Ross Douthat writes as if there is a real core Catholic faith that is being smothered by Francis’ liberal leanings. But after decades of evangelicals proclaiming themselves to be the party of spirituality and faith and integrity and humility and all the other values derived from the example of Christ and then stampeding into the arms of the most repugnant narcissist to ever run for office, one might be forgiven for regarding Douthat’s tears about the state of the Catholic church as disingenuous as best. Thanks to this embrace of Trump, and the sexual abuse scandals, and the residential school scandals, and the Magdalene laundries scandals, and so on and so on, it is very, very hard to regard any religion as anything more than a charade, a club, an exclusive confederation of self-righteous hypocrites. I gaze at these pious individuals in wonder and ask myself, what do you really believe? Anything, other than gaining advantage for the members of your club? Francis should declare that the era of Big Church is over and leave every locality to indulge in their own preferred hypocrisies.
Oh My God! We’re Getting More Anxious
Ross Douthat of the New York Times— the token conservative commentator on the opinion page– accepts the results of a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that show that teenagers today– especially–omygawd! girls– are more anxious, more depressed, and more unhappy than ever before.
By “social liberalism” I don’t mean the progressivism that took off in the Trump era — antiracism and diversity-equity-inclusion and #MeToo. I mean the more individualistic liberalism that emerged in the 1960s and experienced a second takeoff across the first decade of the 2000s. Its defining features were rapid secularization (the decline of Christian identification accelerated from the 1990s onward) and increasing social and sexual permissiveness — extending beyond support for same-sex marriage to beliefs about premarital sex, divorce, out-of-wedlock childbearing, marijuana use and more.
And it’s all because of the liberals! Douthat doesn’t think gun violence should depress anyone, or the cut-throat competitive nature of the U.S. economy, or the fear of being bankrupted by medical expenses, or the fact that a sexual predator and psychopath was elected president in 2016. Oh no. It’s the widespread availability of sex, gay or hetero, as a woman or a man or neither, and, of course, drug use. Have we heard this before?
I have two points. First of all, we hear about these studies all the time– and I mean ALL the time. Sociologists and social scientists just love asking teenagers if they are happy. Now, imagine for a moment you are a teenager. And life is not great, but it’s not all bad either. You’re kind of getting through it. You have some hopes and dreams and know you might have to work hard to achieve them. You have friends. Then someone comes along and asks you if you are happy or depressed or anxious. They ask you again an hour later. They ask you again the next day, and the next, and the next. You read articles in the New York Times or see pieces on CNN that tell you that a big problem today is that teenagers are not very happy. You start to wonder. Maybe I am unhappy. Maybe I’m depressed.
I don’t deny that it might be true. What I question is the assumption that these numbers represent a net change from previous eras, like the 1940’s, the 1950’s, and 1960’s. How would we know? It’s a great question to thoughtfully ask yourself: how would we know?
Nobody studied issues like this in the same comprehensive, systematic way in the 1950’s as we do now. We didn’t have the internet, obviously, or social media, and even television and radio was completely different than they are today. We didn’t have as many books or magazines or records or films. We didn’t have as many family photographs or recordings, let alone video. We had numerous wars around the world, and the U.S. itself was embroiled in Korea, and about to get embroiled in Viet Nam.
We had a lot of obvious racism, whites only schools, whites only restaurants and drinking fountains. We had a lot of drunk driving and date-rape, both of which now are severely punished, but were not back then. In fact, the consensus on rape seemed to be to not report it at all. We had a lot of teen pregnancy, “shotgun” weddings, and groping and petting. We had a society that blindly worshipped the military and the police. (It is no coincidence that Douthat, a conservative, would harken back to an era of such “stellar” values even if he doesn’t make explicit those particular values).
I suspect that a big part of our perception of the 1950’s has been shaped by unrealistic media portrayals, most emblematically, in “Happy Days” and the movie “American Graffiti”. Have a look at “The Last Picture Show”, “Diner”, “Rebel Without a Cause”, or “Badlands” for a corrective.
