News Rundown August 8th, 2008

Here's the News Rundown:

The Olympics

Rod Dreher has mixed feelings:

When I'm thinking with my head, I believe that it's in the world's interest for China to have a good Olympics. China's is one of the world's great cultures. Its rise cannot be stopped, only accomodated, and it's better for peace and stability that the Chinese people, given their nationalism, have reason to feel proud on the world stage, and not have their noses rubbed in their failings.

When I'm thinking with my heart, though, my thoughts run along the lines of, "You ChiComs deserve to have the world see that you're a bunch of environment-fouling, Christians-repressing, Falun Gong-beating, Tibet-crushing goons who have earned only the world's fear, not its decent respect, given your record on human rights and the environment."

I suspect the truth is somewhere in between.

Tom Gibson remembers Chariots of Fire.

Who knows how the Chariots of Fire story is likely to go down in communist China, but we are about to find out. Eric Liddell, or Li Airui as he was known in the Far East, was considered a godly, heroic figure in non-communist China, and now the modern-day Chinese authorities have agreed to let his story of Christian humanity and sporting excellence be told.

John Keddie’s acclaimed Running the Race, a biography that places Liddell’s sporting life in the religious context in which it was lived, has been published in Mandarin and will be launched in China next month - the land where the 1924 Olympic 400 yards champion was born, worked as a missionary and died in a Japanese internment camp.

I personally lack enthusiasm for the Olympics. Part of it is due to the abuses in China, but part of it is due to the idealism surrounding the Olympics itself. Actually, even that isn't true. Lofty ideals can be a good thing, and we often need them more than we'd care to admit. What bothers me is the tremendous discord between the lofty ideals and the ulterior motives surrounding the Olympics in real life--it reeks of duplicity. NBC has promos for the Olympics, raving how the Olympics creates moments "shared by the entire world," complete with shots of athletic competition interspersed with shots of people watching from all around the world--South American Latinos, East Asians, etc. The implication is, "Watch the Olympics, and you'll be doing you're part to foster global harmony!" The reality is, "Watch the Olympics, and GE's advertising revenue will increase!" To make brothers of aliens, it will take more than a mutual interest in the Men's 400 Meters. Moreover, does sharing a viewing experience really bring people closer together? Viewers of the last two College Football National Championships will attest that relations between fans of the Big Ten and SEC have soured quite a bit. Maybe in January President Obama can establish a inter-regional diplomatic envoy as part of our national healing. (Oh, that was mean--I'm sorry. Here, I'll even it out: President McCain will station troops in Gainesville, Florida, for as long as it takes--even 100 years--to create a functional society free from extremism and violence. There. Making fun of politicians is dangerous, but making fun of Florida Gators is always the right move.)

In any case, back to the Olympics. It's not just an athletic event, it's a free-for-all for corporate advertisers to sell more product, especially into the emerging Chinese market, and for China to tout its national glories. Not that companies and countries can't do these things, but to do them in the context of a putatively-neutral celebration of humanity and its physical achievements is at best crass and at worst manipulative.

The Election

McCain's in serious credit card debt.

"Senators John McCain and Barack Obama released their Senate financial disclosure statements on Friday, revealing that Mr. McCain and his wife had at least $225,000 in credit card debt....

The bulk of the McCains’ obligations stemmed from a pair of American Express credit cards that are held in Cindy McCain’s name. According to the disclosure reports, which present information on debts in a range rather than providing a precise figure, Mrs. McCain owed $100,000 to $250,000 on each card.

Another charge card, held by what was described as a “dependent child,” had also accumulated debts of $15,000 to $50,000. In addition, a credit card held jointly by the couple was carrying $10,000 to $15,000 in debt, the filing indicated, at a stiff 25.99 percent interest rate. "

Al Gore still wastes electricity.

