'Nother Solent

Boys, boys

Tim Blair's blog roundup says Brian Linse but actually linkes to Lawrence Dawson. Expect fireworks.

This silly man

, Stephen Pollard, writing in yesterday's Independent, thinks (a) that adults shouldn't read children's books and (b) that Lord of the Rings was intended solely for children. Give me strength. Far from "the film having created the craze," as he claims about Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings is regularly voted "book of the century". Fantasy writers and readers as various as W H Auden, C S Lewis and U K Le Guin discussed half to death the de-ghettoization of fantasy decades ago. Are there really people writing for national newspapers who don't know this? Yep. An idea just kinda pops into your head and the article is written before the coffee's cold. Must try that sometime. Not that I claim it is impossible to intelligently dislike fantasy or dispute the idea that it is fit for adults, but this man writes as if he has had a startling new insight.

It's a pity, because his concluding picture of the infantilization of society, crying Cabinet Ministers and all, has truth in it. That truth, however, is not illustrated by adult heads bent over a book that culminates in a terrifying moment of moral failure on the part of a hero tried beyond his strength, or anyone's.

By the way, the last kid I saw enjoying the LOTR was one of mine, last night.

The 10 Downing Street

website has this vague and misleading account of Blunkett's anti-terrorism measures. Note "Tough Penalties for people seeking to exploit the events of September 11." Glad to hear that, Mr Blunkett. I look forward to seeing you in the dock.

Oh great. Just great

. Momma Bear sends me this story about ex-Taliban hoping to find new homes in Canada. Truth to tell, immigration is one of the many subjects I haven't sorted out yet, but one can't exactly expect the US to bake welcome cakes for these new neighbours.

Collected grovelipoos

. Let me get this over with all at once. There's been something or other wrong with nearly every post I've written in the last few days.

• It should really have been Mater alma dolorosaque.
• I was so incensed while reading about Osama Bin Laden's chortling over his victims that I quite misunderstood what he said: he himself claims he was surprised at the high numbers killed, rendering at least one of my points meaningless.
• The "happier times" in my "Shooters in Western Drag - reprise" post referred to the days before the guvmint stole our guns - but actually they didn't steal that one because it's so old.
• The phrase "Pity" after the bold-type bit "FBI arrests Jewish leader over bomb plot" means "it's a pity that the fine record of the US in the eschewal of revenge terrorism has been broken", not, thank you very much, "pity they were caught."

And finally,

An Apology.
In an earlier post I foolishly compared to the noted cultural commentator Edward Said to a "swamp thing of moral relativism." I now learn that the Swamp Thing was actually a noble creature treated harshly due to its alien appearance. Said may think that describes him, but it doesn't. Mr Thing, I apologise.

5000 and counting

. Who was the man who saw the zeros line up? Dawson.com, of course. He also scored 14,000 on Samizdata. Is this man obsessive or what?

Mater alma et dolorosa

. Now you can all write in and tell me my Latin is up the aestuarium. I never officially learned any, though I picked up words like some people pick up cigarette ends. I think I have the word order right because my copy of Fabula de Petro Cuniculo has "Flopsa, Mopsa, Cauda Linea qui erant cuniculae bonae et parvae" when relating the gender-differential socialisation outcomes of one parent families in the bunny community.

Er, what was I talking about? Oh yes, the troubles of the institution from which I just about managed to extract a somewhat embarrassing class of degree twenty years ago. Oxford falls to third in academic league tables. They're really worried because these rankings, decided by a government-appointed committee, govern the divvying up of the pork. The moral is simple, guys. Stop trying to appease NuLab. All that fiddling with the admissions procedures to try and get more working class and minority students has diluted your standards while doing nothing to assuage their hatred. Their hatred for you is precious to them because it is a cheap way to prove they have not utterly renounced their socialist youth. You have the richest alumni in the world. So cut loose! By all means give scholarships, as you always have, but cut those chains of gold and then taste the glorious wine of telling Gordon Brown to be fruitful and multiply next time he tries to tell you which students to take.

