Charley Reese

I just learned that columnist Charley Reese has passed on.  You can read about him here, here, and here.  Here is an archive of some of his columns.

I’ve had seasons in my life when I read him, and I’ve had seasons when I have not.  When I was a child, I read him, for his column was in my local paper (and someone who worked at the paper told me that Reese’s columns were usually much saltier than they were after the paper edited them!).  Reese leaned more to the right than to the left, but he felt free to criticize hypocrisy wherever he saw it.  He also was not afraid to think outside the box.

I later read him when I lived in New York City and then in Cincinnati.  He was a major critic of the Iraq War.  In one of his columns, Reese contradicted Sean Hannity by saying that the war’s destruction of the Iraqi Museum truly was a tragedy.  That comment impacted me, even though I was a supporter of the Iraq War at the time.  Moreover, reading Charley Reese and other conservatives who voted for John Kerry played a significant role in some of my own ideological shifts.

Some of you may read wikipedia’s article or some of Reese’s columns, find something controversial, and ask me if I agree with those controversial positions.  Let me respond.  For one, I liked Charley Reese’s columns, but I did not agree with all of what he said.  But, second, there was much more to the man and his thoughts than a couple of controversial positions that he held.  Yes, maybe he held a controversial position here and there, but he also was quite progressive on a number of issues.

And I had to appreciate his blunt honesty.  If you’re the type of person who gets tired of hearing the same banal soundbites and talking points over and over again, or of seeing people try to justify someone simply because that person is in their own political party, read some of Charley Reese’s old columns.  You might find them refreshing, like I did!

Margaret Thatcher

I just learned that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has passed on.

I suppose that I liked Margaret Thatcher’s policies back when I was a conservative.  I would read in my college political science class about how she rolled back government and cut taxes and government spending, and inflation in Great Britain came down.  I would think to myself, “Of course!  That’s how it works!”  As time went on, however, I learned that she cut some taxes but imposed others; that her spending cuts were quite draconian and hurt people; that she was all for fiscal responsibility, until she decided to launch that invasion of the Falklands; and that there were economic problems that got worse on her watch (unemployment, at least until 1987).  Plus, while I think that she deserves some credit for the fall of totalitarian Communism, I don’t believe that she was a fine judge of character in standing up for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as long as she did, trying to help him to escape being held legally accountable for his human rights abuses.

So, on some level, she is one of the many exemplifications of my disillusionment with conservatism.  That’s not to say that I lean toward the other extreme, for I can understand her concern that unions were holding the country hostage.  In a poignant scene of the movie The Iron Lady, in which Meryl Streep plays Margaret Thatcher, Thatcher cannot tolerate the stench of garbage on the street, which is due to a strike.  That’s a good example of why I struggle over unions: I am sad that their influence in the U.S. has declined because they ensured that workers were paid a decent wage and that wealth was more evenly distributed, and yet I don’t like the way that unions have held places hostage with their strikes.

Margaret Thatcher is someone I would like to read more about.  It’s not because I agree with all of her policies, though I do find them intriguing, as someone who has enjoyed reading about conservatism.  Rather, it’s because she was a strong woman, in a world that was dominated by men.  I’d like to read about her, the same way that I would like to read books about Hillary Clinton.  Someday, I plan to read books by and about Thatcher.  I won’t do a Year (or More) of Thatcher, the way that I’m doing a Year (or More) of Nixon.  But I’ll read some books by and about her.

I watched The Iron Lady not long ago, and another poignant scene in that movie was when the elderly Thatcher was in a small grocery store.  Nobody recognized her!  People cut in front of her in line!  They didn’t realize that they were in the presence of a notorious figure in history.

Roger Ebert

I just learned (with sadness) that film critic Roger Ebert has passed on.  In this post, I would like to highlight my favorite movie reviews that he did.  I cannot access his page, so I will write on the basis of what I remember.

UPDATE: The site of Ebert’s reviews is now back up.  It appears that I misremembered some of the reviews that I read.  For example, Ebert did not teach in an inner-city school, but in a black area in Cape Town, South Africa.  On his Walk to Remember review, he says that Mandy Moore’s performance is not typical of a lot of teenage dramas, but he doesn’t explicitly praise her for playing a Christian.

