Volume 38

JANUARY 2007

38. 8: SO, HOW MANY GAY ANGELS CAN YOU FIT ON THE HEAD OF A PIN?

(SOS, Part 9) 1.31.2007

2007, UrbisMedia

The word “homosexuals” came up only twice in the Bible sessions, once when Sy mentioned it in a list of social concerns, the second time when I brought it up in the context of love of thy neighbor. Both times it went over like an E-coli notice at the Grand Buffet. There was literally no reaction. Some of the group seized on any part of our statements to deflect attention to other matters, and Donald quickly steered us toward some vague passage of Hebrew scripture about graven images; not the one about this sort of stuff being an “abomination.” “The love that dare not speak its name” no one seemed to dare speak about. [1]

I don't put this all down to cowardice. Everybody in this group is in the “senior” generation, and I suspect that many are not that comfortable with this subject, especially among strangers. Donald, who had solicited us to say positive things about his Bible class to the cruise company so that he can get another free ride, doubtless wanted to avoid any “hot button” issues that might elicit comments of shock and dismay from any socially uptight participants. He needed to keep things clean and smarmy. This was to be a “love in” with only heterosexual hugging.

Christians are usually very uncomfortable when things get genital, which is where, implicitly, or explicitly, the homosexual issue often leads. [2] Ever since the beginning days of the Church they have been nervous speaking about those things . . . ah . . . you know . . . ahem . . . a . . . “down there.” They could get very weird about it. St. Simon Stylites thought it a good idea to castrate himself; not a bad idea for a guy who elected also to spend most of his life on the top of a column where you can't get a date with anything but a bird. Other “holy men” followed suit, but the practice might have fallen into disfavor because it's a dumb way to try to build a church considering what castration does to the birth rate. A smarter idea would be to make celibacy an “elite” status and tell the rest of faithful to procreate. “Recreational (not “procreational”) sex” is about all you can call “the love that dare not speak its name.” [3] Not that the Church wasn't instrumental in giving homosexuality some nice names, like faggot , for example. This “F-word” has acquired a currency similar to the “N-word” among Blacks, but is usually invoked with less insider irony by heteros. [4]

These days the Church has itself in a real pickle over the gay issue. Their problem with pederast priests has dragged it into the light because the common, and incorrect , perception is that these predatory prelates are gay and that pedophilia is a subcategory of homosexuality. There are plenty of gay priests, but that doesn't mean they prey (pray?) on altar boys. Anybody who knows even elementary information on pedophilia knows that. Still, the Church hasn't done nearly enough to clear up conflation. [5] Their larger problem is with the hypocrisy, a religious version of the equal protection clause problem that the Constitution creates at the secular level. Christ said to love everybody as thyself. Presumably the “as” was interpreted by some as a basis for excluding those who aren't like ourselves from that commandment. Similarly, how can the “equal protection clause” apply to someone you do not consider to be an equal. See, it's OK; “throw another faggot on the fire, boys.”

So now the bishops have drafted “guidelines” to deal with the reality that there remain many Christian gays and lesbians (for reasons that are no more explicable to me than there are “Log Cabin” gay Republicans). The new guidelines have eliminated the requirement that gays and lesbians try to alter their sexual orientation and, although the Church will still not marry them, it will grant Baptism to the “children of gay and lesbian couples.” The Church prefers to have little Christian “bastards” over married homosexuals.

This is exactly the kind of hair-splitting bullshit that ecclesiastical boneheads in silly suits do when they aren't looking for new locations for alter boy buggering priests. No one should be deluded that all the “how many gay angels can you fit on the head of a pin” Byzantine guidelines is for the sake of the souls of homosexuals. It has taken the bishops four years of study (without consulting the nation's largest homosexual organization, Dignity USA) to fiddle up something that they think will keep their “sodomites” ensnared in fine print while dipping into their pockets with the other hand. [6] The Episcopalians have ordained an openly gay Bishop and Methodists have said that homosexuality is “not a barrier to membership” in their denomination.

Christians like to play little rhetorical games with homosexuality. “Hate the sin, love the sinner” is the cute distinction that keeps gays and lesbians in the permanent state of needing the forgiveness of their less opprobrious adulterous, war mongering, and otherwise sinful—but hetero sexual—“betters.” Every sin has a moral, as well as an economic, utility. The great thing about “sodomites” for Christians is that it makes simple fornication seem positively venial.

Christians like to call it the “gay lifestyle.” This takes God out of the mix; it's an individual's “choice” (finally a choice that the fundamentalists recognize, even though it's not there) not a biological, or psychobiological predisposition.

On the ship there were some obviously gay waiters, mostly Thai young men with an exaggerated swishy gaits, and feminized voices and mannerisms, in addition to several gay couples. But the reaction was “don't act, don't tell,” or maybe just “don't bother” about it. Maybe that's the reason, and a reasonable one, that the group did not want to take the subject up. A few days after I returned home the South African parliament announced that the government would recognize gay marriages. Those folks that belatedly got rid of their racial apartheid less than a generation ago, have roared out ahead of the Catholics and evangelicals still practicing sexual apartheid.

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[1] But DCJournal spoke about this subject a while back. See Archive, No. 5.12, Nuptial Terrorism (2.10.2004).

[2] Not that the political right that aligns with the political righteous does not see some utility in bringing the subject forward when the genitals belong to somebody like Bill Clinton. Who can forget the glee with which Kenneth Starr gave to the Internet the report with the X-rated details of the Oval Office escapades of Bill and Monica, with bodily fluids flying all over the place. Those prurient details, however, may well have backfired on that sleazy bastard Starr and his minions (Clinton's approval ratings soared, thanks to the approval of those of us who go in for a little fun with bodily fluids) because kids all over the country were asking their parents “Mom, Dad, what's a blow job?”