After the Tennessee Center for Policy Research exposed Gore’s massive home energy use, the former Vice President scurried to make his home more energy-efficient. Despite adding solar panels, installing a geothermal system, replacing existing light bulbs with more efficient models, and overhauling the home’s windows and ductwork, Gore now consumes more electricity than before the “green” overhaul.

Peggy Noonan calls Obama a glowworm.

Mr. Obama consistently shows that he doesn't know what he doesn't know. It's a theme with his talented, confident staff. They don't know what they don't know either. Because they're young and they've never been in power and it takes time to know what you don't know. The presidential-type seal with OBAMA on it, the sometimes over-the-top rhetoric about healing the earth and parting the seas. They pick the biggest, showiest venue for the Berlin speech, the Brandenburg Gate, just like a president, not realizing people would think: Ya gotta earn that one, kid. Going to Europe was fine, but they should have gone in modestly, with a modest venue, quietly spread word that his speech was open to the public, and then left the watching world awed by the hordes that showed up. For they would have. "We couldn't help it, they love him!" It would have looked as if Europe was coming to him, and let that sink in back home.

Anyone can carp like this in retrospect, but when you know what you don't know, you can plan like this in advance.

* * *

Two weeks ago a journalist, a moderate liberal, spoke to me of what he called Mr. Obama's arrogance. I said I didn't think it was arrogance but high self-regard. He said there's no difference. I said no, arrogance has an air about it of pushing people around, insisting on your way. Mr. Obama doesn't seem like that. He took down a machine without raising his voice. Extremely high self-regard, though, can itself be a problem.

"What's wrong with that?" my friend said. "You want a self-confident president."

I said yes, but it brings up the Churchill question. Churchill had been scored by an acquaintance for his own very high self-regard, and responded with what was for him a certain sheepishness. "We're all worms," he said, "but I do believe I am a glowworm." He believed he was great, and he was. Is Mr. Obama a glowworm? Does he have real greatness in him? Or is he, say, a product of the self-esteem campaign, that movement within the schools and homes of our country the past 25 years that says the way to get a winner is to tell the kid he's a winner every day? You can get some true people of achievement that way, because some people need a lot of reinforcement to rise. But you can also get, not to put too fine a point of it, empty suits that take on a normal shape only because they're so puffed up with ego.

Is Mr. Obama's self-conception in line with his gifts, depth, wisdom and character? That's the big question, I suspect, on a number of minds.

The Culture

David Brooks says out culture is focused on the medium, not the message. Buzz and faddishness overrules meaning.

But on or about June 29, 2007, human character changed. That, of course, was the release date of the first iPhone.

On that date, media displaced culture. As commenters on The American Scene blog have pointed out, the means of transmission replaced the content of culture as the center of historical excitement and as the marker of social status.

Now the global thought-leader is defined less by what culture he enjoys than by the smartphone, social bookmarking site, social network and e-mail provider he uses to store and transmit it. (In this era, MySpace is the new leisure suit and an AOL e-mail address is a scarlet letter of techno-shame.)

Today, Kindle can change the world, but nobody expects much from a mere novel. The brain overshadows the mind. Design overshadows art.

This transition has produced some new status rules. In the first place, prestige has shifted from the producer of art to the aggregator and the appraiser. Inventors, artists and writers come and go, but buzz is forever. Maximum status goes to the Gladwellian heroes who occupy the convergence points of the Internet infosystem — Web sites like Pitchfork for music, Gizmodo for gadgets, Bookforum for ideas, etc.

These tastemakers surf the obscure niches of the culture market bringing back fashion-forward nuggets of coolness for their throngs of grateful disciples.

Second, in order to cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of.

Dan Larison says David Brooks overstates things.

No, human character did not change. One thing that has been consistent and recognizable throughout every stage of competing for status and gadget-collecting is the enduring human temptation to fall prey to the latest fad....

The beauty of these silly fads today is that they pass so much more quickly than they once did, if only to be replaced by yet another fad....

