I mean, Godzilla, I Am Legend, King Kong. Enough with the monsters and the pillaging. Now this!

Didn’t Lady Liberty suffer enough in Planet of the Apes?

Ach!

Photos culled from originalprop.com.

A careful reader wrote to complain. My recent web essay on General Education at Harvard cited the following from the Final Report: “The aim of liberal education is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people.” He points out that the full sentence for the report says all that, but ends on an upbeat note: “and to help them find ways to re-orient themselves.”

The careful reader thinks that this ending changes the meaning of the sentence. Perhaps. But the Report emphasizes again and again and again the critical tropes of modern and postmodern intellectual life. Therefore, I read “re-orient” as empty rhetoric and cut it accordingly.

The section of the Report that details the requirement of a course in Ethical Reasoning genuflects in the same direction. Harvard hope students will learn to “reason in a principled way” about moral issues, with the expectation that this will “promote our student’s personal development.” But again, a ton or two of rhetoric falls onto the “critique” side. The Report is very keen to emphasize that students must “encounter value systems not their own.” As a result, the little weight given to the other side gets overwhelmed.

But maybe I lost an opportunity. I now see the logic of the matter. It isn’t boilerplate. Harvard expects students “reorient” by adopting the stance of global managers.

My teenager was reading the Lego catalog. Not that she herself would ever be interested in her brothers’ geeky obsessions, mind you—she had some Latin sentences waiting to be parsed.

So she was idly turning pages and clucking dismissively over the Mindstorms NXT and the Star Wars Exo-Force and the Bionicles, all of which make the boys in this house hyperventilate with longing, and saying, “What boring person would want the ‘Trade Federation MTT, ages 9-14, 1,326 pieces,” when suddenly from the other room—I think I might have been taking laundry from the dryer, or possibly putting some in—I heard her screech.

“Dude!” she said. You make them parse Latin sentences, and this is how they talk. “I thought they only made dude Lego. But look at this.” I came and looked. And sure enough—“It’s pink girly Lego,” she said.

The Lego you love now comes in two great flavors: “Everything,” including Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Lego City, Knights vs. Skeletons, Undersea Adventures, Star Wars, Bionicles, and Lego Creator; and “Just for Girls,” including the Sunshine Home and Horse Stable, a pink Lego-brick-shaped backpack, and a “New! Lego Pink Brick Box: Build a house, pony, or anything else you can imagine with this special box filled with LEGO bricks in colors you love.”

“Wow,” the teenager said.

Of course, I remember when Lego came in one flavor: primary-colored. They came in a big box with a jumble of accessories, windows, doors, wheels, and so on, and were given to your brother for Christmas. At least, ours were given to my brother, though we both played with them, as we played with his Lionel trains and my dollhouse.

Now, presumably in the new Lego dispensation girls can play with whatever they want, though I haven’t met many girls who find Star Wars riveting enough to want to put together the Ultimate Collector’s Milennium Falcon (5,195 pieces). As I look at the picture of this item, here at my desk at home, the telepathic effect is such that my ten-year-old son, at choir practice right now, feels his heart rate go up inexplicably; while the teenager, sitting beside him, merely experiences a brief frisson of apathy and then swats him with her Voice for Life workbook and hisses, “Would you please not breathe so loudly?” Such is the telepathic effect of their behavior, that I can read it from a mile away.

Even my four-year-old, who likes to play Star Wars because she thinks Leia is pretty, and who also likes putting Legos together because that’s what there is to do around here, gives the Lego catalogs only a passing glance before her brothers seize them up in fevered hands and paw them to pieces. All those machines, she clearly thinks. And not a rabbit or a fairy or a pair of ruby slippers among them. Of course, she’s just this minute stomped with great purpose on some kind of Star Wars ship—it had a lot of clone troopers on it, that’s all I know—which her five-year-old brother undoubtedly left for a reason on the floor in the doorway to this room. This leads me to think that Lego has missed its mark with the ponies and the Sunshine House. What they really need is a line of Terminator Princesses who fight everybody.