Secondly, Douthat clearly implies that enthusiastic membership in a church is a viable corrective. If only we had a study that showed that teenagers who are active members of churches are happier, less depressed and less anxious, and happier, than those who are not. We have no such study.
What studies we do have that compare church-going folk with non-church-going folk seems to show that we are all largely the same, holy or profane, saved or damned. We all indulge in porn. We all cheat and lie. (But only one side votes for Trump and loves guns and only one side believes you may have been born to the wrong gender and the world is warming.)
Even for Douthat, this column is unusually contrived in his desperation to find some way to blame liberals and progressives for the sad state of America. Like all conservatives, he knows that his side, the side of regressive, low tax, deregulated economies, benefits by promoting a sense that we are on the brink of catastrophe. Nothing new. We’ve been on this brink according to the Douthats of the world since Elvis first gyrated his hips.
Social Toxicity in Action: Your Cockatiel is Missing
CTV news had a story about a local woman who lost her pet cockatiel. I thought, well, I’m glad I live in a country where this is a news story. Beats the alternatives. Then I read the comments on the story. Some people actually expressed the wish that the bird would be killed and eaten. Others were dismayed that this story displaced more important stories about the earthquake or the new Russian offensive in Ukraine. There were comments by people who hated the first comments, and then by people who hated the second comments, and then by people who hated the people who made the hateful comments about the hateful comments. Humanity at its toxic worst.
The other night, PBS News had an interview with a Democratic governor, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, and a Republican governor, Spencer Cox, of Utah. The two men sat together, beside each other. They were civil, constructive, engaging, and respectful. They liked each other a lot, even though they had fundamental disagreements in many policy areas. They were working together on various important issues and trying to find common ground in areas where they disagreed. It was marvelous. It was inspiring. It was a powerful contrast to the toxic national political scene right now. It was reason for hope.
I’m not sure if that leaves me optimistic or pessimistic right now.
And yes, of course I wished the two of them would form a ticket for President and VP in 2024. And I am very sure that a majority of voters would love a team like that.
But it is a truism in American politics that you probably can’t win a nomination from your party right now if you don’t join the toxicity. The voters say they hate lying, compromised, attack-dog candidates but they vote for them. “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
And now, let’s shoot down another ‘balloon’.
The Pointless Irrelevant Useless Mind-Numbing Grammys
If they really feel auto-tuned vocalists deserve Grammys, by all means, let’s have a category for that. And lets have a “Truth in Packaging” note at the bottom of the screen when they use it live, as many now do, or at least when they lip-synch to an auto-tuned vocal (so they are actually faking it twice). I might actually tune in to watch if they have a category of “honest to god actual singing” awards, especially if they actually have real musicians playing the instruments on the recording. Until then, every Grammy Awards show should open with Simon & Garfunkel’s “Fakin’ It”.
Won’t someone please create an award restricted to non-auto-tuned performances? And let me answer my own question: all of the major media companies benefit from the auto-tune scam. They all sell the same types of artists, the same types of product, the same shit.
There is one possibility: a website devoted to non-auto-tuned artists accompanied by real honest-to-god musicians playing real honest-to-god instruments. No synthesizers, sequencers, drum machines, and so on allowed. I would start it myself if I didn’t have more than enough other activities to keep me busy. They could have articles and links and they should create an annual award for honest artists in several categories not including rap or hip hop whatever flavor of the decade rears it’s ugly head.
I would suggest these categories:
- Folk
- Rock
- Pop (for the inevitable dreck)
- Classical
- Soul
- Gospel
And no fucking other categories. Not one, not ever. Each category would have two sub-categories, for performance and composition.
I suspect that a website like that could develop an impressive following, though it would probably never hit mainstream acceptance. Vinyl is doing pretty well lately, but it’s no threat to Spotify.
Incidentally, “Grammys” is correct; not ‘Grammies’.
