Against the Stream

Jeremiah Wright

I've spent the last few weeks watching the Obama/Wright controversy with interest, but work matters made it difficult to find time to pull all of the divergent strands of my thought together into a coherent whole. So, rather than write piecemeal, I figured I'd wait till I had time to think it all through.

In the end though, I'm not sure that I have a coherent line of thought on the Wright controversy. The din of voices from every direction makes it difficult to discern the truth from the falsehood in how he has been represented in the media.

Nevertheless, Martin Marty has a good piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education that summarizes my own feelings about Wright better than I probably could have. Here are some excerpts:

To the 10,000 members of Trinity, Jeremiah Wright was, until just a few months ago, "Pastor Wright." Metaphorically, pastor means shepherd. Like members of all congregations, the Trinity flock welcomes strong leadership for organization, prayer, and preaching. One-on-one ministry is not easy with thousands in the flock and when the pastor has national responsibilities, but the forms of worship make each participant feel recognized. Responding to the pastoral call to stand and be honored on Mother's Day, for instance, grandmothers, single mothers, stepmothers, foster mothers, gay-and-lesbian couples, all mothers stood when we visited. Wright asked how many believed that they were alive because of the church's health fairs. The members of the large pastoral staff know many hundreds of names, while hundreds of lay people share the ministry.

Now, for the hard business: the sermons, which have been mercilessly chipped into for wearying television clips. While Wright's sermons were pastoral — my wife and I have always been awed to hear the Christian Gospel parsed for our personal lives — they were also prophetic. At the university, we used to remark, half lightheartedly, that this Jeremiah was trying to live up to his namesake, the seventh-century B.C. prophet. Though Jeremiah of old did not "curse" his people of Israel, Wright, as a biblical scholar, could point out that the prophets Hosea and Micah did. But the Book of Jeremiah, written by numbers of authors, is so full of blasts and quasi curses — what biblical scholars call "imprecatory topoi" — that New England preachers invented a sermonic form called "the jeremiad," a style revived in some Wrightian shouts.

In the end, however, Jeremiah was the prophet of hope, and that note of hope is what attracts the multiclass membership at Trinity and significant television audiences. Both Jeremiahs gave the people work to do: to advance the missions of social justice and mercy that improve the lot of the suffering. For a sample, read Jeremiah 29, where the prophet's letter to the exiles in Babylon exhorts them to settle down and "seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile." Or listen to many a Jeremiah Wright sermon.

One may properly ask whether or how Jeremiah Wright — or anyone else — experiences a prophetic call. Back when American radicals wanted to be called prophets, I heard Saul Bellow say (and, I think, later saw it in writing): "Being a prophet is nice work if you can get it, but sooner or later you have to mention God." Wright mentioned God sooner. My wife and I recall but a single overtly political pitch. Wright wanted 2,000 letters of protest sent to the Chicago mayor's office about a public-library policy. Of course, if we had gone more often, in times of profound tumult, we would have heard much more. The United Church of Christ is a denomination that has taken raps for being liberal — for example for its 50th anniversary "God is still speaking" campaign and its pledge to be open and affirming to all, including gay people. In its lineage are Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr, America's three most-noted theologians; the Rev. King was much at home there.

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It would be unfair to Wright to gloss over his abrasive — to say the least — edges, so, in the "Nobody's Perfect" column, I'll register some criticisms. To me, Trinity's honoring of Minister Louis Farrakhan was abhorrent and indefensible, and Wright's fantasies about the U.S. government's role in spreading AIDS distracting and harmful. He, himself, is also aware of the now-standard charge by some African-American clergy who say he is a victim of cultural lag, overinfluenced by the terrible racial situation when he was formed.

Having said that, and reserving the right to offer more criticisms, I've been too impressed by the way Wright preaches the Christian Gospel to break with him. Those who were part of his ministry for years — school superintendents, nurses, legislators, teachers, laborers, the unemployed, the previously shunned and shamed, the anxious — are not going to turn their backs on their pastor and prophet.

You can't live in Chicago, be a member of the UCC and not have at least some passing familarity with Jeremiah Wright or his reputation. When the firestorm around his relationship with Obama began, I have to admit to being as shocked as anyone by some of what he said. But, knowing the tradition of prophetic preaching from which he comes, and understanding, in some small way, the experiences from which he was drawing, I found it much harder to judge him than many have. In the end, the good done by Jeremiah Wright for Chicago and the UCC far outweighs the impassionted intemperance of some of his remarks. And I, for one, am unwilling to be quick to try to remove the speck from his eye until the beam is removed from my own.

Most Overrated Drummer Award

This may get me into trouble.

For Easter, I got a $25.00 iTunes gift card, so I used it to download, among other things, Led Zepplin II, which is, by any standard, an awesome album.

But listening to "Moby Dick" for the first time in about 20 years, I've reached the conclusion that John Bonham is a hugely overrated drummer.

That's not to say that he's not a billion times better than I  ever was. Of course he is, and he was perfect for Led Zep. However, "Moby Dick" was recorded to showcase his drumming, and as I listened to it, the thought that kept occurring to me was "was he drunk when he recorded this?"

