A little light culture: conversatio morum

An essential step forward is the development of a fitting order of the day: a division of the day that gives a rhythm to the day, with a reasonably fixed pattern of exertion and relaxation, of spiritual breathing in and breathing out, of ordering one's environment and moments when one is in touch with something beautiful.

The Rule of Benedict for Beginners by Wil Derkse

In touch with something beautiful. I read that and thought, Exactly! That is what life is all about.

I've made a tiny change in my profile: the word "libertine" has been replaced with "aesthete". (Subsequently unchanged so we're back to "libertine" and hoping people get irony.) I'm not sure anybody else will or should care but I have been drifting in a direction that is less libertine and more aesthete-like for a while. I want to live a much more ordered life than I used to and, quite frankly, I am an obedient Catholic to degree that quite shocks me. That wasn't the plan but, like Charles Ryder, my old ways stopped making sense at some point.

But being in touch with something beautiful does matter. I've been reading a book called What Ever Happened to Modernism? by Gabriel Josipovici in preparation to reading all of Proust again next year. It's about as eloquent a defence of modernism as you can manage. Unfortunately for Josipovici, I think the answer to his question is a simple one, modernism was passed by and it was passed by because it failed. The thing modernists set out to do—to fundamentally change the culture—they failed to do.

Josipovici claims that modernism is not a style but, while modernists certainly wanted to create something that was more than a style, that is all it is now. The word modernism refers to a style associated with a particular historic period running from the last years of the the 19th century to the 1950s. Because their aims were so ambitious, we're saddled with a name that feels a bit clumsy when applied to the past but there you are. In my neighbourhood there is an antique store that specializes in modernist antiquities. I'm sure the language can adapt, either by adopting a new word for "modernism" or a new word for "modern".

Although I don't agree with him, Josipivoci has helped me to see things with a new clarity. Although there was a time when I read Prufrock, and thought this was the way of the future, I ultimately have come to reject modernism as an ideology based on lessons I learned from Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell and Philip Larkin. I don't mind some modernism as a style but too much of what modernists produced is just ugly and when the public didn't get modernism, modernists blamed the public for not working hard enough instead of themselves for producing pointlessly obscure art. But the extra thing I see now is just how important the notion of an disenchanted world is to modernists. You cannot be a modernist unless you really believe that we live in a disenchanted world and I don't. I live in a world haunted by God's beauty. Thus the word change from "libertine" to "aesthete".


(The crypto-Catholic can remain as its irony always has been, or always should have been, obvious. Announcing yourself as "crypto-Catholic" is like announcing yourself as "in the closet" the second you say it it ceases to be true.)

Manly Thor's Day Special: Women's need for novelty

So I am sitting at the barbershop waiting for a shave and a haircut and I find a women's magazine in the rack. I begin to leaf through with the firm intention of reading it for the pictures and not the articles when I trip across an article by my old friend Alexandra Molotkow. As with all her stuff, there is clearly a deep intelligence at work along with some immaturity. I doubt I was much different at her age.

In any case, what really jumped out at me was some research she cited beginning with this sentence:

While men are stereotyped as the ones who tire of monogamy, research suggests it isn't so.

And she goes on to cite three separate studies showing that women actually are. I won't quote all three here (the article is in the December 2012 issue of Flare magazine beginning on page 134 if you want to read more) but here is one example:

In a 2012 University of Guelph study of people aged 18 to 25, female respondents reported that their desire dropped slightly—but steadily—for each month they stayed with a long term partner. (The men's interest remained largely unchanged.)

That result should not surprise us. Any man who has been in a long term relationship will have noticed that women unfailingly do this. There are a number of reasons why you might miss it though. The principal one is that when her interest dropped she probably blamed you and you probably believed her. You then made all sorts of efforts to improve things. You asked her what she wanted and tried to make the things she said she wanted happen.

More often than not, these things not only fail but actually make the problem worse for the simple reason that women feel uncomfortable talking about the things that make them hot (and therefore sexually vulnerable); they prefer to talk about the things that make them feel loved which is not the same thing at all.

No matter what, there is very little chance that you will succeed because the person who needs to succeed is her. And if she does make an effort she has to make an effort at sex not at closeness or "love"; those are results of the effort but the way to get there has to be making herself sexually excited (and, yes, vulnerable) so that you can make things happen for her. In the same way that one of you going out in the cold to walk the dog, cleaning the kitchen, paying the bills and so forth is a way of loving the other, her making extra efforts to get herself hot and bothered and ready for sex is a way of loving you.