And do it in Latin. That little touch of elitism will really get up his nasus.

Everybody will blog some version of this story.

Including me. Read The Times on Osama Bin Laden's favourite viewing: mass murder. Anyone still think this is a fake? Personally, despite what he says about having calculated how many would die, I think he did not expect as many deaths as he got. (It makes little difference morally; as observed by Stalin, who ought to know: "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." But it does make a difference to the West's estimate of OBL's psychology, which is a military factor.) I know I've said it before, but the shilly-shallying over whether he was or was not responsible is strongly reminiscent of the Provisional IRA's vacillation over "claiming" the bombing of a Remembrance Day ceremony at Enniskillen.

He's right on one thing: people started to think about Islam. What they thought is another matter. Conscientious Moslems have work to do.

Shooters in Western drag, reprise.

Two correspondents - Edward Vitello and one who does not wish to be named - opine that "drag" does, after all, mean guys in girls clothes in at least some of the USA, and speculate whether the someone somewhere might be either making a Freudian slip or some sort of editorial meta-comment. I don't know, though. It would be a lot simpler to just not print a pro-gun story - isn't that the usual strategy?

My husband says that he has entered (in happier times) cowboy shooting competitions in this country using a 30-30 Winchester. Wearing conventional male attire, thank you.

FBI arrests Jewish leader over bomb plot.

Pity. Until this, the US could have congratulated itself on the lack of revenge terrorism after September 11. According to this Guardian story some of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane's group were planning to blow up the main mosque in LA.

Of course, compared to most countries (for example, the massacres of Sikhs in India after her Sikh bodyguards treacherously murdered Indira Gandhi) the present-day US still is notable for the absence of vengeful mobs. One wonders what the reaction in India will be to the killings - presumably something to do with Kashmir - in their Parliament building. About which the BBC is up to its usual tricks: according to the Ceefax version of the story, the killers who stormed the Parliament of a country that, for all its flaws, is still democratic, were not your plain ordinary terrorists but our new potential friends and co-citizens of the world, "terrorists", snuggled up tight between nice clean quote marks.

That dratted Inappropriate woman

has not only made the serious yet scathing analysis of Said's PEN lecture than I wanted to, but has also telepathically stolen one of my pet rants, namely #23c, on the cursed word "inappropriate" which is used these days for everything from child rape to incautiously telling the truth on the Today programme. Don't think I'm going to direct you there. Oh, all right.

A fascinating shooting competition

is described in this article in WSJ OK, OK, so most of the article is an assessment of the effect of the last three months in making Americans value the Second Amendment - whatever the harm to their other liberties. But can this -

25,000 paying spectators turned out for the cowboy shooting world championships--an event that uses weapons made prior to 1900 and requires its participants to dress in appropriate western drag.

- possibly mean what I think it means? I mean, guys in flouncy dresses? There's nowhere to put the guns. Well, nowhere except.... Wow. No wonder 25,000 people turned up.

Just fooling. I have in fact deduced that "drag" does not mean to you people what it means to me. Another two nations separated by a common language thing is the mention of Eddie Eagle safety courses. Excuse me. The sublime Eddie the Eagle was a British ski jumper who was completely undaunted by the fact that we only get two days of snow most winters, and who came gloriously last in all the ski events for some Winter Olympics or other and ended up being personally asked to the White House and becoming far more famous than the boring actual winners. So now he's into gun safety training. Take cover. (He was, of course, objectively a far better ski jumper than anyone else you or I have ever met, just worse than people born to it.)

The view from the other side of the hill.

I recommend Emmanuel Goldstein's Airstrip One blog for an eloquent libertarian anti-war commentary. Lots of argumentative letters from readers, given full weight. No hesitation about admitting mistakes, either. Oh, and good stuff on British politics (such as the risible and unlamented Pro-Euro Tories) that I can, at last, agree with.