The solo is uninspired, meandering, and sloppy. Listen to the triplets between the tom-toms and base drum. Sloopy, uneven, and poorly executed.

I know that he's iconic and all that, and again I want to stress that it's not like I could have ever measured up to him myself, but I can think of at least 5 drummers right off the top of my head that are leaps and bounds above him, and yet not nearly as iconic. In fact, here they are:*

1. Steve Gadd
2. Vinnie Colaiuta
3. Terry Bozio
4. Bill Bruford
5. Chad Wackerman

Yes, that's a lot of Zappa alumni, but there's a reason that Zappa's music is so interesting: How many drummers could really handle "The Black Page" after all. Of course, I could  have picked other drummers. Neil Peart should be on any list of great drummers, but he is, after all, just as iconic as John Bonham. So is Keith Moon.

So there you have it: My nominee for the most overrated drummer in Rock & Roll. Feel free to leave your nominees for overrated musicians in comments.

*I'm specifically limiting myself to rock drummers here. If I were to expand the list to include Jazz drummers, it would easily take up my entire day.

This is Exactly Why the First Law of Robotics Was Enacted!

Petreaeus: The Bloom is Off the Rose

Via Crooks & Liars:

The debate over the U.S. policy towards Iraq (and the debate over the debate) has taken several twists and turns over the course of five long and painful years, but if there’s one thing I thought the entire Republican establishment agreed on, it’s this: don’t disagree with Gen. David Petraeus. His judgment is sacrosanct, his word is gold, and his assessments of conditions in Iraq are unimpeachable.

Why, then, are John McCain and Dick Cheney contradicting Petraeus publicly?

Just four days ago, Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said that “no one” in the U.S. and Iraqi governments “feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation,” or in the provision of basic public services.

As it turns out, “no one” doesn’t include John McCain, who feels there’s been plenty of progress…

“Anybody who believes the surge has not succeeded, militarily, politically and in most other ways, frankly, does not know the facts on the ground.”

… nor does it include Dick Cheney, who apparently sees political progress Petraeus doesn’t.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday declared the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq a “successful endeavor,” pointing to security and political progress on a visit ahead of the fifth anniversary of the war.

A new schism between Petraeus and Republican leaders? Well, probably not. It’s far more likely that McCain and Cheney have their political talking points to read, and don’t much care whether they contradict Petraeus’ comments or not.

And I remember the days when to question the wisdom of Petraeus was to question the goodness of mom and apple pie themselves. Oh how things change when reality bumps up against the Bush narrative.

Sacrifice the Face, Save the Macbook

I tuned in briefly to Charlie Rose last night to see what was what, and was surprised to see that he looked as though he had been mugged. Turned out, there's a reason:

Viewers of the Charlie Rose show tonight were stunned to see the normally composed Rose looking like he’d just been in a bar fight. He has a very bad black eye and a bandage over part of his forehead. I contacted the show’s producers to hear what happened. Earlier today, they said, Rose tripped in a pothole while walking on 59th Street in Manhattan. He was carrying a newly purchased MacBook Air and made a quick (but ultimately flawed) decision while falling: sacrifice the face, protect the computer. “In doing so, he pretty much hit the pavement face first, unfortunately,” they said.

Luckily the MacBook Air survived the fall. “The Macbook Air is fine, he showed us the blood stains on it this morning.”

Ok, I was on the fence before, but now I really want one!

Schmuck says Schmuckly Things on Daily Show

Ronald Kessler, registered schmuck, appeared last night on the Daily Show (apparently reluctantly!) and defended the administrations use of torture. As long as I'm posting video, I might as well post this.

And yet another defender of torture crawls, cockroachlike, out of the woodwork.

Olbermann on Clinton on Ferraro

Strong words from Keith. I think he hits the nail on the head.

How Do You Kill That Which Has No Life?

Via Matt Yglesias:

From the I can't believe it's not a joke file: "the U.S. intelligence community is working to develop software that will detect violent extremists infiltrating World of Warcraft and other massive multiplayer games, according to a data-mining report from the Director of National Intelligence."

Which is really just an excuse for me to post  this:

Mamet on Politics

In the Village Voice, David Mamet has an essay in which he formally disavows his status as a "brain dead liberal." It's pretty interesting stuff, particularly in light of what he thinks of as "liberal," which he thinks he rejecting, and what he thinks of as "conservative," which he claims to be embracing.

To be clear: I'm not really sure David Mamet as ever qualified as a "liberal," at least insofar as his writing is a reflection of his psyche (which, of course, it may not be). While I can understand some of the impetus behind plays like "Sexual Perversity in Chicago" and "Olleana," they could hardly be considered to be representative of a "liberal" outlook on sexual relations. At best, they're retrograde reflections on male sexual anxiety, at worst, they're misogynist tripe.

But, let's give David the benefit of the doubt. It's of course possible that his political life exists at a total disconnect from his art, and that, despite the reprentations of universal human venality in his work, he really did, at one time as he writes, accept "as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart."