The second reason why the above study might surprise us is, as Molotkow notes, that men are stereotypically believed to be the ones who tire of monogamy. The truth is, men never fully buy into monogamy in the first place and that can make it look like we "tire" of it. A man is looking at and thinking of sex with other women from day one of any relationship. The studies cited by Molotkow don't show that men don't tire of monogamy; they actually show that men never tire of their partners, which is quite a different thing. But if we could have five or six sex partners concurrently without moral condemnation and without losing the woman we love most, most of us would jump at the chance.

That we don't do this is part of the deal. Everyone wants love and commitment and getting love and commitment means not getting everything you want. As men, we control (well most of us do) our desire to pursue multiple partners in exchange for a relationship. Forsaking all others is a way of loving her and any woman worthy of being a woman should understand that this is not easy or natural for you and should see your efforts as something they should be grateful for rather than, as women often tend to do, as something they should be able take for granted.

Women, on the other hand, want novelty. It's not an accident that serial monogamy has risen with women acquiring greater freedoms in our culture. As I've said before, I know quite a few women who have fallen in love, lost interest in the sex, broken up, moved on to another guy and repeated the process until they ended up bitter and unhappy and single in their forties.

A while ago, I said that most men manage monogamy even though we are not predisposed towards it. Currently four out of five men remain faithful for the duration of their marriages. Some might argue that one out of five failing is still quite a lot and it is but we should also consider that that one in five will contain men who only slip up a little but otherwise manage.

Now all we need is for more women to grasp that if they want love and commitment they have to tame their tendency to seek a new partner or simply give up on sex when their interest wanes and to make extra efforts on the sex front. Quite a few already have figured this out. They have, after all, nothing to lose and quite a bit to gain in terms of pleasure, intimacy, trust and closeness if they do. Quite a few others, however, don't and they either move along or, more typically, give up on sex in their relationship.

Again, as I have mentioned before, I know all about this once having spent about a decade with a woman who didn't make the effort for the simple reason that she never saw it as her responsibility to do so. If you find yourself in a  similar situation, giver her a good chance to get it right but dump her if she doesn't.

If, however, she does make the effort, any man worthy of being a man will understand that this is not natural or easy for her and should see her efforts as something they should be grateful for rather than, as we often tend to do, as something we should be able to take for granted.

Election further thoughts

I've been reading a certain amount of election follow up by other people. The reaction on the right has been all over the map. Most "analysis" is of the if-only-they-had-listened-to-me variety. There are a few truths I have culled elsewhere that I think are worth repeating.

I think Ramesh Ponnuru is correct in arguing that the problem was that the party dragged Romney down more than that Romney was such a weak candidate. And the reason the party dragged Romney down is because it shows no obvious concern nor does it have any message to the average voter.

I think Ralph Benko is correct in arguing that Bushite technocrats are a huge problem for the Republican party and that they have used and abused their control over fundraising to keep Reaganite candidates from rising to the top.

And I think that I am right that the culture war and the Catholic intellectuals pushing it has become an albatross around the Republican party's neck. I did not think this before the election and do not accept this without reluctance but accept it I must. There are some great further points on that line made by John Hindraker:

It seems obvious that the evolution of social issues from crime and welfare to abortion and gay marriage has hurt the Republican Party. Crime and welfare were serious public policy issues that could be, and were, debated from empirical premises. Abortion and gay marriage are moral, largely religious issues, and are less amenable to public policy debate. They are, for reasons that are entirely understandable, governed more by emotion than by empirical data. A great many people are heartily sick of these issues and wish they would go away, while others view them as matters of moral duty that are key to the ultimate survival of our civilization. Whether you agree with the latter perspective or not, it seems clear that contemporary conservatives have reached a dead end in their approach to the social issues. If we want to do better in future elections, we need, I think, to recalibrate our approach–by which I do not mean adopting liberal positions.

You want to read the whole thing. I'd add that while I agree that it would be a mistake to simply adopt liberal positions, it also seems to me that we Catholics need quietly go away until we can prove we are capable of arguing constructively on the matter.

In any case, I believe those are the three lessons to take home from this election.