[3] Celibacy was a stupid idea. For a long time it was the clergy who were the most educated people in their communities. They were literate, the teachers, and often the scientists as well, although this last role could be risky. In any case, celibacy meant that the genes of the most intelligent people were squandered, not passed on. Obviously, the vow was often broken, so some intelligence was passed on. Take Dragon City Journal , for example.

[4] Reputed to derive from the L. fasces, or a bundle of sticks (also, ironically, the Roman symbol of absolute authority). In Medieval times, when heretics were burned at the stake it was helpful to add a little grease to the fire by tossing a “faggot,” or homosexual, on the fire. We also passed over references to the town of Sodom a few times without touching its role as an etymological root.

[5] In fact, Benny XVI has initiated a purge on gays in the seminaries. He'll stop that as soon as someone gives that idiot the numbers of seminarians who aren't Africans looking for three square meals a day.

[6] Gays have a lot of money to spare. Since they do not have kids, and kids cost an average of $250,000 to raise to adulthood, and the birth rate is about 1.2, that means that for every “gay couple” there is about $375,000 that can be tapped by the Church. Multiply this by “gays are at least 10% of the population” and you have about 15 million gay couples that are worth more that $5.6 billion! Considering that the Church has nearly bankrupted itself paying indemnities for its pederast priests, it would be ironic some of the money from gays—who have been unfairly blamed for this scandal—helped bail the Church out.

38. 7: LIFEBOAT, Dir. by Alfred Hitchcock (1944) [MR] 1.27.2007

“Xu Lin just told me that he has shot himself and he is dead,” one of the observing students whispered in my ear. Xu Lin would not be returning to the simulation. I had developed my simulation, Lifeboat 15, some seventeen years earlier, as a “game” for illustrating the limitations of rational decision-making under stressful conditions. In Hong Kong in 2001 I had just created a Chinese version, with Chinese names for the players, and this was the first play of the simulation with Chinese students, after many years of playing it with my students and other professors' students in America. And it was the first time ever that then player in the role of Xu Lin, the only player with access to a (toy) gun, committed suicide with it. Earlier in the simulation Xu Lin had “shot” another player who was being obstreperous; in shame for that rash act he decided to kill himself. It was a cultural revelation for me; clearly, Asian students saw decision making through an Asian morality, which was something I had not anticipated.

I think of the student who played Xu Lin when I see John Hodiak, who plays John Kovac in Hitchcock's film about a group of Americans adrift in lifeboat after the ship has been torpedoed by a German U-Boat. I based Xu Lin's role on Kovac. [1] But I also “borrowed” other roles shamelessly from Hitchcock's movie or, I should say, John Steinbeck, who received an Oscar nomination for the original story.

Hitchcock was a master craftsman of the mystery, and Lifeboat has many elements of a mystery. Like one of those dramas in a big old house where people keep getting murdered, there is the plenary suspense of who is going to be left at the end. The film is also much like a play with a single set—the boat and, at first empty, the cast comes “on statge” one by one over the gunnels.

After a long establishing shot of debris from the ship Constance ‘Connie' Porter (Tallulah Bankhead), an international journalist, is seen safe and dry aboard the lifeboat; she's dressed in her jewelry and mink coat and has her 8mm movie camera with footage of the U-Boat, which was also sunk by a last minute shot from the ship's gun. Bankhead plays her self-possessed and cynical. Kovac (Hodiak) is the first to climb aboard, a member of the ‘black gang,' or engine room and covered with oil. Next, millionaire industrialist Charles ‘Ritt' Rittenhouse (Henry Hull) comes over the side and, crew member Gus Smith (William Bendix) whose leg is badly injured, a radio operator named Stanley ‘Sparks' Garrett (Hume Cronyn), nurse Alice MacKenzie (Mary Anderson) in whom Garrett forms a romantic interest, and a mother who believes the baby she holds is still alive (Heather Angel ) assisted by a Black steward named George ‘Joe' Spencer (Canada Lee). Then two hands appear on the gunnels and a German U-boat captain they call Willy (Walter Slezak) is pulled aboard to complete the very-talented cast.

These dramatis personae make for a social cross-section that in turn drives the conflict. In the Lifeboat 15 simulation I “created” roles of a millionaire, a nurse, an ordinary crewman, and a young couple, and have an “injured” person as well (a young boy). [2] There is plenty of class distinction, with Kovac and the other crewmen representing working-class values, and the millionaire and the journalist the privileged classes.

I like this movie, not just because it is well-made, but because it is human social life stripped raw; a bunch of near strangers thrown together in a circumstance where they don't know where they are going (their compass is broken) and don't know if they will even get there. The U-Boat captain, who seems to know more than they do gradually tricks them into heading, by sail and oars in the direction of a rendezvous with a U-Boat tender ship. Eventually, they find Willy out, but not before he has caused the death of one of Gus (William Bendix). Willy who has portrayed himself as an Aryan uber-menche , gets pounced on by the outraged group and thrown over the side.

I won't spoil the ending if you haven't seen Lifeboat . But each time I view it there is confirmation of some of the things I have learned over the years putting fifteen students in a “lifeboat” made of grouped chairs in the middle of a room and watching them try to come to grips with declining resources, storms that might kill them with a roll of the dice, and even sharks. Like the actors in the movie they try to be rational and make decisions about leadership and such; but when conditions become more dire, principles and lofty values tend to break down when individual survival supercedes that of the group. In my simulation I have built in different ways in which people might perish, some by their injuries, some perhaps by sharks, and even some by being “voted” to be put “over the side.” What I have learned is that people would rather that fate took a hand in lightening the boat and eliminating mouths to consume dwindling resources, than to have to take things into their own hands.

