ratzinger had been a Nazi. Locating his listing in a standard reference work, I pointed out that when World War II began, Ratzinger was all of twelve years old. The journalists went away sad, leaving me to marvel at the malice of whoever was peddling such hateful poppycock.

Crisis magazine explains that Ratzinger was just twelve years old when the war began. However, that means he would have been 17 when it ended, and UPI seems to think that he saw action. No, I do not think that Ratzinger was a Nazi. I think it is still troubling that a man who saw action as a soldier in the Army of the most evil enterprise in history should be elected Pope without more explanation. What has he said about the War?

Analysis: Ratzinger in the ascendance - (United Press International)

Ratzinger, once a teenage infantryman in the German army at the end of World War II, and then briefly an inmate in an American prisoner-of-war camp, has repeatedly stated he would like to retire to a Bavarian village and dedicate himself to writing books.

Why is it that the new Pope's service as one of Hitler's soldiers does not seem to have excited more comment, particularly in light of Pius XII's complicity in the massacre of the Jews?

Tax time, a two-year-old, and an office move — complete with Internet blackout, storage reorganization, and tempermental Local Area Network — have spelled all work and no blogging. Further comment will have to wait until after midnight on April 15.

The life and death of Pope John Paul II were remarkable. The calm and fortitude with which the Pontiff apparently met his end served as a model for all of us. However much I disagreed with his policies and his doctrine, however retrograde his Church, I admired his strength of character and personal integrity. Even at the end, he was blessed with dignity in death.

Dignity in death. It is sobering to think how few of us will actually receive a similar blessing. Death is unpredictable and often messy, and few of us are really prepared when it comes. The circus surrounding another recent death, that of Terri Schiavo, makes this point all too clearly. Schiavo's life was effectively over years ago, but she became a vehicle for right-wing Christian extremists and cynical politicians like Tom Delay and Bill Frist to stoop to new depths in exploiting the passions of their intolerant and obscurantist followers. While the passage of the Pope was an uplifting moment, the hypocrisy of the crowds who affected to adopt "Terri" as a close personal friend — though they never knew her — in order to push their own intolerant and life-denying agenda was truly nauseating.

The President of the American Bar Association, Robert J. Grey, Jr. issued a statement condemning attacks on the judiciary in the wake of the controversy over withdrawal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. In part, the statement read as follows:

As members of the legal profession, I know you share my concern over the public's misunderstanding of the judiciary's role and the politically motivated criticism of the judiciary stemming from the Terri Schiavo case, and are equally alarmed about the murders of Judge Lefkow's family members in Chicago and the attacks at the Fulton County Courthouse in Georgia. The circumstances of these tragic events require careful analysis, thoughtful leadership, and measured response. The American Bar Association has long held the preservation of judicial independence as one of the most important Association goals. These recent events have elevated the urgency of that commitment among the ABA's leadership. In the past several days, I have issued public statements condemning the violence against our judiciary and the gratuitous and vicious public attacks on the dedicated men and women who are our country's judges. During my speaking engagements, I have taken the opportunity to call for a change in tenor when the national discussion turns to our justice system.

Regardless of how one feels about the specific circumstances of the Schiavo - or any - situation, the role of the judiciary is clear. Federal and state judges are charged with weighing the facts of a case and following the remedies set forth in the law, responsibilities they carry out valiantly and with great dignity and sensitivity.

It is vital that the legal community address the current atmosphere in which our legal system operates, in what can only be called a decline in civility and respect toward our justice system. Too often judges are characterized as political tools and the justice system merely an offshoot of politics, and not the independent leg of our democracy that they are.

It is time to remember that even when we disagree with the men and women who are appointed to the judiciary, we should respect the instititution because it is a vital part of our democracy and the rule of law.

Doubts on Weapons Were Dismissed (washingtonpost.com)

That was one among many examples -- cited over 692 pages in the report -- of fruitless dissent on the accuracy of claims against Iraq. Up until the days before U.S. troops entered Iraqi territory that March, the intelligence community was inundated with evidence that undermined virtually all charges it had made against Iraq, the report said.

How many people have died because of the Bush Administration's lies about the need to go to war in Iraq? How do these people sleep at night?