It's striking to me that he roots this political self-conception in his status as "child of the '60s." That says a lot about both why he held the naively optimistic conception of liberalism that he did, and why he seems to have switched over to a particularly facile brand of conservatism now. What Mamet is writing is a classic baby boomer screed of disappointment that the world is not made to suit his predilections. So, instead of contemplating a more nuanced and complex conception of social life, he just switches teams.

But, be that as it may, it's worth while to examine both his conception of liberalism and his conception of conservatism, in order to glean some sense of what he thinks he now is.

In the first place, it's worth noting the distinction he makes between the conservative and liberal mindsets. Writing a recent play, he states:

The play, while being a laugh a minute, is, when it's at home, a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.

So, conservatives are tragic and liberals are perfectionist. Furthermore, it is (apparently) a tragic view of the world to hold that freemarkets allow people to flourish insofar as government "stays out of the way." This, by Mamet's lights, is the alternative to "brain dead liberalism," in which, once more, government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart."

But wait a minute: Conservatives believe that "people are each out to make a living" that there are "inevitable abuses and failures of ... free market economics," but that those are "less than those of government intervention." How, exactly, is this substantively different from the liberal perspective? Again, the problem isn't that Mamet has changed. He's just reframed what he always believed. People aren't vicious, they're just trying to make a living. Business may be exploitative, since that's one possible "abuse and failure" of the free market," and government, if not quite corrupt in his current thinking, is surely incompetent. So what has fundamentally changed. He still has more faith in individuals than institutions.

He goes on: "This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong." This, for Mamet, is the distillation of liberalism.

I find this exceedingly strange. It bears no resemblance to anything that I would call "liberal" in a generally accepted sense of the term. It's as though Mamet's conception of liberalism is cribbed directly from the talking points of right wing congressmen and conservative talk radio. What "liberals" actually believe this (beyond, apparently, Mamet)? How many of us are really Mamet's version of the utopian socialist/liberal perfectionist speechwriter of his play? And why is she working for a conservative anyway? Why would a conservative hire her? You see my point: In order to justify his worldview, Mamet has to posit characters that don't actually exist in real life. He can't even make the characters in his play true to life, becuase he's too busy grinding a political axe.

All of this reminds me of the quip that somebody made about all of the "former liberals" who came out of the woodwork in the wake of 9/11: "I used to be a liberal, but ever since 9/11 I'm outraged by Chappaquiddick!"

Liberalism, at its best (which it isn't always, any more than conservatism is), is both a tragic and an optimistic world view (who said anything about perfectionism here?). My brand of liberalism is directly descended from the Christian Realism of Reinhold Niebuhr, who recognized both the human capacity for corruption and the human capacity for good existed together in the mixed circumstances of real human life. Individuals can be more moral than institutions, but all institutions can both be corrupt and necessary for the maintanance of a just balance in society.

Whatever Mamet may think about economics (and I find his list of economists to be brain achingly narrow), its not clear that he has actual data to back up his contention that "the failures and abuses" of the free market are better than those of government. He's got ideology, but not evidence. And he doesn't seem to be able to distinguish the two. After all, one has only to look at the health care system to see a direct refutation of Mamet's assertion in action: National health care systems in every major industrial country distribute better health care to more people for less money than the private U.S. system. Indeed, the public Medicare system in the U.S. does a better job than private insurance.

It's not necessary, then, to choose, as conservative ideologues (and now Mamet) seem to want, between business and government. Each is necessary for the proper and just functioning of a society. Nor is it necessary to assume that either individuals or institutions are "perfectible." On the contrary, that brand of perfectionism is precisely the kind of blinder that allows Mamet to think, without evidence, that markets are always better than government. Because if it can't be boiled down to a simple formula, if it requires complexity of analysis, and ambiguity in terms of one's outlook, then Mamet wants no part of it.

I find it particularly striking that he roots his epiphany in his liberal religious community. His conservative Rabbi seems to have a much better sense of things than Mamet himself does, at least insofar as he believes that at the heart of Judaism lies an obligation to listen to and understand one another more fully, and seek pragmatic solutions to real problems. Mamet, however, whatever he may think he's doing, hasn't gotten any better at listening. He's just listening to a different set of voices. His Rabbi, I suspect, would appreciate Niebuhr's brand of realism, whatever his political predilections. Mamet might too, if he bothered to pick it up. He wold find in it the sense of tragic realism that he associates with his newly found conservatism, but also an optimism about the capacity to create a just society out of the complex interweaving of self-interest and idealism that intertwines throughout our individual and collective psyches. It would be far preferable to the narrow ideology he has now embraced.

Congratulations, David. You are no longer a brain dead liberal. You are now a brain dead conservative. And more's the pity for all of us.

OK, This Is A Bit Much

It's well known that Andrew Sullivan has a deep-seated and irrational hatred of the Clintons, but c'mon! He entitles a post "Who the Clinton's Really Are," and then, as an illustration of how corrupt and degenerate Hillary "really" is, he uses a clip from the movie "Primary Colors"! Ga!

Andrew ... Andrew. If you want to make a case against the Clintons, make a case against the real stuff that the Clinton's really did. Not a fictional version made up by Joe Klein and portrayed by John Travolta and Emma Thompson! Is that really so hard to comprehend?