The new clerisy cont'd

Picking up from yesterday's post let's talk about the way Ta Nehisi Coates talks about Rihanna.

Rihanna, you may remember, was so badly beaten by Chris Brown that she was hospitalized. Now she and he are playing bizarre games about it. You really want to read this thing for yourself [link fixed]. I'm serious, you need to have a grip on the moral character of Rihanna to appreciate the moral conclusions Coates draws from the situation.

Okay, if you've read it, read his take:

I don't know that Rihanna owes anyone anything. I think what bothers me is the willingness to  trivialize the behavior of men who like to put women in the hospital. Most of those women will not have the resources of a Rihanna.

There you have the new clerisy exceptionalism at its  purest.

Let's start with: "I don't know that Rihanna owes anyone anything." Seriously. He doesn't "know" if Rihanna, a public figure whom millions of people admire, has any moral responsibilities to anyone at all? He doesn't think she owes it to herself or to society or to God to be morally serious? I know lots of people who are completely unknown outside their family and workplace who manage to shoulder that responsibility. Why can't we expect the same of Rihanna?

Now, keep that in mind and read the next sentence again, "I think what bothers me is the willingness to trivialize the behaviour of men who like to put women in hospital." I don't know if you could pack more wishy washy moral weakness into one sentence than that. "I think what bothers me ..." Are you kidding me? We're talking about two people who have exploited violence against women for fun and profit and you only think you know what bothers you?

But it gets worse, he's already told us he doesn't know that Rihanna owes anyone anything. Okay, so who is he blaming in thus utterly passive sentence? Who is doing this trivializing? If it's Rihanna then the first sentence is nonsense. If what happened between them is not subject to any moral obligations to anything bigger than her current whims, then what is subject to? If, on the other hand, he isn't blaming Rihanna for this, then who is he blaming. Did this trivializing just happen or are there people with names that could and should be named who are doing it.

Finally, notice how stupid Coates, a man who is rarely stupid, is being about violence against women. Does he seriously imagine that this sort of violence happens because the men who do it "like to put women in hospital"? If it really were the case that only men (and women!) like that were responsible for domestic violence, then domestic violence would be a very rare thing. Domestic violence is a larger problem because a lot of men and women who can tell their partner they love them and care for them and mean it, and who can also swear they never would want to hurt them and mean that too, will, in moments of emotional turmoil (often fueled by alcohol or other drugs), turn around and demean, degrade, hit or savagely beat the person they love.

The thing that drives this wishy washyness in the new clerisy is a deep fear of any politically enforced morality. There is a desire to leave all moral questions in the "individual" realm except to the extent that they might cause social problems (and even then ...). Coates can't state a simple truth here that I am sure even he can plainly see and that is that Rihanna is a jerk. She is just a self-centered jerk with a lot of money and influence and the class of people who have the most influence over which entertainers get to have the sort of money and influence Rihanna has are terrified of moral judgment.

Pulling a Woody

I have been thinking of Mr. Allen again.

Woody Allen has started filming “Fading Gigolo,” director John Turturro’s movie starring the “Manhattan” director and sexy leading ladies Sofía Vergara, Sharon Stone and Johnny Depp’s ex Vanessa Paradis.

It's interesting, and must be a source of some pain to Mr. Allen, that he is remembered primarily for a movie he considers his worst effort. In any case, he is wrong. Manhattan is by far his best movie. The punchline to the whole story is that he is cast in the Turturro movie as a pimp.

But back to Mr. Allen and his odd moral stature among the new clerisy. The term "new clerisy", which deserves to catch on, comes from a brilliant article by Joel Kotkin and refers to

“new hierarchies of technical elites” that Daniel Bell predicted in 1976 in The Coming Of Post-Industrial Society. For that group, Bell wrote, nature and human nature ceased to be central, as “fewer now handle artifacts or things” so that “reality is primarily the social world”—which, he warned, “gives rise to a new Utopianism” that mistakenly treats human nature as something that can be engineered and corrected by instruction from their enlightened betters. This approach, although often grounded in good intention, can easily morph into a technocratic authoritarianism.

I would add, however, that although this group believes that nature and human nature can be overcome, they also have a tendency to accept fate and a tragic explanation of life.