As with films, sometimes we get more out of tem in the discussions of them. In my simulations many insights into human behavior came in talking about what happened and why. I used to like to tell the students that the analogue of the “lifeboat” might be extended in these times to what might be called “lifeboat earth.” [3] I wonder if George Bush, Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao, Tony Blair, Angela Merkel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, and a bunch of other people would like to have a go at the Lifeboat 15 simulation. At least they should see the movie.

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[1] In the American version of my simulation the role is: Ramon Cruz, male, age 30, Senior crewman, who served four years on Portuguese cod fishery off Grand Banks, eight years as crew member on luxury passenger ships in Caribbean and North Atlantic. Has wife and four-year-old child in Lisbon. His instructions include the following: You have been given a pistol which has five bullets. You are to keep the pistol hidden in your pocket for at least the first round of the game. Afterwards, it is your discretion whether you wish to disclose that you have the pistol and whether you intend to use it, or give it to another player. See adescription of Lifeboat 15.

[2] My purpose was the same as Steinbeck's—the social differences energize the interactions but also, for my empirical and pedagogical purposes purposes, they formed a microcosm of society in general. The injured boy (the role can also be played by an injured girl) serves as the disadvantaged, vulnerable element of society, for example. I also included other roles: a minister and his sick daughter, a judge, a politician, an athlete, a scientist, and an elderly couple (also vulnerable because the wife is injured), to round out the players and cover as much social diversity as possible.

[3] With apologies to the late British economist Barbara Ward, who a number oi years back coined the term “spaceship earth.” But then a spaceship is in many respects no different than a lifeboat..

38. 6: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN TEXDAD 1.21.2007

The phone-video of the last moments of Saddam Hussein seemed to provoke a surprising amount of protest, from his faithful, of course, but also from those that felt the rather crude way in which it was conducted, reflected badly on America. America needs no extra bad reflections these days—we have George Bush—but we grabbed Saddam, held him, and only turned him over in the last hours to the Iraqi government, which is our satrapy. So our hand was not far from the handle that dropped Saddam into the arms of his awaiting “72 virgins.” And not that anything that Bush-Cheney and Rumsfeld had their hands on would not be a colossal public relations screw-up.

So there was ugly old Saddam (actually he is was a rather handsome man) being taunted and cursed in his final moments. And he, remarkably, is giving it back, feisty to the end. It was sordid, not at all like the nice, clean, quiet job we do of it in Texas. But there is far more precedent for the way Saddam was treated; he wasn't tumbrelled through the streets of Paris covered with spit, offal, and feces, then jeered and mocked, decapitated, and had his head held up to the laughing throng; he wasn't roasted on a stake the way the Church used to do it; he didn't have his guts unraveled, or his limbs serially broken on the wheel, or drawn and quartered, the way the country that gave us Masterpiece Theatre used to do it. Historically, Saddam got off easy. It would have been much better if the idiots who wanted to “do him” would have the prescience to figure out that, if you want an execution to look as “proper” as possible, you do not give the job to relatives of the principal's victims. Bush, who keeps Saddam's pistol as a war prize in his drawer, thought he could take his hands off at the last moment and not get implicated. [1]

So, am I copping a commutation plea for Saddam? Nope But I never have a good feeling about executions—I think that it's knowing the exact moment—even for the worst bastards. It's hard not to imagine oneself on the gallows, guillotine or gurney; to wonder what it feels like to be at the precipice of existence, and to wonder if getting there hurts. So executions are always a bit of memento mori .

OK, here's a test. If Saddam Hussein or Radko Mladic came into my house and was going to kill my grandchildren would I shoot him or put a knife in his guts. I wouldn't hesitate a nano-second, even if they were only intending to do no harm. OK, now switch to Hussein and Mladic having been tried and found guilty of mass murders of other people's grandchildren. So distinction No. 1 is that you might feel differently about things if you were a victim (and yes I know that the relatives of some victims oppose capital punishment, and have even “forgiven” murderers). Since, it's never happened to me I can't say exactly how I would feel. But if there is incontrovertible proof of a person being a mass murderer you are not going to find me with a candle outside the prison on execution night chanting to save Saddam Hussein. Somebody wants to kill him? I'm not going to get in the way.

But I can't get off that easy. It's my state, my government that is doing it, putatively, and maybe, on my behalf. My hand is not on the gallows lever, but it was (or was not) on the voting machine lever (pre-touchscreen) that put people in office or created then plebiscites that gave us capital punishment.

So, you still want to know, is this a brief for Saddam? No. They could have slathered his naked body in falafel sauce and set him loose in the streets of Basra as far as I'm concerned. Which is to say, that it would have been far more “poetic” had he been found by Shiites and gotten some street-level payback. But George had to get into it, and, as is his “gift,” screw things up.

But when thinking about capital punishment Saddam, Mladic (and there are many other candidates) are the easy part. They do their murders openly, brutally, and with seeming glee. There is incontrovertible proof of their evil deeds. But most of these creeps—Pinochet most recently—die in their beds, not at the end of a rope. So let's now bring Texas into the mix. And DNA .

The problem with the exalted American system of justice is that it sucks on a number of levels. Sentencing for one. Some poor sap who gets caught with a pocket full of pot ends up sitting in prison for fifteen years, but some embezzler who cons thousands of people out of the life savings gets 3 to 5 in a country club with time off for good behavior.

I should admit at this point that I used to be a supporter of the death penalty. It just seemed that there were crimes so heinous that their perpetrators deserved extinction. That was my rationale, just vengeance, just punishment; not anything practical, like it would act as a deterrent to capital crimes. Such intents like deterrence just don't work; there are higher homicide rates in states that have the death penalty. [2] But there still was vengeance.