The Rapture (1991): Mimi Rogers plays a swinger and a lonely telephone operator who converts to Christianity, only to later leave the faith later in the movie.  Roger Ebert said that her character learned what many people learn: that the world is not fair.  Roger Ebert’s reviews were often honest and thoughtful about faith, both when he was praising faith-affirming films, and also when he was praising films that offended a lot of conservative Christians.

Dangerous Minds (1995): I vaguely recall reading in Robert Ebert’s review of this movie that he once taught in an inner-city school.

The Majestic (2001): Jim Carrey plays a man who loses his memory during the McCarthyite era.  He defends the Constitution before the House Committee on Un-American activities.  Roger Ebert said that the film had an important lesson, in a time when the government might seek to undermine our civil liberties.  This was during the aftermath of 9/11.

Star Wars II: Attack of the Cones (2001): I laughed when Roger Ebert mocked the wooden dialogue on this particular Star Wars movie, especially the part where Anakin says to Padme that she is not like sand because sand is course and rough, whereas she is soft and smooth.

A Walk to Remember (2002): Mandy Moore plays the devout daughter of a preacher.  She is marginalized at her school, yet the popular bad boy falls in love with her.  But she is dying of leukemia.  Roger Ebert praised Mandy Moore for choosing to play a devout Christian in a movie, an unlikely move for many actresses seeking popularity.

The Passion of the Christ (2004): Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ was an extremely controversial movie, as some praised the film as an affirmation of the Christian faith, whereas others contended that it was anti-Semitic and excessively violent.  Roger Ebert tactfully acknowledged that those who criticized the film had valid concerns, yet he thoughtfully disagreed with them.  Ebert gave the film four stars.

Lady in the Water (2006): Ebert ripped this film to shreds!  But he still acknowledged that it had a moment of thoughtfulness: when one of the character’s was trying to hear from God by looking at cereal boxes.

Doubt (2008): Viola Davis was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in this movie, even though she was not in the movie for that long.  But, Ebert noted, Viola did hold her own before the most widely-renowned actress of this decade (Meryl Streep).  (Or maybe Ebert said it was longer than a decade!)

R.I.P., Roger Ebert.  I’ll miss your thoughtful movie reviews, and your humble and insightful reflections on life, politics, and faith.

Robert Bork

Robert Bork has passed on.  Bork was a conservative whom President Ronald Reagan nominated to be on the U.S. Supreme Court, but the U.S. Senate voted against his confirmation, and the empty slot eventually went to Anthony Kennedy instead.  Liberal Senators attacked Bork so vehemently that the name “Bork” became a verb meaning “To defeat a judicial nomination through a concerted attack on the nominee’s character, background and philosophy” (see here).

Senator Edward Kennedy made the provocative statement on the Senate floor that “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.”  See here.

Bork denied Kennedy’s characterization of his positions.  It would be interesting to read Bork’s thoughts at some time.  Bork was an intelligent man, who taught at Yale Law School (and two of his students were Bill and Hillary Clinton!).  I own a copy of his Tempting of America, but it is not with me.  Maybe I can find it at my Dad’s house when I go back to Indiana this coming February for my sister’s wedding.  In the past, I did not read the book because I feared that I would not not understand it, but by now I have taken a class in constitutional law, followed the news, watched judicial hearings on C-Span, and read a lot of books, so I’d probably be able to understand Bork’s book better were I to read it now.  And, of course, I would blog through it!

When I took a class on constitutional law at DePauw University, my professor said that Bork was an originalist, who wanted for constitutional interpretation to be based on the original intent behind the Constitution.  Overall, that is probably correct.  And yet, as I read about Bork last night, I saw that he realized that things could get pretty murky when it came to interpreting the Constitution according to its original intent.  On Brown vs. the Board of Education, for example, Bork realized that many of the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratifiers did not believe that segregation was incompatible with equality, and yet Bork said that we can see that legal segregation in the South contributed to inequality between whites and African-Americans.  You have an originalist tension here: Do you go with the mindset of the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratifiers, or do you go with the goal of the Fourteenth Amendment itself?  Because the aim of the Fourteenth Amendment was equality under the law, Bork supported Brown’s ban on legally segregated public schools.  (See here for the quote about Brown from Bork’s Tempting of America.)