Consider the classic problem of "falling" in love with one person when you're married to someone else. What do you do about it? The tragic worldview accepts this falling in love as fate. The non-tragic view says you can, with God's help, transcend this. Let's read a little reaction to such a case. The following is Keira Knightly and an interviewer from a piece in Interview magazine giving Newt Gingrich some well-deserved mockery. But the fascinating bit is how Knightly simply cannot see any sort of transcendent forgiveness or justice as anything but a joke:

CRONENBERG: Well, I've heard from Newt Gingrich that open marriages are the thing now.

KNIGHTLEY: That's what Newt Gingrich is saying?

CRONENBERG:Well, apparently his ex-wife says that Newt came to her and said, "I've got this mistress, and I think we should all sort of just accept that this is an open marriage." Of course, he probably wasn't thinking of his wife taking advantage of the privileges of an open marriage, but he thought that it was quite all right for him to have a couple of ladies and that they should both accept it.

KNIGHTLEY: Well, that is a problem. If you're a Republican in America and then you're also sort of shagging anything that moves—I think that's always difficult, isn't it?

CRONENBERG: Except he's got the right-wing Christian out: "I asked god for forgiveness and he said okay." [laughs] If you're a Christian right-wing Republican, then that might make it okay. But the thing is, Newt was the guy who was attacking Bill Clinton for his Monica Lewinsky moment while he himself was having an extramarital affair. So the hypocrisy is rather thick at that point.

KNIGHTLEY: Absolutely extraordinary . . . If only I wasn't an atheist, I could get away with anything. You'd just ask for forgiveness and then you'd be forgiven. It sounds much better than having to live with guilt.

As is so often the case, Knightly doesn't seem to understand the difference between "guilt" and "shame". Guilt is the thing that Gingrich obviously did not have. If he'd been aware of his own guilt he'd have had some regard for human frailty* in others. Knightly neither knows nor cares much about guilt. What she understands is shame and she wants Gingrich to be burdened with tons of it so that he, or anyone who thinks like him for that matter, will be unelectable. She wants to drive him out of polite society.

The important difference between the two is this: guilt is something you would feel even if you weren't caught. If Gingrich or Clinton were the sort of men capable of feeling guilt they would have been torn by it long before their behaviour was exposed. Shame is something that is only felt at the thought of the greater society you live in knowing and condemning what you have done.

You can, of course, have anticipatory shame. That is you could have cheated on your spouse and have gotten away with it but be constantly dreading the shame would come with getting caught. Someone in such a situation will be motivated to keep their behaviour a secret but will not be motivated to atone for or ask forgiveness for what they have done. They might wish they had not done what they did in the fate of possible exposure but the practical effect is that they are only motivated to try even harder to avoid getting caught.

In two Woody Allen films, Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point a man who finds himself in the position of desperately needing to avoid shame for an affair actually murders the woman he was having an affair with in order to keep what he has done a secret. And then he is racked with "guilt". For a while. Eventually this anticipatory shame that Allen mistakes for guilt goes away. The following is Woody Allen musing about it all in two parts, part one:

I feel that is true—that one can commit a crime, do unspeakable things, and get away with it. There are people who commit all sorts of crimes and get away with it, and some of them are plagued with all sorts of guilt for the rest of their lives and others aren’t. They commit terrible crimes and they have wonderful lives, wonderful, happy lives, with families and children, and they have done unspeakably terrible things. There is no justice, there is no rational structure to it. That is just the way it is, and each person figures out some way to cope….

This is obviously deeper than Keira Knightly (not a tall order, Barbie dolls are deeper than Keira Knightly). But while Allen has obviously thought of it longer, notice that he, like she, can only think of guilt and/or shame as a negative thing that needs to be made to go away. It's sort of like acne: "If I could get rid of these pimples then I could get girls to put out and I'd be happier". The guilt (which is really anticipatory shame) is something that stands in between me and a comfortable, easy life.

One gets the feeling that neither Knightly nor Allen appreciate the degree to which their elite stature in our society is a result of either colossal fluke or the workings of grace. In some abstract sense they get it but they clearly go through life comfortable with their elite status and privileges. It doesn't trouble them to think that millions of other people couldn't dream of such a thing and millions more suffer in ways that neither of them could bear every day and yet manage to "cope" better than they do.

Here is part two of Allen's musings:

Some people cope better than others. I was with Billy Graham once, and he said that even if it turned out in the end that there is no God and the universe is empty, he would still have had a better life than me. I understand that. If you can delude yourself by believing that there is some kind of Santa Claus out there who is going to bail you out in the end, then it will help you get through. Even if you are proven wrong in the end, you would have had a better life.