The first thing that turned me around on this issue is DNA, not mine, but the DNA of (so far) some 155 persons that were on death rows who have been exonerated by DNA evidence. [3] It seems to me that having our revenge on murderers is not worth the very good chance that we will execute an innocent person or persons, which has probably already happened way too much. It is now possible to prove , scientifically, guilt or innocence. For me, the rationalist, that trumps (well, maybe buttresses) beyond reasonable doubt , because what corrupts reasonable doubt is unreasonable prejudice. Yet, social conservatives, and religious fundamentalists have been opposing a more systematic use of DNA evidence. [4] It amuses me that religious fundamentalists, who believe in divine justice and that murderers will eventually languish in Hell, feel the need to keep DNA out of death penalty cases. It is they who should feel most assured that justice will eventually done. But then we know from the evolution issue that they have their problems with science. After all, DNA isn't even mentioned in the Bible.

Of course, neither Saddam nor Mladic probably have any of their own DNA involved in their mass murders. Frankly, I don't care about them as much as I care about those low-income, or high-melanin dudes who couldn't afford their own defense attorney, but whose guilt or innocence might be verified by a lab test. Some murderers will get off, some will rot in prison for life, but that's preferable to one innocent person going to the gallows. I always wonder what it would be like not just to be executed, but to know that you are innocent.

But as far as that ugly execution of Saddam Hussein is concerned—George Bush's DNA was all over that one. [5]

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[1] I'm still wondering whether this whole sorry, bloody, Iraq thing, is the result of Little George showing Big George that he is a “real man” by going out and trashing a country to get the guy who tried to get his father.

[2] But this much I can say: were it not for my moral repugnance for murdering somebody I think the idea if being executed, by any means, would deter me. Whether it deters others is, of course, much mooted.

[3] Twelve convicts in Dallas County Texas alone have been exonerated by DNA evidence. [NPR, Day to Day, 1.18.2006]

[4] Yes, I realize that DNA evidence is not always relevant or available in capitol cases.

[5] Since I first wrote this the Iraqis have bungled another execution, this time not gauging the weight-to-drop distance and literally ripping off the head of Saddam's cousin. When Bush was asked about the executions recently on 60 Minutes he said, with his characteristics stupid ambiguity, that he was “disappointed.”

38. 5: POTAL INFALLIBILITY 1.17.2007

If you happened to see Scott Pelley's interview of George Bush on 60 Minutes this past January 14, you were witness to the hubris of man who has clearly deluded himself that he can be “responsible” for “mistakes” that “happen,” but is incapable of making a mistake.

By now, most everyone knows about the Roman Catholic Church's doctrine of “Papal Infallibility.” [1] We've come to expect this sort of nonsense in the metaphysical realms; but it is another thing when we come down to earth and are dealing with those who putatively lead our secular institutions, like something as mundane as the governments of our national states. Hardly anyone but a sychophant, or someone fearing a tyrant's wrath, would say that a human being, by whatever means they came to office or power, was “infallible,” incapable of error.

Yes we have, in this most advanced, and democratic, nation, something that is very much akin to the infallibility that is accorded to the Pope when he speaks on matters of faith or morals—we have what could be called Potal (from POTUS, the official code name for the P resident O f T he U nited S tates) Infallibility. Potal Infallibility is related to that area of presidential power and responsibility that is perhaps closest to when the pope speaks ex cathedra (literally from his throne), when he is “commander-in-chief” of the armed forces. Potal Infallibility means that the POTUS is incapable of being wrong when he says that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein was in league with Al Qaeda; he cannot be wrong when he engages in preemptive war, approves prisons that abuse suspects that remain uncharged for years, or are “rendered” and tortured; who uses “signing statements” indicate that he is above the laws made by Congress; who approves of spying on his own people and opening their mail.

We are hearing increasing reference—though not in these terms—to Potal Infallibility these days because Republicans who support George Bus's Iraq War have been backed into a corner by the American voters this past November, by generals, active and retired, who have expressed grave doubts about this war, and by even 38 percent of troops in Iraq, about the prospects of for a so-called “surge,” or infusion of thousands of more troops, to try to arrest or reverse what is probably already a lost war.

Invoking Potal Infallibility goes something like this: we must abide by the decisions of our commander-in-chief—no matter what—in time of war. He is right, by right ; we should not question whether his decisions. It's that old military crap that, “an order is an order,” you obey it. Don't' think, don't question, just obey. We have seen this countless times throughout history, and its results can be disastrous—at Actium, on the steppes of Russia, the Maginot Line, Hitler in his bunker, Vietnam, and many other places where the hubris of political/military leadership resulted defeat and disgrace.

The doctrine of infallibility applies to when Catholics have a Pope who is a moral hypocrite, so why not when we have a president who is an intellectual dunce. Remember, this is a president who, when asked at a pres conference if he thought he might have made any mistakes, replied that he couldn't think of any.

No, make that a President who is a moral hypocrite, Because it is becoming clearer and clearer that the motivation for the protraction of the Iraq way owes much to this president's unwillingness to admit it was a mistake—one would think that a man who knows he has lied about the causes of the war would know also that he is lying to himself—and he is willing to sacrifice thousands of American lives and limbs in a foolish and desperate attempt to not have his legacy be that of a loser.

There will be those Republicans (and, of course, that slimy Uriah Heap of a Democratic(?) Senator, Joe Leiberman), who will invoke Potal Infallibility. They will link it to the usual bromides—to not support him, since he is the top of the chain-of-command, is not to support the troops, and the good ole “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” It's the troops who will suffer, not because their commander's has been challenged, but because he has lied to them and, like the spoiled brat that he is, he is willing to see them killed for the sake of his reputation.

There is no special knowledge that the president has that justifies and complete and unquestioned deference to his plans and policies. Just as the Pope or some Ayatollah has no more direct knowledge of God, or Allah—if there is one—than you or I do, George Bush is making value judgments when he acts. It is his twisted “moral” view, not intelligence, that determine his actions, that allow him to arrogate to himself an exalted position above that of mere fallible citizens such and you and I. He seems to feel that his position is so exalted that he does not need to hear the vox populi that spoke with much volume and clarity this past November. We must therefore prevail upon our duly elected representatives not to abdicate their collective wisdom. It is they who must restore to us our democracy. It is they who must tell this arrogant fool that he is WRONG.