Bork may have backtracked from originalism in his approach to the Second Amendment.  This review of Bork’s Slouching Towards Gomorrah quotes Bork as saying: “The Second Amendment was designed to allow states to defend themselves against a possibly tyrannical national government. Now that the federal government has stealth bombers and nuclear weapons, it is hard to imagine what people would need to keep in the garage to serve that purpose” (p. 166n).  This intrigued me because of the debates about the Second Amendment, especially after the recent school shooting.  Some argue that the Second Amendment primarily concerns the militia, like the National Guard, whereas others contend that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to bear arms, one reason being that the Founders wanted for people to be able to stand against their government if it becomes too oppressive.  Bork appears to hold to a combination of these two perspectives: yes, the Second Amendment concerns state militias, but the Amendment exists so that the states could defend themselves from the national government if it became overly oppressive.  But Bork does not seem to think that such a rationale would work nowadays, when weaponry is much more advanced.  I don’t have access to Bork’s book, but is Bork acknowledging that there are times when constitutional interpretation has to take into consideration new realities, rather than just focusing on original intent?

I’d like to mention one more thing: When the Alito hearings (I think) were going on, C-Span was playing the Bork hearings, and I watched some of them.  I thought it was cool that Bork was being questioned about his beard, and Bork explained its history!

As someone who leans more to the Left, I’m glad that Robert Bork was not on the Supreme Court.  But I do admire his mind, not to mention the boldness and the courage that he displayed when he was under attack from his liberal critics!  Someday, I’d like to engage his works, even if I end up disagreeing with most of what he had to say.

Larry Hagman

As many of you know, actor Larry Hagman has passed on.  Hagman is best known for his roles in I Dream of Jeannie and Dallas.

I wasn’t allowed to watch Dallas when I was a kid, but I occasionally got to sneak in an episode!  One baby sitter allowed me to stay up late to watch part of Dallas.  And, when my family traveled for the Feast of Tabernacles, we all ended up sharing a motel room, and I’d get to watch Dallas and Falcon Crest because, well, my parents didn’t want to miss them!

I was allowed to watch I Dream of Jeannie, however.  It was on in syndication during the afternoons.  I liked the music that played whenever Dr. Bellows was baffled!  Also, Major Nelson shouting “Jeannie!” whenever Jeannie had placed him in a precarious situation was classic.

I got to watch Dallas with my family when I was in college, when it was playing in syndication on a country music cable station.  I loved J.R.  My favorite line of his was whenever he said “Is that a fact?” after someone had informed him of certain developments that he had caused, but that he didn’t want people to know that he caused.  I liked the affable, charming, and yet ironic tone in J.R.’s voice whenever he said that.

And, believe it or not, J.R. could have a sense of integrity.  I remember one episode of Dallas in which a blue-collar worker came into J.R.’s office and informed him of something.  For one, I liked the fact that J.R. asked a complete stranger coming into his office “What can I do for you?”  I doubt that you see that kind of openness among most rushed, busy CEOs!  But, second, I liked J.R.’s response after the guy shared with J.R. the information that he came to share, which would be to J.R.’s benefit.  “Man, I’m going to make it worth your while for coming to me first!”  J.R. had the integrity to reward those who helped him out!

R.I.P., Larry Hagman!

George McGovern

I just learned that George McGovern has passed on.  George McGovern ran for President against Richard Nixon in 1972.

As I’ve said on this blog before, I used to be more of a right-wing Republican.  On account of that, I tended to associate McGovern with the smug, condescending, obnoxious, socialistic, soft-on communism, draft-dodging, unpatriotic, activist Left that emerged in the 1960′s-1970′s.  (Or so I characterized it.)

But there were a variety of things that changed my mind about McGovern, even when I was a conservative.  First, I was listening to McGovern on Sean Hannity’s show, and McGovern came across to me as a nice and decent guy.  Second, McGovern came to Cincinnati (where I was living at the time) to speak about his service as a soldier in World War II, and it surprised me to learn that he was a veteran.  Third, I was watching a 1972 McGovern campaign ad, in which a working class guy was challenging McGovern on welfare and asking why the poor can’t be put to work—-like cleaning the streets.  McGovern responded that he agrees, and that his goal is for people to have jobs.  See here for the commercial—-it’s the fifth from the left in the “Democrat” column.  This commercial helped to shift my conception of the Left, for I had long regarded the Right as the ideology that wants for people to work, when, actually, the Left is for work, too!  And, fourth, I read Bill Kauffman’s excellent book on anti-war conservatism, Ain’t My America, which presented George McGovern as a person of faith and as one who sought to understand George Wallace supporters rather than looking down on them.  I read in another book, Grand New Party, that McGovern disdained bureaucracies, which resonated with me back when I was a conservative.  See here for my post on Ain’t My America, and here for my post on Grand New Party.