Again, notice that Allen only sees faith as a way of getting bailed out in the end. Even the views he projects onto religious believers are antinomian; it's always about avoiding suffering for your moral failings. There are of course, brands of protestantism that are antinomian and even some Catholics like Newt Gingrich who behave as if they think that their religion gives them a get of jail free card, but Allen never confronts the choice to believe in a God who is a source of justice; a God who might well, almost certainly will for most of us, cause us to suffer for our sins and, further, weird as this may seem, would do so because he loves us.

The Woody Allen interview I cite here ends with a discussion of Shane and Allen says the following about the character.

I didn’t see him as a martyred figure, a persecuted figure. I saw him as quite a heroic figure who does a job that needs to be done, a practical matter. I saw him as a practical secular character. In this world there are just some people who need killing and that is just the way it is. It sounds terrible, but there is no other way to get around that, and most of us are not up to doing it, incapable for moral reasons or physically not up to it. And Shane is a person who saw what had to be done and went out and did it. He had the skill to do it, and that’s the way I feel about the world: there are certain problems that can only be dealt with that way. As ugly a truth as that is, I do think it’s the truth about the world.

Now I don't think Allen understands Shane at all but I want you to feel the full chill of what he says here: " In this world there are just some people who need killing and that is just the way it is". Now that might seem acceptable in the limited context of the movie Shane where the men the hero kills are a corrupt cattle baron and a professional killer who are threatening to kill innocent people to get there way. But in this interview, the whole issue arose because of a discussion of Allen's in which a man has his mistress killed because she threatens his ordered, married life. That is the larger context of "some people just need killing".

In conclusion, notice how bourgeois Woody Allen is. He isn't the sort of guy who'd actually take a hit out on his mistress (Crimes and Misdemeanors) or kill her directly (Match Point). No, he's the sort of guy who'd sit at home imagining such a thing and could convince himself that it's all okay at a certain distance, just so long as none of it rubs off on him. That would be intolerable because it would be shameful.

* I've shamelessly swiped the construction "some regard for human frailty" from The Philadelphia Story:

Tracy: You seem quite contemptuous of me all of a sudden.

Dexter: No, Red, not of you, never of you. Red, you could be the finest woman on this earth. I'm contemptuous of something inside of you you either can't help, or make no attempt to; your so-called 'strength' - your prejudice against weakness - your blank intolerance.

Tracy: Is that all?

Dexter: That's the gist of it; because you'll never be a first-class human being or a first-class woman, until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty. It's a pity your own foot can't slip a little sometime - but your sense of inner divinity wouldn't allow that. This goddess must and shall remain intact. There are more of you than people realize - a special class of the American Female. The Married Maidens.

Tracy Samantha Lord's foot does slip of course and she learns something from it. When Woody Allen's foot slips, he, with the help of his analyst, convinces himself that he just needs the bad feeling to go away so he can live a comfortable, bourgeois life. That is the personal morality of the new clerisy. It's a personal morality in the sense that that is what they apply to themselves; they wouldn't let anyone they disapproved of get away with it.

Elmo and the gutter press

UPDATE: Elmo's accuser has recanted. I would guess that there was some sort of lover's tiff at the base of this—most likely that the accuser was dumped and retaliated with this story. We'll never know. That does not, I believe, invalidate anything that follows.

What is it about Elmo the Muppet and sex? Do you remember the Tickle Me Elmo craze? I'm sure you remember the year parents paid outrageous sums to get the doll but do you remember the Elmo sex craze? There was one in the mid-to-late 1990s. Young women have decorated their adult beds with childish toys since time immemorial but there was something different about Elmo. Most such plush toys get pushed aside when more adult activities took place but for some reason it became a big thing for a woman to to do outrageous things with her Elmo while naked. Put him in between her breasts or upper thighs and squeezed until he'd made his famous sound for example. When between the upper-upper thighs, the reaction after the third squeeze was particularly stimulating for all involved.


Fortunately for Elmo all this happened before the craze of girls willing putting up incriminating photos and video of themselves on the Internet really took off. But now it looks like Elmo's lucky streak has run out:

It’s not a sunny day on “Sesame Street,” as the show revealed Monday that the puppeteer behind Elmo has been accused of having a sexual relationship with an underage boy.