This blog also repays technical study by feeble amateurs like me. Perhaps because it has been going for eons in blog terms - practically a whole year - It boasts envy-inducing features such as beautifully accessible archives. Mr Goldstein sent me a personal e-mail recommending these, and have I done anything about it? No I have not, through fear of this hostile and insubordinate computer.

There is a very sad and heartfelt piece by Dawson.com commemorating the three months that have gone by since the World Trade Center attacks. He calls it a rant, but that is not how I would describe it. Thinking how some people would describe his account of the ordinariness of the lives about to be cut short as "a crude appeal to sentimentality" or some phrase like that, I was led to muse about the ability to imagine yourself as another being the root of all appeals.

Looking back over the last months since I began this weblog, I have been very scornful of the general climate of culture in the Islamic world, and in particular of the Arabs. The reason for my scorn was that they seemed to have deadened themselves to feelings of common pity or humanity, while at the same time setting up a great wail of "nobody understands us." I make no apology, and I stand by my view, but it is about time I said that there are Arabs and Muslims doing their best to get back in contact with the world, and, in my view, God. (Libertarian Samizdata introduced me to Muslimpundit.com for a start.)

Back to the main point. Someone writing to Instapundit proposed that film-makers from many countries tell the stories of the last hours of some of their own people destined to die that day, sharing the costs of the special effects between them. Certain critics would get angry at the idea that each country should concentrate on their own citizens. I don't, not any more. Of course in the eyes of God, race, nationality and language makes no difference, but they do in the eyes of men, and it is to men - and women - that we must appeal to make it harder for this sort of thing to happen next time.

So, let there be many reminders, in film or print or webpage, of the problems never solved, quarrels - in many languages - never patched up, confusions never cleared, messages never replied to, beds never made, bills never paid, goodbyes never said of 4,000 people who did not know that their chance was over.

Multi-cultural education in Bradford

Remember Ray Honeyford? He was a headmaster forced out of office some years ago in a storm of protest, for saying more or less exactly what our Labour Home Secretary said the other day. Instead of crawling away to die, Honeyford decided to make a living as a columnist, and is ten times more influential than he ever was before. I hope, but doubt, that his persecutors will reflect on the phrase "unintended consequences."

It always makes me feel odd to cast my mind back. Once upon a time I was a conscientious socialist who did not like to see such "aberrations" as the fury against this man, and similar periodic outbursts of frenzy. What I once thought of as inexplicable fevers I now view as the normal boiling blood temperature of any system that supresses freedom of association - the bubbles just pop sometimes, that's all.

Oh, and another thing!

"Johnny Walker," I ask you! What business did the man have being called Johnny Walker, heh? Talibanised. Terrible thing to happen to a brand of whisky.

Two takes on fundamentalism.

Reader Brian Hoffman makes an interesting juxtaposition. First he cites my excerpts from Edward Said in the Guardian. Then he quotes Glenn Sacks in the San Francisco Gate (he did provide a link, but I can't make it work), writing on American Taliban Johnny Walker:

GS:Those willing to sacrifice for their beliefs deserve respect -- even if what they believe in is foolish. As a teenager, American Taliban fighter John Phillip Walker gave up a comfortable life in Marin County and traveled halfway around the world to put his life on the line for his religious convictions. How many of us are that courageous?

BH: So, which is it? What's your wager that if we go to Glenn Sacks' house, we find a copy of 'Orientalism', probably with marginal notes saying things like "yes, very true"? Let me guess: Christian fundamentalism is irredemiably dangerous and evil, BUT Johnny Walker's is just spiritual exploration, even though he was walking around with an AK and was six months or so in Afghanistan, where he went because it was cooler, you know, dude, more "Islamic." Did he beat women who showed an ankle? Did he collapse a wall on gay people, or was he more "moderate" than that, merely throwing them from a roof?