Recently, I watched the Wonder Years episode about George McGovern.  It was called “Politics as Usual”, and you can watch it on YouTube here.  On this episode, McGovern is a big stir.  Kevin’s Mom notes that people at the college she attends are voting for McGovern, and she likes McGovern’s stance on women.  Kevin’s Dad, a conservative, actually seems to like McGovern at first, even though at the end of the day he probably voted for Nixon.  And Kevin’s girlfriend, Winnie, has joined the McGovern campaign and signed Kevin up for it because she opposes the Vietnam War, for her brother was killed in it.  Kevin is jealous of the head McGovern campaign official in his area, for he feels that the guy has sights on Winnie.  When Winnie goes to a late-night campaign meeting, Kevin breaks into the Democratic headquarters, and there he meets Senator McGovern (or, actually, someone playing him)!  After McGovern loses badly, the campaign official tells Winnie that he didn’t expect for McGovern to win anyway, and he speculates to another campaign worker that Kennedy may run in the next election.  Winnie is disappointed.  But Kevin can see where he’s coming from—-that the campaign official will come back and fight another day.  Kevin also reflects that the McGovern campaign was a time when young people got involved in the political process and tried to make a difference.  I think it’s cool when people who ordinarily aren’t involved in the political process become involved.  I think this when I consider the McGovern campaign, and also when I consider how a number of fundamentalist Christians first entered politics with the Goldwater campaign, the Moral Majority, and local educational controversies.  They learned that (to echo C.J. Cregg on The West Wing) the people who have a say are the ones who show up, and that, if they’re discontent about society, they should get involved and try to make a difference.

I actually bought a book by McGovern not long ago.  It was called The Essential America, and it’s about liberalism in the American tradition.  When looking for a McGovern book to read, I learned that McGovern had an alcoholic daughter who died, and he wrote a book entitled Terry: My Daughter’s Life-and-Death Struggle with Alcoholism.  It was sad to learn that he had experienced that kind of pain.  More recently, I read Cal Thomas’ interview with McGovern in the 1999 book, Blinded by Might: Why the Religious Right Can’t Save America, in which McGovern thoughtfully reflects on the errors of the religious right and the religious left, the role of religion in politics, his own errors in the 1972 election (i.e., he let Nixon define him), and his personal faith.  My post on this will appear next month.  Stay tuned!

R.I.P., George McGovern.

Frank Moore Cross

I recently learned that Frank Moore Cross has passed on.  Cross was a renowned scholar in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern languages.  I blogged through one of his books, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic.  To read my posts on that, see here, here, here, here, here, and here.

There were two things that Cross said that stood out to me.

The first thing is not clearly in my mind, but he was addressing in an interview the issue of biblical maximalism when it comes to the Exodus.  He said that there is a tendency among biblical maximalists to rob Peter to pay Paul.  What he probably meant is that many biblical maximalists try to defend the faith by arguing that events in the Bible actually happened (on some level), and yet their arguments tend to undercut the faith.  I forget the exact example that he used, but one that comes to my mind is how some maximalists contend that we can say that the Sea of Reeds parted for the reason that seas have parted at other times throughout history.  On the one hand, this argument supports the historicity of the Sea of Reeds parting.  On the other hand, it treats the parting as a natural event that has occurred at other times in history, which arguably takes supernatural intervention out of the picture.  I was one time giving a presentation on the historicity of the Exodus for a class, and my professor chuckled when I quoted Cross’ remarks about the tendency within maximalism to rob Peter to pay Paul.

The second thing that stood out to me was something that I read on James Tabor’s blog.  See here.  Cross was talking about his own religious background as a Calvinist, a tradition that valued the Old as well as the New Testament.  But Cross said that he preferred the world of the Old Testament because it’s more austere, whereas the New Testament has a lot of demons and spirits.  I could identify with Cross’ comments on a couple of levels.  I myself grew up in a religious tradition, Armstrongism, that put a lot of emphasis on the Old Testament, albeit not in the exact same way that Calvinists do.  And, for some reason, like Cross, I myself prefer to study the Old Testament more than the New.  My reason for this is not entirely the same as Cross’, for I don’t have a great problem with supernaturalism.  Perhaps my reason is that the Old Testament is more of a mystery to me that I enjoy trying to unravel—-with its enigmatic laws and prophecies.  And there could be other reasons that I have yet to identify!