The most reassuring thing about all of this is that none of this status competition of obtaining and using gadgets really matters, and by its very transitory nature it confirms for us that it doesn’t matter.

Matt Conner says people get too worked up over nude art.

This country is going to hell. I don’t mean literal hell, as I am leaving spirituality out of this for a second. I just mean that we are shooting ourselves in the foot. A parent in Georgia is calling for a ban of Harry Potter. An art teacher is fired for going to an art museum on a principal-endorsed, parental-permission given trip. The teacher has been teaching for 28 years! She is almost 60! But some kids came back and apparently told mom and/or dad that there were breasts exposed in 3-D form, and then chaos ensued.

When you and I refuse to be challenged or shaped by different political viewpoints, we become closed-minded, dogmatic and really no good to anyone. Does this have consequences in the art world as well? When you and I refuse to listen to the talents of others, to view something that is different, to take in beauty in all its forms, do we miss out on what true beauty really is? I would answer that we do.

Commenter Nates says, not so fast.

I think there are a bunch of people like me, young men, especially middle and high school age who, in a culture that is already preaching a very loud and false gospel about sex, it doesn’t help to see breasts or the naked female form. In our lust and our fallenness, we can easily use these to begin to objectionalize women...

We need a holistic teaching of beauty and sexuality in the church and we need to allow our Christian biblical worldviews to erupt (not just ooze, but erupt) out of our private lives into everything we do.

Drug Addictions

Theodore Dalrymple says common understanding of heroin addiction may be skewed.

WORLD: Then how have addicts come to be considered blameless patients, creatures without choice?

DALRYMPLE: This is the result of a long historical process, which I date back to the English Romantics of the first quarter of the 19th century, particularly Thomas De Quincey and his very influential Confessions of an English Opium Eater. This book (the two editions published in his lifetime are very different, and the differences themselves expose the untruthfulness of De Quincey) contains all the misconceptions that have been faithfully handed down by authors ever since, including the odious Burroughs. Every fictional and cinematographic representation of heroin addiction has repeated uncritically De Quincey's equivocations, falsifications, and exaggerations.

WORLD: So why do we hear that withdrawal from heroin is physically dangerous when so many people beat their addictions without medical assistance?

DALRYMPLE: This is an interesting cultural phenomenon. People are often very surprised to learn that withdrawal from opiates (unless combined with other drugs, and with the single rare exception of withdrawal in pregnancy) is a trivial medical condition, unlike withdrawal from alcohol when it results in Delirium Tremens. The misconception arises because of the repeated misrepresentations in books and films. Of course, the myth of the horrors of withdrawal serves the interests of addicts who do not want to stop, and the professionals who want to "treat" addicts.

WORLD: What's the key evidence that heroin addiction is a spiritual or moral condition?

DALRYMPLE: There is lots of evidence. First, there are historical examples of thousands and indeed millions of opiate addicts giving up their addiction because of motivation to do so. Mao Tse Tung took a very dim view of opium addicts and threatened in the end to shoot them. When Mao threatened to shoot you, you took it seriously. Millions of people gave it up. It would not have made sense for Mao to say to people with rheumatoid arthritis, "I will shoot you if your joints don't become normal." It did make sense, even if it was wrong, to threaten to shoot addicts. There is therefore a conceptual difference between the two conditions.

NFL Hall of Fame Inductions

Art Monk depends on Christ and Christ alone:

“[E]ven now as a Hall of Famer, the one thing I want to make very clear is that my identity and my security is found in the Lord. And what defines me and my validation comes in having accepted his son Jesus Christ as my personal savior. And what defines me is the Word of God, and it’s the Word of God that will continue to shape and mold me into the person that I know he’s called me to be.

“So I’ve learned a long time ago never to put my faith or trust in man, for man will always fail you. Man will always disappoint you. But the Word of God says that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. And He will never fail you..."

Have a good day, readers.