Deficit Attention Disorder
Let’s see: to reduce the deficit, you have to increase tax revenue or cut spending. To cut spending, you have slash funding for programs that might be popular. Voters won’t like that. That’s why so many Republicans who claim that the deficit is a serious problem, when interviewed on the subject, refuse to say what they would cut. Coincidentally, while Trump was running up the deficit and Republicans had control of the House and the Senate, they didn’t cut any programs; they actually increased military spending and cut taxes thereby increasing the deficit significantly. (Since the last balanced budget in 2000, the Republicans have run up $12 trillion in new deficit while the Democrats have racked up $13 trillion.) Now that a Democrat is in the White House, they are popping up everywhere declaring that the deficit sky is falling. Again, when asked where they would cut, they conspicuously refuse to answer.
Most economists do not think the deficit is a serious problem, but refusing to raise the debt ceiling– in essence, refusing to pay the bills that are due for mandated programs approved by Congress– would be a very, very serious problem.
It appears to be slightly hypocritical to complain about the deficit now when not a single Republican voted against the Trump programs that dramatically increased the debt.
That took longer to read than a CNN screen crawl. You see the problem? You see why some people want to talk all day and all night about secret documents and Hunter Biden’s laptop instead.
The Captive Psychiatrist
The great challenge of American film and literature is this: the protagonist must disclose powerful personal stories of past abuse or crushing disappointments or betrayals to win the audience’s sympathy (and excuse his addictions, infidelities, and other bad behavior) but telling all this to the object of his or her affections would come off as self-pitying. The only plausible venue for this type of disclosure is the therapist’s couch. But in the popular imagination, only a weak effeminate pussy would voluntarily become so vulnerable as to disclose such details, so it must be dramatized as coerced. Somehow, we must create a dramatic situation in which the protagonist can simultaneously disclose his vulnerabilities and mock the inquisitorial mind.
Here’s the problem, and it’s not a small one: no psychiatrist or psychologist worth his salt would waste a minute of time on a patient that doesn’t want to cooperate. It is a bedrock principle of psychotherapy that you can’t provide therapy to someone against his will.
And what therapist would even want to try?
But what if it’s a condition of probation, or shared custody of the children, or a job? The problem does not change. If a patient behaved the way Will Hunting behaves in “Good Will Hunting”, the therapist would almost certainly wish him luck in future endeavors and tell him he has willfully thrown away his probation or the job or the custody arrangement or what have you.
And so we have “A Clockwork Orange”, “Good Will Hunting” and “Shawshank Redemption” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Gangs of New York”, “Antwone Fisher”, and perhaps the worst of all, “Reign Over Me” (in which Liv Tyler played the psychiatrist– seriously) and so on. It’s become an extremely tiresome trope, a sure indicator that a film writer has run out of ideas or is concerned that his audience is so stupid they won’t get the point of the story.
(An additional trope in many of these films is the therapist who cares so much that he or she chases down the reluctant patient and begs them to receive therapy. Seriously. The audience is invited to project themselves into a character so lovable that professional psychiatrist and psychologist will abandon personal schedules and work obligations in order to track them down and drag them into their healing arms.)
“The Sopranos” toys with the issue and frequently straddles the line. Tony has a real problem: panic attacks. He stops seeing Dr. Melfi for a while but the panic attacks resume. He tries a different psychiatrist, who proves ineffectual. He returns to Dr. Melfi on just barely believable terms, though he frequently blurts out something like, “I’ve had enough of this crap”. The audience projects itself into a character who thinks he’s smarter than a psychiatrist.
What’s really going on in these scenes is the writer is trying to show that he is smarter than a psychologist or psychiatrist.
The most contemptible examples of this are those mildly enlightened films that pretend to have a real theme, an idea, an enlightened perspective on something, like “Reign Over Me” and “Good Will Hunting”. “Good Will Hunting” lays the groundwork for the millions of Trump followers who are convinced that those educated elites are really no smarter than the average janitor (played by the charismatic Matt Damon). But it would not be an asset to the character to have Will admit to how much harm he has suffered from his traumatic upbringing unless he is compelled to admit it; thus, the kludge plot mechanism of having his probation depend on attending therapy sessions with the utterly charming and sexy Robin Williams– who, nevertheless, threatens to kill him at their first session after Will makes light of Dr. Maguire’s wife. (And the probation? Another tired trope: Will was involved in a gang fight. Because he is a bad boy? Oh no– one of the gang members used to abuse Will when he was a child. Hollywood loves bad boys but not if they’re really bad, just as they love titillation, but not real, honest sex.)