That's the New York Daily News, God bless them. People who hate the gutter press imagine that it's easy to do what papers like the Daily News do but it isn't. That is brilliant writing. The New York Times writers and editors couldn't do that.

But it's not just what they write, it's also the stuff they have the good sense to let you figure out for yourself. For the puppeteer in question will now be leaving the show even though the people who make the show claim he has been vindicated!

“We took the allegation very seriously and took immediate action,” Sesame Workshop said in the statement. “We met with the accuser twice and had repeated communications with him. We met with Kevin, who denied the accusation. We also conducted a thorough investigation and found the allegation of underage conduct to be unsubstantiated.” 

But he is till off the show:

 “Although this was a personal relationship unrelated to the workplace, our investigation did reveal that Kevin exercised poor judgment and violated company policy regarding internet usage and he was disciplined,” Sesame Workshop said.

In light of the incident, Clash will be moving away from Sesame Street for the foreseeable future.

“Kevin insists that the allegation of underage conduct is false and defamatory and he is taking actions to protect his reputation,” the Workshop noted. “We have granted him a leave of absence to do so.”

No doubt Stalin liked to insist that he'd "granted Trotsky a leave of absence" too. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall at the meetings where the exact terms of Kevin Clash's departure were negotiated.

But here is the thing, the news story doesn't tell us anywhere the real reason Kevin Clash is leaving the show nor does it tell us the simple truth that Kevin Clash cannot protect his reputation because it is now irredeemably trashed.

Here are the two most important facts in the story:

1. This was a same-sex relationship. You can pretend all you want but society isn't fully accepting of homosexuality and it never will be. The most gay men can hope for is tolerance and tolerance always comes with limits, which brings us to the second crucial fact.
2. Kevin Clash is 52 and his accuser is 23 and the relationship seems to have started a number of years ago. 

Presumably the evidence suggests it did not start more than six years ago because the Sesame Workshop say they found no evidence of an underage affair. On the other hand, it must have started at least long enough ago that his accuser feels the claim was credible.

We can start to wonder can't we? But I want to focus on the writing style because there is something about this gutter style journalism that makes for great writing. Not in Proust, even though the relationship Clash had here is very much like one that Charlus has in The Novel. He never had the knack for this sort of touch.

But Evelyn Waugh sure did. Notice in the following how he never tells us what makes the scoutmaster naughty or what the instrument was being used for* and how that makes this writing so powerful.

"Oh dear, it's very difficult being a Catholic."

"Does it make much difference to you?"

"Of course. All the time."

"Well, I can't say I've noticed it. Are you struggling against temptation? You don't seem much more virtuous than me."

"I'm very, very much wickeder," said Sebastian indignantly.

"Well then?"

"Who was it used to pray, 'O God, make me good, but not yet?'"

"I don't know. You, I should think."

"Why, yes I do, every day. But it isn't that." He turned back to the pages of the News of the World and said, "Another naughty scout-master."

"I suppose they try to make you believe an awful lot of nonsense?"

"Is it nonsense? I wish it were. It sometimes sounds terribly sensible to me."

"But my dear Sebastian, you can't seriously believe it all."

"Can't I?"

"I mean about Christmas and the star and the three knights and the ox and the ass."

"Oh yes, I believe that. It's a lovely idea."

"But you can't believe things because they're a lovely idea."

"But I do. That's how I believe."

"And in prayers? Do you think you can kneel down in front of a statue and say a few words, not even out loud, just in your mind, and change the weather; or that some saints are more influential than others, and you must get hold of the right one to help you on the right problem?"

"Oh yes. Don't you remember last term when I took Aloysius and left him behind I didn't know where. I prayed like mad to St Anthony of Padua that morning, and immediately after lunch there was Mr Nicholas at Canterbury Gate with Aloysius in his arms, saying I'd left him in his cab."

"Well," I said. "If you can believe all that and you don't want to be good, where's the difficulty about your religion?"

"If you can't see, you can't."

"Well, where?"

"Oh, don't be a bore, Charles. I want to read about a woman in Hull who's been using an instrument. Thirty-eight other cases were taken into consideration in sentencing her to six months – golly!"

