Mark W Tiedemann

Category: culture

Words Don’t Matter

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

The message being put forward, especially by the Right, in the aftermath of the shootings in Arizona, is that it is absurd to blame the rhetoric of violence and hatred for the actions of anyone, let alone Jared Lee Loughner.  Words don’t matter.  The man is a loon, his actions cannot be laid at the feet of anyone else.  Taken far enough, by this reasoning he acted in complete isolation from all influences.  Maybe so.

But really—words don’t matter?

In 1774, Goethe published his novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, a seminal work in the so-called Sturm und Drang movement. …

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Crazy Is As….

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but bear with me.  A bit of confessional time.

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I’m an atheist.  To put it simply, I basically grew up and got over it.  Religion, to me, is historically and psychologically interesting, but does not represent any kind of reality.  The world, the universe, what have you, just doesn’t work that way, and for every example you can pull out of your hat of supposed “miracle” I can equal or better it with “shit happens” and just plain human synergy.  That anecdotal game can go on and on with neither side really running out of examples, leading no where, but just the fact that most miracles can be explained by mundane models suggests to me that the miracle is actually occurring inside the witnesses skulls. …

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Other Buzzzzzzzz

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I am not going to go see the new Green Hornet movie.  I knew that long before its release, when I heard Seth Rogen had been cast as the Hornet.  I just knew it would be a waste of everyone’s time, money, and sentiment.

I’m sorry.  Hollywood has been doing superhero movies now for decades and they’ve gotten a few of them pretty right.  Except for a ridiculous semi-musical romantic interlude, the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve was fine.  Mostly this was due to Reeve and co-star Gene Hackman (who can save just about any movie), but they treated the material lovingly the whole way. …

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Challenge the B.S.

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Let’s be clear:  no one should advocate censorship.

That said, we need to understand the power of language.  Images matter, words matter, what you say has an effect.  Every propagandist in history has grasped this essential truth.  Without oratory, Hitler and Goebbels would never have turned Germany into a killing machine.

The only antidote, however, is not less but more.  Not more propaganda, just more words, more images, more information.  More truth.

Ah, but, as the man said,  What is truth?

Sarah Palin, or her speech writers, has decided to play with that a bit and compare the criticism against her rather fevered rhetoric to the Blood Libel. …

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Taking Cues

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I’d intended to give this a little more thought, but the events in Arizona have prompted a response now.

In the last post, I opined about the atmosphere in the country generated by overheated rhetoric and the irrationality that has resulted from seemingly intransigent positions.  Some of the responses I received to that were of the “well, both sides do it” variety (which is true to an extent, but I think beside the point) and the “you can’t legislate civility or impose censorship” stripe.

As it is developing, the young man who attempted to murder Representative Gifford—and succeeded in killing six others—appears to be not of sound mind. …

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If You Can’t Play Nicely With Your Toys…

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

We finally have our Kennedy Moment in the current political climate.

Saturday, January 8th, 2011, is likely to go down as exactly that in the “Where were you when?” canon.  On that day, Jared Lee Loughner, age 22, went on a shooting rampage at a supermarket parking lot in Tucson, Arizona, killing six people and wounding eighteen others before bystanders tackled him.  (There may be a second man involved, police are searching for him.)

The rhetoric is already ramping up on both sides over this.  Loughner is a young man with, apparently, a history of mental difficulties.  What is interesting in all this is the suggestion that Sarah Palin is partly responsible. …

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So Right It’s Wrong

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Recently, Justice Antonin Scalia shot his mouth off about another bit of “social” judicial opinion and managed to be correct to a fault again.  Here is the article.  Basically, he is of the opinion that if a specific term or phrase does not appear in the Constitution, then that subject is simply not covered.  Most famously, this goes to the continuing argument over privacy.  There is, by Scalia’s reasoning (and I must add he is by no means alone in this—it is not merely his private opinion), no Constitutionally-protected right to privacy.

As far as it goes, this is correct, but beside the point. …

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Thoughts On The End of 2010

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I may start doing this every year.  I’ve been trying to write some posts about some of the more recent events in politics, but I keep following my arguments into a kind of WTF cul-de-sac.  Watching the last four months has been amazing.  Not in a good way.  Just dumbfounding by any measure.  So maybe it will work better if I just do a summary of my impressions of what has happened this past year.

I think I’ll say little about my personal situation.  It is what it is.  Like many people, the upside is hard to find.  To reiterate what I said a couple posts back, though, I am not in dire straits. …

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Explain It To Me

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

In the movie Philadelphia, Denzel Washington plays a savvy courtroom litigator whose catch-phrase in front of a jury is “Explain it to me like I’m eight-years-old.”  It’s a great line and maybe I’m looking for that kind of clarity now.

I really don’t know what to make of this.  Obama—who won election with a very solid majority of the popular vote and a most impressive majority of the electoral—has managed to be reasonable to the point of impotence.  He’s on the verge of validating every cliche about spineless intellectuals.  The man is smart, erudite, has charisma, and can’t seem to say no to the Right. …

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Reading and Lists

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

By now, I’m sure, many if not most people on FaceBook have encountered the so-called BBC list of books “everyone should read” but likely haven’t.  It’s an interesting meme, both for what is on it and for what is not, but also for the apparent idiocies it contains.  For example, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is listed and then, separately, The Complete Works of Shakespeare.  What, is Hamlet suddenly no longer part of the Complete Works?  Also, the first book of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series is listed and then—again separately—The Chronicles of Narnia.

Aside from the obvious lack of editing, this raises the number of books (or, in the case of Shakespeare, “books”) quite a bit above 100. …

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