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[1] But just in case, it is “. . . defined as "a divinely revealed dogma" that "the Roman Pontiff , when he speaks ex cathedra -- that is, when in the exercise of his office as pastor and teacher of all Christians he defines, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the whole Church -- is, by reason of the Divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter , possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer wished His Church to be endowed in defining doctrines of faith and morals; and consequently that such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of their own nature ( ex sese ) and not by reason of the Church's consent."

38. 4: GOLDEN BOY, by Bob Thomas (1983) BR 1.14.2007

William Holden (nee William Beedle of Franklin, Illinois)) always seemed to me to be playing men who were not necessarily who they wanted to be—always stuck in a persona and circumstances that made them testy and cynical. His first real role was that way, the Golden Boy (1939), the young boxer who wanted to be a musician; he was the architect who wanted to be a painter in The World of Suzie Wong (1960) [1] , he played Sefton, the guy everybody detested in Stalag 17 (1953), and the recalcitrant Cmdr. Shears in Bridge on the River Kwai. He made his first big impression as screenwriter-stud Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard (1950), his resonant voice describing how his character came to be floating face down in a swimming pool in that now classic shot from then pool bottom.

I took a more than casual interest in Holden when I wrote about a couple of his romantic roles a few years ago for a conference in Hong Kong. The conference was on Western perspectives of Hong Kong in film and cinema and I took my theme as “Love With a Proper Gweilo ,” [2] about failed romances between Western men and Asian women. Holden's characters had a tendency to fall for Asian beauties, so I used him as a model of Western men with that inclination, even proposing that there might be a psychological condition I called “William Holden Syndrome.” He was, in many respects, the perfect American for such movie roles because he remained seemingly untouched by locale. I wrote of him in 2000:

“With his handsome features, unadulterated “American” character, self-assurance, and taint of cynicism, William Holden was the ideal casting for the American abroad. As a journalist ( Love Is . . .), soldier ( Bridge on the River Kwai ), or an architect seeking a more artistic muse ( The World of Suzie Wong ), Holden is always his own man, always unwilling to be confined to the accepted norms and social conventions, and always afflicted with some recondite psychic angst. Of the latter, it can now be made public, he was of course, himself suffering from the syndrome that bears his name. Holden was always the “American abroad,” even in his native country; a condition that made him the archetype of the man of the world, the model for “the proper gweilo .”

"But sufferers of this syndrome are up against some daunting odds, at least if those odds are to be based on the films and novels that are most often responsible for, and subsequently about, their condition. Why is it that the romance they find is so often doomed? “Looking for love in all the wrong places” might be their theme song, because the Orient, as represented in the novel and the film at least, seems to be a place fraught with perils for Occidental men of a romantic-adventurous temperament."

Later, I read what Thomas wrote of his expatriatism: “Bill Holden made no effort to learn the languages of the country he lived in or visited. It was not his style. He brought an American curiosity to foreign lands, but it did not extend to studying the languages or exploring social issues. He was ever the traveler, moving on to another place when his curiosity was fulfilled.” It all comes through in his foreign movies.

No wonder Holden had seemed the perfect model for the eponymous syndrome I created for him, not just in the roles he played, but in what turns out to be his off-screen persona as well. He became what we call an “ex-pat,” buying homes and other properties in Keyna, Hong Kong, and establishing (for tax purposes) a home in Switzerland. Somewhat of a political conservative (though not a vocal or active one), he was skeptical about government, and apparently as cynical in his personal life as he was in the roles he played. He played them convincingly, and won an Academy Award for one of his most cynical roles, in Stalag 17. Such types became his métier. But they were also his demon.

Holden was so internally-conflicted, and rootless, he was unable to give his commitment to anyone or anything. He all but abandoned his wife and children, became a compulsive globe-trotter, and had few deep friendships and love relationships. He was apparently never faithful to his wife, had affairs with his leaqding ladies, and later in life seemed to need women more as companions and care-takers, although he seemed to resent having to rely on anyone. His children barely are mentioned in this book.

Holden was one of those actors who was never comfortable with “playing” life (his friend, John Wayne, was another), thought acting somewhat sissified and faux, and yet could not quite achieve a satisfactory reality outside of it either. His brother joined the Air Force in WWII and was killed in the Pacific; Bill joined up, but never left the States. Like Wayne and other actors, like Ronald Reagan, he “played” soldiers, but never was one. [3] He always felt guilty about it. He also cared little for the Hollywood life, and especially the studio executives, such as Columbia boss, Harry Cohn, who he felt were exploiting him. He could be reckless, doing dangerous stunts and he drove cars like as maniac.

William Holden held the conflicted elements of his person together with alcohol. He began drinking and smoking to relax himself before going before the cameras; he never stopped, except in brief periods to dry out in hospitals from his chronic alcoholism. It ruined his relationships, and aged him prematurely. He always looked older than his age in his movies, and the booze really showed its effects in his later pictures, like Network, where he was playing the cynic for the final time. Eventually, it killed him. At least that is what the coroner concluded when they found his body in his apartment in Santa Monica on November 16, 1981. He apparently had fallen in a drunken stupor, hitting his head on a coffee table and died some time later. He was only 63. There was no Joe Gillis VO to tell the details.

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[1] See DCJournal Archive, 7.2: "If You Knew Suzie . . ." 4.13.2004

[2] in Luk, Thomas Y.T. and James P. Rice, Eds., Before and After Suzie: Hong Kong in Western Film and Literature , (Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002), Pp. 31-45

[3] Reagan later conjured up a false military career. Carl M.Cannon wrote in The Atlantic Monthly recently (January/February, 2007): “ Ronald Reagan told Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, in separate Oval Office visits, that as a young soldier in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II, he had filmed the liberation of Nazi death camps; Reagan never served in Europe at all, though his work involved handling footage shot by military cameramen and war correspondents.”