R.I.P., Frank Moore Cross.

Gary Collins and Arlen Specter

I’d like to honor two men who passed on recently: Gary Collins and Arlen Specter.

1.  I watched Gary Collins on Hour Magazine when I was a child.  Granted, he had his feet of clay (see here), but I remember him as a pleasant host on that program.

2.  I used to not like Arlen Specter because I was a right-winger and I considered him to be a RINO on account of his pro-choice stance.  But I admired him during the Roberts hearings (or perhaps it was the Alito hearings) when he was telling Senators Kennedy and Biden to let the judicial nominee answer their questions rather than interrupting him.

In terms of how I feel about Arlen Specter today, when I’m more left-wing, I don’t know.  I find it funny that Kevin Costner mentioned him in the JFK movie as the “ambitious junior prosecutor” who came up with the magic-bullet theory (see here).  I wonder how Arlen felt about that!  And I was thinking back to a 1996 debate between Arlen Specter and Pat Buchanan on Meet the Press (I think that was the show).  I recall Buchanan saying that a President should disregard the Supreme Court when it goes too far, as Thomas Jefferson did, and Specter then replied that we’re a nation of laws, and Pat Buchanan should not feel free to disregard institutions whenever they disagree with him.  I tend to agree with Specter on that, whatever Thomas Jefferson did.  Would I make obedience of the Supreme Court an absolute?  Probably not, but I’d say that, if it were to be challenged, that challenge would have to take place reluctantly and after a lot of weighing of the options, for we don’t want a country in which people can just disobey the law whenever they feel like it.  That would nullify necessary institutions.

Alex Karras

I just learned that football player and actor Alex Karras has passed on.  I mainly know Karras as George, the adoptive father of Webster Long in the 1980′s sitcom, Webster.  I used to watch this show on Friday nights, and also when it was in syndication.

I always liked Karras’ character.  He was like a teddy bear.  He also came across as likeable and laid-back.  I particularly remember two episodes.  The first one was when Webster was angry at God because he thought that God had killed his mother and father, and so Katherine (Webster’s adoptive mother) was playing devil’s advocate at the church that Webster and his Uncle Philip attended.  Essentially, she would question God, and George and Webster’s Uncle Philip would defend him.  Katherine was asking why God allowed Webster to be sick one time, and George responded that there were many days of the year when Webster was not sick.  George was giving a long, drawn-out answer, with a lot of numbers, and Uncle Philip finally said, “We get the point, George.”  Come to think of it, watching this episode this may have been my first exposure to the problem of evil and theodicy.

The other episode that I remember was when George’s Greek father was a janitor at Webster’s school and was singing to his broom, prompting Webster’s friends to make fun of him.  When Webster, George, and George’s dad were talking about Webster being embarrassed by his grandfather, Webster brought up the broom, and George said, “Oh, come on, Dad, not the broom!”  I was used to shows in which adults were right and kids were wrong (at least that’s how I remember the shows, even if they were more complex than that), but, here, George, an adult, was identifying with Webster.  But Webster still rebukes his friends at the end for making fun of his grandfather!

R.I.P., Alex Karras.

William Windom

I just learned that actor William Windom passed on last week.

Of course, he’s known as Commodore Decker on the Star Trek episode, “The Doomsday Machine”.  That’s one of my Dad’s favorite episodes (we called it “the tube one”), but there are other Star Trek episodes that I like much better!

Windom also played Ray Krebbs “father”, Amos, on Dallas.  I put father in quotation marks because Ray’s real dad was Jock Ewing.  My favorite scene was when Amos Krebbs tried to get Jock’s attention on the street by saying “Mr. Ewing”, and Jock looked behind him and gruffly said, “Yeah?”, like Jock didn’t want to deal with any riffraff.

I also liked Windom’s role as the cold pastor in the Highway to Heaven episode, “A Child of God”.  I wrote a post in my first year of blogging about this episode—-see here.

And William Windom played the prosecutor in the movie, To Kill a Mockingbird, starring Gregory Peck.

Windom was in a lot of other stuff, but I remember him most for these roles.

R.I.P., William Windom.