Category Archives: Social Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Amanda Knox

6 Comments

My one and only post on this subject will just point to the one by John Hinderaker, in case any of my readers care.

[Update early afternoon]

OK, one more — Amanda Knox as femme fatale:

One lady I know offered the view that the femme fatale was a totally self-generated male creation. “The self-destructive acts are not orchestrated by women of some preternatural cunning. Most femme fatales do nothing. All the work is done by the men themselves. Femme fatales are only ordinary women who’ve accidentally found the right combination of buttons to push to make men do what they want. It is the fantasy of men that does the rest.” Her explanation made me uneasy because I had heard the same argument offered, in a political context, to explain the 2008 presidential elections. But in that view, we will never know any more about Amanda Knox than we will ever know about Barack Obama. Maybe neither actually exists as we think they do, except in our imaginations.

Well, the evidence against Obama continues to accumulate.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

More Guns

1 Comment

Less crime:

there were 14% fewer murders in Chicago compared to the first six months of last year – back when owning handguns was illegal. It was the largest drop in Chicago’s murder rate since the handgun ban went into effect in 1982.

Note also how this occurred during a time of extreme economic distress. So two “liberal” shibboleths — that guns and poverty cause crime — have been hammered here.

[Update a few minutes later]

South Florida officials are worried that they might actually be punished for blatantly violating the law.

Good. Fine them and remove the criminals from office. Make some examples.

General, Philosophy, Social Commentary

Connections

11 Comments

…some meditations:

I’m thinking: no dog, no bag hoarding instincts, no barf-containment. No iPod location mystery, no sorting through the glove compartment, no instantly-available barf bag. The reason this day didn’t end with a stinky car can be directly traced to the moment I walked past a pet shop in Uptown in April 1996, looked in the window, and saw my dog.

Wife took him for a walk later. He was slow. Very slow. “He’s not going to be with us much longer,” she said. Resigned. Then hopeful: “But I’ve been saying that for three years.”

“You saw him when the food showed up. Annoying as a puppy. Where did he take you tonight?”

“Well, I let him go where he wanted, and we went up the hill to the water tower, and then back down, and when we got home he didn’t want to go up the steps so he went down the street, and I thought he would go up the back steps, but he looked at me, like ‘I’m not done,’ and we walked east and around the neighborhood again. But it was dark and he can’t see anything.”

“But he can smell.”

Nearly deaf and nearly blind, and the world is still a story, every scent a character, every strong odor a twist in the plot. The dog walks outside and the world is his iPod, and it’s always set on shuffle. So it is for us all, really. If you have a dog you know how they come to the door and stand there waiting for you to let them out. Standing at the glass door. The wall that keeps the odors out. They can see, but they can’t smell. Daily life for us is just like that. If you’re lucky someone opens the door and all the glories rush over you.

It’s days like these that you realize how much you miss. For once, you saw all the connections. You suspect there are just as many threads between the now and the then every other day. Probably more. Would you go mad if you considered them? Would you exult to discover how everything braids itself together, fear for the action ten years gone that will explode down the road, anticipate the bloom that grows from a casual act last month? Sure. All of that. All these things. You can’t act if you remember everything. You shouldn’t act if you remember nothing.

What a writer. And he does it almost every single day.