Month: October 2009

Is Santa Claus Really the Pope All Dressed Up in Red?

Madeleine Johnson, my colleague at The American, has a brilliant satire on the Italian citizenship quiz. Of course, I challenge anyone to guess whether she made this up or not. That’s what’s brilliant–it just might be true.

— Which of the following is known to cause cancer among Italians?

•a. Drafts;

•b. Indigestion;

•c. Not wearing a woolen undershirt;

•d. Smoking.

 

— Padre Pio is:

•a. The center of a lucrative cult that aims to defraud and delude the credulous;

•b. The priest who administered the last rites to Elvis Presley;

•c. A saint whose good works and popularity has attracted envy and hostility from the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy;

•d. The patron saint of taxi drivers.

T.S. Eliot and his Enemies

T.S. Eliot’s reputation has undergone a thorough reassessment over the last sixty years or so. He was, at mid-century, the prevailing protagonist of orthodox English literature. As both poet and critic, he was worshipped in the academies and by struggling young poets alike. Hart Crane’s admiration from Eliot was so extreme that his long epic The Bridge was conceived as an answer to The Wasteland.

In 1951 the Anglo-Jewish poet Emanuel Litvinoff read a poem that he had written, “To T.S. Eliot.” It was something of a game-changer, as it brought into the open the most uncomfortable aspect of Eliot’s poetry–his anti-Semitism. Amazingly, Eliot was in the audience that evening and is quoted as saying, “It is a good poem, it is a very good poem.”

None of this is news, however. In 1995 Cambridge University Press published a book-length study of Eliot’s controversial poetry, “T.S. Eliot, anti-Semitism and Literary Form” by Anthony Julius. A few years later, Julius would represent Deborah Lipstadt in court against David Irving. Lipstadt was defending herself against a charge of libel. She had written that Irving was a Holocaust-denier. He pressed charges, and the court found him giuilty. Lipstadt’s account can be read in History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier.”

But what is so extraordinary about T.S. Eliot, you ask? Everyone, arguably, was anti-Semitic in those days. Except, of course, those who weren’t. And Jews themselves, who paid a hefty price for this durable brand of bigotry. Litvinoff was horrified not only that Eliot had written these poems in the first place as far back as the 1920s, or even earlier. Litvinoff was horrified by the fact that Eliot had them reprinted in his 1948 Selected Poems. Considering that Eliot had barred his embarrassing early book, After Strange Gods, from ever being reprinted, one must ask the question: Why did he allow his Der Sturmeresque characterizations of Jews (or “jews” as Eliot himself wrote it) to be reprinted immediately following the Nazi carnage? Could this have been an oversight on the part of the great poet? If so, then why was After Strange Gods, with its ranting on about perilious “freethinking Jews” (p.20) and the utopian dream of a “Christian society” (p.21), not similarly overlooked?

These are just some of the questions readers must ask themselves when they open Eliot and begin reading, “The rats are underneath the piles/ the jew is underneath the lot.”

Carl Bernstein: Berlusconi Bordering on Stalinism

Carl Bernstein was invited on the controversial Italain political show Annozero last night. He spoke twice (from New York), and it appeared that there were indeed two separate Carl Bernsteins: one who chose journalistic prudence: “We have to be very careful of generalizations. I think many of the restrictions of good journalism are self-imposed.” He won a Pulitzer Prize, so he should know. Below is the clip, around 4:30. (Video blocked.)

Which brings us to the second Carl Bernstein. About half an hour later, the previously prudent Bernstein–who had admitted he wasn’t in any position to judge Italian politics because he didn’t really follow them–lashed out against the Berlusconi government as “a kind of Soviet Stalinism.” You can hear this at around 3:20 in the clip below. (Same story.)

What was responsible for the sudden change of heart? Even Michele Santoro, who earlier had introduced Bernstein as “played by Robert Redford in the movie”, commented: “Bernstein must have had an espresso.”

True Fighting Words

Susan Jacoby, in her book Freethinkers, takes on Glenn Beck’s beloved Battle Hymn of the Republic:

The Battle Hymn, one of the most powerful calls to arms ever set to music, was not only religious but Christian to the core. The last verse…as well known during the war as the famous first verse is today, explicitly articulates the song’s Christian doctrinal basis and emotional appeal…But what was a devout Christian from the North, fightling under instructions from his God, to make of an equally devout Southern cousin whose God–ostensibly the same God–had handed down a contradictory set of instructions?

Clearly food for thought, but does Beck think?

In the Beauty of Glenn Beck’s Lilies

Glenn Beck has some chutzpah.

He even cites the Battle Hymn of the Republic as some sort of proof of God’s mercifulness (the verse about the “beauty of the lilies”, of course). For a fiercer portrait of God, we might read another verse of the same Hymn:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

 

Why does the canorous Christ of the Battle Hymn need a “terrible swift sword” with which to bludgeon His enemies to death? Glenn Beck doesn’t ask such questions during his nightly reverie on Fox.

I got the video from Pharyngula.