38. 3: THE GALILEE KID (SOS, Part 8) 1.10.2007

I am always amazed at the tendency these days for Evangelicals to go on about Jesus Christ as though he was somebody they knew personally. It's that “personal savior” thing and Carl, from Australia, exemplifies what I like to call the “when I get to heaven I want to go duck hunting with the Redeemer” attitude. Carl goes on about how much Jesus means to him. How Christ is his “hero” and his “friend,” how Christ is “perfection.” I suspect that Carl might not have had a male figure, like a father or older brother, when he was young, and Jesus filled the void for him.[1] The whole “personal savior things” is such New Age nonsense. I guess everybody's Jesus is a product of time and circumstance.

Fr. Fahey, the retreat master that I had in high school, knew the psychology of young men quite well. Like a lot of Jesuits he probably had be around the block a time or two before he took vows. He knew how to approach guys who would rather be out playing basketball than sitting a chapel for hours hearing about God and sin and salvation. He must have known what he was doing because there were things he said that have stuck with me through the decades, even if the object of the lessons had been transmogrified by subsequent life experiences.

“Jesus was no Breck girl,” he would say with a typical opening shocker that resounded around the nave and among the Stations of the Cross. Then, pointing up to the crucifix above the chapel alter he would add, “Does He look like some cutie from St. Agnes [2] all prettied up for the prom?” We knew he was referring to those depictions of Jesus with the long, nicely-coiffed hair, the rouged cheeks, the sweet Agnus Dei eyes, and the robes by, who else, Christian Dior. That is the effeminate [3] Jesus image he detested, and he figured we would as well.

Then he would tell us about the real Jesus, the carpenter's son with rough hands, who probably could hold his own in a punch-up in the alleys of Nazareth. He would wax about the type of guy who could throw money-changers out of the Temple, and “had the balls” as a kid to take on the elders in the Temple on liturgical matters. And he especially liked that Christ grew up to hang out with tough, illiterate fisherman, like Simon. Christ grew up in a dangerous neighborhood; the Romans were meanest guys in the Mediterranean, as he would later find out, and taking on the local Jewish power structure was risky business as well. “No place for a Breck girl,” Fahey would sneer. In my imagination formed a vision of somebody like Shane in eponymous film, in this case a formidable metaphysical gunfighter called “The Galilee Kid,” strong, self-possessed, and of few words.

The fact is we know very little of the man/(God?) so many people call their “personal” Savior. His childhood is thinly recorded and, after about age thirteen he disappears for about seventeen years—gone! Where he went and what he did and learned, nobody knows. Many think he went East, maybe to Persia, and picked up some Zoroastrian stuff, and on to India, to see what they had to say. He was indeed a man of few words (although a lot of words have been put in his mouth.)

Then, mirabile visu, the Galilee Kid is back in town, primed to shake things up with the Jews and the Romans. He doesn't say all that much (probably a lot ascribed to him that he never said) and in less time than it takes to get a bachelor's degree, he's dead and “resurrected” (at least by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul) as arguably the most influential human being (others say Mohammad is) ever to walk the earth. There has been more good and evil done is his name than in any other's. Economically, he has made more money for more people, as Mel Gibson continues to prove, and probably sold a good amount of Breck Shampoo. I wonder how he feels about that.

But the Galilee Kid thing didn't really work that well for me. I just couldn't get a handle on how he might really look. I was pretty isolated when growing up; Italians and other Roman Catholics were about all I associated with. There were Jews around, shopkeepers mostly, but none that I saw seemed like they might have the appearance of Jesus. “Beansy” Altman, the proprietor of the store that sold workmen's clothes, was maybe the first Jew I knew to be a Jew, and he was short, fat, and bald. Hardly a mental model for the Jesus the nuns rhapsodized about, or the one on the cross. I think part of the problem was the Church's de-Jewification of Chirst? Not only do they do him up like Breck girl, but they seem to except him from his own ethnicity. Never mind that Yeshua bar Yusef was born a Jew, lived as a Jew, and died a Jew. He wouldn't have recognized his Greek “Jesus Christ” name from Krispy Kreme Donuts and, I'm convinced, he would have tossed 87.4 percent of those who call themselves Christians today out of the Temple. So, if Jesus didn't look like Jeffrey Hunter [4] with a Breck “do,” ten what did he look like? Certainly not one of those mean cartoons done up by Nazis and Muslim newspapers; not like Red Buttons, or Edward G. Robinson; maybe Paul Newman, or John Garfield. At one time I didn't even know these guys were Jews, thanks to Hollywood's de-Jewification.

That's why I think that if you replied to some of these people who urge us to “take Jesus Christ as our “personal savior,” “best friend,” and such, “Oh, you mean “my best friend, the Jew, Yeshua?” you would get a perplexed reaction, perhaps even touch a sublimated, or repressed anti-semitism. They would be referring to the commodified Jesus, the one concepted by Paul, and then worked up into product that scarcely resembles the original—the Breck girl Jesus, the celebrity Jesus, maybe even the Galilee Kid, ridin' off into the sunset of resurrection.

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[1] A few days later Carl volunteered that his father died when he was a baby and he “never knew him.”

[2] The nearby all-girls Catholic High School

[3] Nobody broached the idea of a “gay” Jesus in those days.

[4] Even prettier than the guy Mel Gibson casted, see Nicholas Ray's King of Kings (1961)

38. 2: THE OLE DUMPEROOSKI 1.6.2007

DRAGON CITY JOURNAL rarely makes predictions. [1]. But this one is an alert to all prophets and bookies, and you. George Bush is setting up for the ole dumperooski. He will announce it in the coming days, so we want you to be on the lookout for it. Write Nancy Pelosi, write your Democratic congressperson. Write "DUCK!". He knows that his Iraq war is un-winnable, probably lost already. Now he is concerned with two things: his “legacy” (winner or loser) and, saving the Republicans from years of minority status. The solution is--you guessed it--the dumperooski.