He is right. There is a bizarre double standard operating here. Mind you, I do take Glenn Sacks' point that courage is to be admired, but only in the sense that one can admire the courage of, say, the SS or the Khmer Rouge, preferably from a safe distance, or, failing that, from the happy end of a gunsight.

Questions of Deep Portent Part II: Back to Edward Said.

I tried. I came back from the Nativity full of peace and goodwill to all men, even him. I had some success in feeling sorry for him because it must have been a horrible experience seeing, for the first time, angry faces amid the admiring crowds; and because he has leukemia, but the guy is just such a swamp-thing of moral relativism that any part of him you want to grab on to liquefies as soon as you reach out. How's this:

ES: Yes, they always want answers. In a certain sense you have to provide some answers, but they're different kinds of answers to different kinds of questions. I'm often asked about the Middle East - people always want to know what is going to happen. The other kind of question is, "Why don't you stop killing people?" Well, that's an American question.

Having several thousands of your citizens killed might prompt Americans to make a polite enquiry on the point, yes. But Said has better things to do than actually answer.

ES: I think it's important for an intellectual to steer discussion away from what passes for pragmatic things, things that require quick answers.

Note who does the steering. I can certainly see where the self-interest of the intellectual would lie. He has every incentive to portray non-intellectuals as simple-minded fools who must be led away, lest they come up with "quick answers" such as "murder is murder" or "the Emperor has no clothes." Said is proud of his ability to keep those questions coming:

ES: He [Huntingdon, who wrote The Clash of Civilisations]never thinks that cultures are about questioning, they really aren't watertight - they're made of jelly, they keep falling into each other and combining. The idea of fundamentalism is common to every one of them. It's really about literalism. That's what people like Huntington and Osama bin Laden are about: they take a text, which may be full of subtlety and uncertainty and incertitude, and they turn it into a clear pronouncement for action.

Someone remind me who it was made the definitive response last time Said went on about "interpenetration" of the modern arab and western cultures: "We build the planes and the skyscrapers. You arabs slit the throats of stewardesses and fly the planes into the skyscrapers. The dividing line seems clear enough to me."

Arma virumque cano

but others have a different song. Tim Blair gives the deeply considered philosophy of Boondocks cartoonist Aaron McGruder an airing in "Just Go Broke Already". For ease of study Mr Blair divides his account of McGruder's nuggets of wisdom into subheadings such as:

On McGruder’s vast military scholarship: "You know what? World War II was fucked up. How many millions of people died good and bad? Could World War II have been fought differently? I don’t know. There are few wars where innocent people don't die."

I just love the 'Let Us End With Questions of Deep Portent' style, as taught to documentary makers everywhere. It serves to make you look thoughtful and leaves to others the tedious business of answering. If Mr McGruder did care to answer some of his own questions, we might discover which he thinks were the "few" wars where no innocent people died.

What Said said

in the Guardian: It all starts off sweet as candy, little Edward's memories of growing up with a confused sense of identity and so on. You can tell the reporter wasn't going to get caught obsessing on September 11 too early. The interesting stuff starts five or six paragraphs down. And I have to be out of here in five minutes, so, while waiting to hear my views you can form your own. Here's the interview

From "102 Dalmatians"

...Cruella caught sight of the puppies. She rushed to pet them - but just then Big Ben chimed... At once, Cruella's hair sprouted wildly from her head, then she raced out into the street, shouting evilly, "Cruella's ba-a-a-ck! Hahahahaha!

And so am I.

Alas, I can't settle down to serious blogging this fine morning because I have a different treat in store, namely the school Nativity play. I want to enjoy as many performances as possible before they reclassify it as a Winter Festival With Pseudo-Historical Birth-Legend Elements play.

Anyone who sent me an e-mail over the last few days, be patient while I work through the pile. All except Dawson.com who gets a big snuggy hug* right now.

*Enjoy it while you can. Soon to be reclassified as a Non-Exclusive Platonic Solidarity Gesture.