As I write this, a married public official has had to resign because of an affair he was having. The interesting thing about it, from our perspective, is that he was found out when the woman he was having the affair with started sending harassing e-mails to people she considered his enemies. Think of how stupid that was! But for her, in love, it probably felt just fine. The power of erotic love is such that we all feel like we live in some protected sphere of inviolable purity when we are basking in Eros' lap.

The point of the above is not just that sin is banal but also that it only can be so because we are so unaware of ourselves as sinners. And thus a woman having an extramarital affair harasses others for what she believes to be there sins and Sebastian, who claims to be aware of his own wickedness, delights in that of scoutmasters.

A bonus point for Catholics: Notice the point Waugh makes here about human nature and its fallibility. Waugh thinks sexual sins are not something other people do but something we do. That is an important issue given the nature of the relationship between Sebastian and Charles. That is an aspect of Waugh a lot of Catholics have a hard time swallowing.

 And not just Catholics. The modern secular view is that the sexual relationship between Sebastian and Charles is just fine and should be accepted if not glorified. Proust couldn't bring himself to say such a thing and perhaps couldn't even quite believe it himself but he sees love differently. One of the odd outcomes of this, as Waugh himself seems to have realized, is that it was much easier for Waugh to create gay characters who were happy and well-adjusted than it was for a writer like Proust.

And we cannot say that that is because Proust really knew what it was like to have a loving sexual relationship with another man and Waugh did not. If anything, the reverse was the case.


* For those who didn't know, the instrument was used to induce abortions.

A little light culture: The Power of Love

Here folks, is what six million pounds will buy you:


(If that embedding doesn't work, you can also watch it here.) I'll be honest,  I don't think they got their money's worth. They should have spent less on production and  more on the script.

That said, let's stop and think about what is going on here. I know, it's tempting to brush it off by saying, "Cheap emotional manipulation, that's what is going on."And it is. Any grade Grade 6 class in the land could come up with something like this.

The power of love
A force from above
Cleaning my soul
The power of love
A force from above
A sky-scraping dove

Flame on burn desire
Love with tongues of fire
Purge the soul
Make love your goal

But here is the thing, it works. You may say, "It didn't work on me," but that will only be because you saw it coming and chose to put up barriers. This sort of stuff will always work on some and, even if you choose to be cynical, one day something like this will catch you off guard and you'll be swept away by it. And then you'll be a little bit embarrassed because you won't be able to explain it to anyone else. They might laugh at you.

The song is old enough now that you may never have heard it. The original was by a group called Frankie Goes to Hollywood who had very, very brief fame in the mid-1980s. Their biggest success is the song "Relax" which has been aptly described as instructions for how to do anal sex. Yes, really. You can see it here if you want. By contrast, the original of "The Power of Love" video featured a Christmas Nativity theme played absolutely, if you'll pardon the expression, straight.

This is only one of a number of songs called "The Power of Love" and it isn't the crassest by a long stretch. That honour goes to a song by that name by Jennifer Rush. Most people will be more familiar with the version by Celine Dion. It's much loved and DJs at weddings get asked to play it for the couples first dance all the time.

It's a song about a girl losing her virginity. No, I am not making that up. Read the lyrics and weep. The key moment begins at 2:49.





Actually, "losing her virginity" is too kind. It's really a song about a girl putting out for the first time and I put it that way because we know this won't the last guy she puts out for.

I love the line, "Whenever you reach for me, I'll do all that I can," because it's such a transparent lie. Yeah, Saturday morning when you feel like sleeping in and you're mad at me because of something I said that embarrassed you in front of all your friends last night and, besides, you have a headache and you're not in the mood, but you'll do all that you can just because I reach for you? There isn't a pick up artist anywhere on the planet, crass, cheap or unoriginal enough to spring a line like any of the lyrics of this song on a girl and yet millions of women bought this single and ate that steaming pile of horseshit up like it was chocolate pudding.

It's a funny contrast. Here is what the guy who wore leather, did poppers and had sex so casual it was anonymous says about the power of love:

I always felt like The Power Of Love was the record that would save me in this life. There is a biblical aspect to its spirituality and passion; the fact that love is the only thing that matters in the end.

Here is the climax of the Jennifer Rush song:

The sound of your heart beating
Made it clear
Suddenly the feeling that I can't go on
Is light years away 

Who ya gonna choose?

I think the key question is that if you really believe that love is the only thing that matters in the end, you also want to ask, "Whose love?" and, on that point, I'm going with Jesus myself.