So, how best to do that? The Old Dumerpooski; and this is how it will work. 1) Bush will continue to say that we are “winning.” 2) Bush will promulgate his “surge” strategy that will last 12- 18 months [2]. This way he keeps the Democrats on the defensive (“if you bitch about this you only discourage our troops and encourage the insurgents”). Of course, this is not going to work, but—and this is the important but —it will get him to the end of his administration in what he will claim was a “winning” position. Then 3) he dumps the already lost war on the next Democratic president. It's the old dumperooski. He gets the Democrats to do the surrender, and history records it that way. He gets to run around his ranch saying” “We were winning when I was in charge.”

George is a master at slipping out of responsibility for being a serial screw-up. He's done it all his life—screwing up business and faking a military career—and you can bet that that is why he is setting up the old dumperooski. Like a junkyard dog with diarrhea, he makes a stinky mess and moves on. The Democrats might just be holding this grenade when it goes off.

Just about everybody else knows it; some have even dared to say it. The war in Iraq is lost. It's George Bush's last attempt at manhood in the colossal flop of a career of flops. He believed his own lies, he swaggered, reveled in the power that irrational fear conferred upon him (and he nurtured), and reality has come to exact its terrible truth. His erstwhile supporters are those who are cutting and running, and those he used to call appeasers and traitors are finally being seen as the realists.

America has got itself into terrible mess thanks to George Bush and what is becoming painfully evident is not only that is there no way out of it with victory and honor, but also that Bush has two more years in office. He will be saddled forever as the guy who lied to start the wrong war and lost it. It is clear from the polls that he no longer has any credibility with a large majority of the American public. He will have no effectiveness except as an irritant in his remaining tenure. George Bush should resign and take his vice president and the rest of his cabinet with him. It is the only honorable thing he can do, not that he has any record of doing the honorable thing. If not, articles of impeachment should be prepared. (It would be some retribution for the Republicans impeaching of Bill Clinton for a sexual act between consenting adults. These are Republicans that caused the deaths of 3000 Americans and a quarter million Iraqis and countless wounded. And they arrogate to themselves the moral posture in American politics?

More Americans will die while Bush plays Hamlet, collecting “facts”—something that never concerned him before—to make his speech to America, now postponed till after the first of the year. Each day Bush dithers with his war another six or so Americans are killed, even more maimed by the horrendous wounds that are produced by bombs, as the civil war worsens and more Iraqis die. So more caskets will be snuck into Dover Air Force Base under cover of darkness. To put more troops there just gives the insurgents more “targets”; to reduce their number means those left are even more vulnerable. All that “shock and awe, of the giddy race to Baghdad has turned into a nightmare for George Bush and America. The lies about Jessica Lynch and Tillman have been exposed, the Abu Ghraib photos disseminated, Guantanamo shown for the torture chamber it is, and soldiers and marines indicted for the murders of innocent Iraqi citizens. There is no snatching “victory” from the jaws of this defeat; there willnot be a “mission accomplished.” The lies, the deceits, the arrogance, and the sheer stupidity have all come home to roost. Americans have come out of their denial and have admitted that Bush's war is not the equivalent of a “war on terror”; some have even admitted that that it was terrorists from Bush's friends, the Saudis, and from Egypt—not Iraqis—who attacked America in 2001.

Bush is completely snookered. Bullies don't negotiate, so there little chance he will open talks with the (evil axis) Iranians, or the Syrians. Anyway, the Iranians and the Syrians have the advantage now, not to mention Kim Il Jong, who seems to off the radar screen of the old “axis of evil.” Not to mention Afghanistan, which will soon be back in the brutal hands of the Taliban. Not to mention Osama bin Laden, who remains conspicuously un-mentioned.

America now owes a huge debt to the people of Iraq. They didn't ask for this war and we trashed (and many of them did, too) their country. They have over 50% unemployment and nearly no working physical or social infrastructure. Sort of the way Bush ran his businesses. If anything is to be done about it, it will be the Democrats' responsibility after Bush springs the old dumperooski on them. Of course, we will not be able to afford it because of the debt George ran up and the tax breaks and war profits he gave to his corporate friends. George pulled the old “borrow and spend” for six years so that we are now “owned” by the Chinese; but expect the outcry if there is even a suggestion of raising some taxes.

So, what can the Democrats do? Well, more of them need to read DRAGON CITY JOURNAL for one thing; we're here to help. [3] The other thing is to get all those generals and soldiers, pols, and citizens to strike up the chorus. It's a sad song, but it's the reality. We lost another war .

The Fat Lady has sung. Elvis has left the building. Finito! We lost. Let's deal with it, because George is setting up the ole dumperooski !

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[1] OK, so we were wrong on that prediction that Angelina Jolie would throw over Brad Pitt to marry our beloved and respected (and some even think a little “cute”) Editor and CEO, Jim. He's getting over it (we think) and is even going to keep the 14 Asian and African kids he adopted.

[2] As recommended by a new retired general he has dredged up from the conservative American Enterprise Institute, since most of the others don't support the idea.

[3] I plan to attract Pelosi by posting my penne arrabiata and melanzane Parmagiana recipes.Then she will know what you know: Dragon City Journal: Breathing the Fire of Knowledge on the Metropolis of the Next Millennium

38. 1: FLOP GUNS 1.2.2007

A friend who I have coffee with from time to time likes to counter my insistence that George W. Bush is an idiot with his insistence that “an idiot could not have been taught to fly an F-106 jet.” Bush learned to fly one when he was hiding in the Texas Air National Guard that his father pulled strings to get him into. No, it only proves that you can teach an idiot to fly an F-106, which, by the way, was a plane the Navy was phasing out, so George would have obsolesced with his plane and not been deployed to Vietnam. He made doubly certain of that by deliberately not showing up for his mandatory physical and being grounded—chickenhawk-idiot.