I used to work in a children’s mental health centre. I can tell you that almost none of the psychiatrists or psychologists in these films approach believability. Dr. Melfi in “The Sopranos” is particularly inept. Now, I’m not saying that psychiatrists or psychologists can actually be smart and effective. But they do have extensive training and they will have some idea of how they are going to approach the task at hand, even if their approach is contrived or transparent or just plain ridiculous. Dr. Maguire in “Good Will Hunting” is supposed to win our respect by showing how tough he is when Will mocks his (deceased, unknown to Will) wife.
It’s not admirable: it’s downright stupid.
The Drones of Transient Pitchyness
This is the death of real singing. Any half-decent singer can now sound “decent”, that is, on pitch. The penalty is obvious if you know what to listen for: that odd ambient tunnelling of the voice, the weird tiny echo, the synthesis of algorithm and vocal expression.
From the point of view of an “artist”–but especially a producer or engineer– the appeal is irresistible. A singer only has to be close– not perfect. Before Autotune, you needed twenty, thirty, or forty takes to get something “right”. Now a take or two and a software application can do it in 20 minutes or less. It will iron out the flaws and fluctuations and produce perfect pitch with a tiny smidgeon of robotic tone, for the lead, for harmonies, for background vocals. But the cost is the hard to describe: the feeling of authenticity, of humanity, of real human tone.
Most people in the industry would find my distaste for it bewildering. Don’t you want perfect pitch? Don’t you want flawless musicality? Don’t you want that style that buzzes by your ear without the slightest hint of variation or personality or character or the richness of the random? Don’t you want music that anesthetizes and soothes and washes over you like silky bubbles of insubstantial gloss?
No, I don’t. I would rather listen to Frank Watkinson. Give me his all too human flaws any day over Beyonce or Katie Perry or Taylor Swift and all the other manufactured factory drones that pass for artistry nowadays. And what do I love about Frank more than anything else? This comment:
“I’ve never had an ambition to go out at night, traveling, going to places and playing and that, because I personally wouldn’t pay to see myself.”
There will be a small constituency for the real out there. But most pop has succumbed to the Autotune disease.
Give me Leonard Cohen and Neil Young and Iron & Wine and the Civil Wars and Tom Waits and Neutral Milk Hotel and Bruce Springsteen and, yes, Bob Dylan, instead. And the next time you listen to one of the drones and think they sound just great, thank you, remember: you’ve been cheated.
Bach’s 13 Mistakes
“Tar” is a bit long-winded but still the best movie I’ve seen this year. Blanchett will win the Oscar. I am absolutely fabulously overjoyed that they filmed and recorded the orchestral scenes with a real orchestra, live; Blanchett’s piano playing is also real, as is the cellist ingenue. Most films about musicians dub the performances and it usually shows, badly. Contains a provocative, timely discussion by the lead character of the relationship of art to the scandalous behaviors of the artists, instancing a LGBQ student who can’t get “into” Bach’s music because he had 13 children.
Free Speech, if you Already Have it
‘I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”’ Elon Musk.
Because people sometimes ask the government to make speech less free? Censor us! We don’t deserve to have a voice in our nation’s affairs! I wish to disagree in silence!
What Musk is really talking about, of course, is the obligation we are beginning to impose on gigantic social media entities to regulate and restrict what kind of speech they allow. We are beginning to realize that shouting “fire” in a crowded virtual theatre through Twitter is potentially just as harmful as it is in a real theatre.
The whole essential principle of free speech is to protect the rights of minorities, not the right of a majority to shut them up.
CNN’s Election Coverage 2022
CNN was rather meticulously explaining why counting votes from urban districts with very large, more educated populations that tend to vote Democrat takes longer than counting the relatively small number of votes from rural areas that tend to vote Republican.
It was like Sesame Street for Election deniers. I kept expecting them to bring on the Count to demonstrate how some numbers are bigger than others.
Except, I think the Count counts faster than Arizona or Nevada.