Now you might wonder what the hell I am doing picking on Navy pilots, men who risk their lives “to protect our freedoms.” Well, wonder some more. I am not picking on the category, but of members of it. But I am also picking on the disturbing American tendency, not without a good amount of official assistance, to elevate these guys (probably because they drive such expensive and powerful machines) to the heroic heights of NASCAR champions. [1]

So the syllogism goes something like this: Not all Navy pilots are idiots / But Bush was a Navy pilot / So you can teach an idiot to be a Navy pilot. (It's sort of a Rumsfeldian syllogism.) You can teach a lot of idiots to fly airplanes. Rumsfeld learned to fly one, Duke Cunningham was a fighter “ace” in an F-4, and John McCain managed to get shot down after he learned to fly one. Idiots all. Navy pilots all. In fact, I'm rather sick of this whole Navy pilot thing that my coffee companion seems to apotheosize. George H.W. Bush was a Navy pilot, too, and he, like McCain, also managed to turn being shot down into being a “hero.” [2]

But let's stick with McCain, since he is actively seeking to be the next ex-shot-down-Navy-pilot-president. This guy is such a political windsock (although he presents himself as a man of integrity), who has been trading on his former 5-year POW status for so long that it is time to announce that the North Vietnamese still have McCain's brain for which they substituted a bunch of stuff that fell out of the back end of a barnyard animal. [3] McCain wishes us to view him as a man of integrity, which is rubbish because he flips and flops around like a tuna out of water.

He proclaimed in 1999: "I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations.” Recently he flipped to: "I do believe that it's very likely or possible that the Supreme Court should - could overturn Roe v. Wade, which would then return these decisions to the states, which I support." In 2004 he regarded the [against] gay marriage amendment as "antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans"; but said he would support it in this little kiss up to that Baptist bucket of phony piety, Jerry Falwell. McCain once referred to Falwell as an "agent of intolerance," and then showed up at Falwell's Liberty University to proclaim his support for teaching Intelligent Design in schools. He said he opposed Bush's tax cuts, and then voted for them. What the hell possessed to North Vietnamese to keep this guy so long? Intelligence?; everything he says is bullshit!

My coffee friend at least does not counter these claims with “Oooooo, how can you say that about a “war hero” when you didn't even go off to fight in Vietnam to protect America's women in red states from being forced to wear Viet Cong black pajamas. But that might be what he's thinking. He's thinking, “This guy only gets to talk this way because Navy pilots repulsed those Viet Cong and NVA who were attacking our country back in the early 1960s. You remember that, dontcha? Americans didn't of course know where the hell Vietnam was, but they were sure that the little people (later changed to “gooks”) were hell bent on storming ashore from those coracles [4] they use in the Mekong Delta (wherever the hell that is?) at Malibu and making us become communists and eat pho noodles and spring rolls. Those navy pilots were protecting my freedom, and this is how I show my gratitude. And then I go and compound my ingratitude when my country is attacked again by people called Iraqis (or was that Iranians?) who “hate my freedom” and want to make my daughters wear burkhas (you know, those laundry bags that cover the whole body), and make me convert to Islam. Meanwhile the people who really did attack us are BBQ-ing in the mountains of Afghanistan or scheming about oil profits with the Carlisle Group in Jeddah.

But such distinctions seem to wash out at Navy pilot altitude; Sunnis, Saudis, Shiites, Shiatsus, what the hell's the difference to these guys—bombs away! “The Sunnis and Saddam were our pals and those Shiites and Iran the enemy, then the Sunnis and Saddam became the enemy, and so are the Shiites who are the enemies of the Sunnis . . . oh, what the hell . . . bomb ‘em all and let Allah sort ‘em out!”

Frankly, I'm tired of our foreign policy being run by these idiots, who are nothing but the minions of greedy war profiteers like Haliburton and defense contractors. Now idiot McCain wants to increase the troop levels in Iraq. He must feel that the insurgents do not have enough Americans to blow up and snipe at as they wander around wondering what the hell they are doing in this place that Navy pilots trashed with their shock and awe bombing campaign five years ago and still hasn't been put back together. This, of course, is one of the options left open in the weenie report by the Iraq Study Group, which did little more, after so much deliberation, than come to the conclusion that the war is lost, without saying it outright.

It is clear that the American attitude is now—probably always was—what is best for America, or more particularly, the Bush administration, the war profiteers, and the Bush legacy; not what is best for the Iraqis! Given the disaster of their country, their economy, and their resources, and given that perhaps ten times as many Iraqis have been killed in the past five yeas than in the previous thirty years of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship it might not be too outrageous to give the country back to Saddam. Remember, he was our guy before, maybe he like the job again. [5] At least he kept the place from self-destructing. Anyway, he was getting a little goofy near the end there; but nowhere near as goofy as McCain.

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[1] After all, that dork, Tom Cruise, played the lead in the film, Top Gun. But for those that didn't really get it, you have to see Charlie Sheen sending up Cruise and his role in Hot Shots. Thank the lord that we have our Navy pilots to protect our precious right to satire.

[2] 90% of being a hero today is just showing up. See DCJ No. 13. 3 The End of Heroism.

[3] This is to put to rest the nasty rumor that McCain's brain was actually given by the North Vietnamese to Jane Fonda in exchange for information about the location of American missile silos in Hollywood.

[4] Look it up. I had too. All In could remember was little round basket boats.

[5] TOO LATE! Boy, they hung that guy and had him in the ground quicker than you could say Osama bib Laden.