You’ll recall that Mitt Romney was a socially liberal governor who realized that he was socially conservative just about the time he decided to run for president. He then campaigned as a movement conservative, until he lost the Iowa caucus. Looking around, Romney noticed that Barack Obama, who won the Democratic race in Iowa, had campaigned on a theme of “change,” Romney altered his campaign and ran as the “change” candidate in New Hampshire.

After losing New Hampshire, Romney noticed that Hillary Clinton had won the Democratic primary there because, many observers concluded (incorrectly), she had cried in public and declared that the issues in this race were “personal” to her.

Here’s Mitt Romney now, out on the hustings in Michigan:

We’re going to make sure this state gets on the move again,” Mr. Romney said. “I care about Michigan. For me, it’s personal. It’s personal for me because it’s where I was born and raised.”

Earlier in the day, after hearing from a voter who recalled his father, Mr. Romney choked up momentarily, according to a pool reporter who was present.

Earlier this week, I pointed out that 2 of the 3 major American newspapers had taken the Democratic presidential candidates to task over their positions on the “surge.”

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman write that “The Surge Worked.” A key passage:

The question we face, on the first anniversary of the surge, is no longer whether the president’s decision a year ago was the right one, or if the counterinsurgency strategy developed by Gen. Petraeus is working. It is.

The question now is where we go from here to sustain the progress we have achieved — and in particular, how soon can more of our troops come home, based on the success of the surge.

And the ending:

The war for Iraq is not over. The gains we have made can be lost. But thanks to the courage of our troops, the skill and intellect of their battlefield commander, and the steadfastness of our commander in chief, we have at last begun to see the contours of what must remain our objective in this long, hard and absolutely necessary war — victory.

Now, I was going to title this post “Bipartisan Agreement on the Surge.” Then I remembered that Lieberman was not allowed to run as the Democratic candidate for Senate from Connecticut, having lost the primary to the anti-war Ned Lamont. As a result, Lieberman writes as an “Independent Democratic senator.” Which, I guess, means that only 2 of the 3 major parties can agree that the surge worked.

Over at the Weekly Standard, Matthew Continetti is running a blog that has become must-reading for election junkies, campaign activists, and political journalists. The rest of America, too. And this, despite the fact that I sometimes contribute small notes on items that seem off-topic for the First Things blog. Here, for instance, is a note I gave Matt today:

There’s hardly a dime’s worth of difference among the Republican candidates when it comes to the judiciary. Or, at least, when it comes to what they say they’ll do about the judiciary. Originalism, plain meaning of the Constitution, textualism—even the non-pro-life Giuliani uses these words.

Still, it’s interesting to see the small addition Mike Huckabee makes to the standard line: Not just originalists but judges “who also have established themselves within the conservative legal community as faithful adherents of originalism and textualism.” That’s the longhand version. In shorthand, it runs: No More Harriet Miers.

The other items on the Weekly Standard’s campaign blog are better—particularly the ones from Jonathan Last, Matt Continetti, and the mysterious Richelieu. Give it a visit.

So brave, our transgressive artists who stand up against the oppression of religion. So brave—except when, you know, it might take actual bravery. Over at Pajamas Media, David Rusin notes the case of Grayson Perry:

A Turner Prize recipient and England’s most famous cross-dressing potter, Perry has been heralded for his controversial explorations of religious imagery, which include a vase entitled “Transvestite Brides of Christ” and a portrayal of the Virgin Mary that is best left to the imagination. Yet apparently there are some boundaries that even groundbreaking artists dare not cross.

“I’ve censored myself,” Perry told the Times, admitting that he treads lightly around radical Islam. “With other targets you’ve got a better idea of who they are but Islamism is very amorphous. You don’t know what the threshold is. Even what seems an innocuous image might trigger off a really violent reaction so I just play safe all the time.” Self-censorship thus boils down to self-preservation. “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”

Note that Perry wasn’t actually threatened by England’s Muslims. This is pure self-censorship on the off chance of being threatened. But he’s a brave transgressive artist because, well, at least he’s willing to challenge the Christians, despite the risk that they’re going to storm his studio and cut off his head.

(Hat tip: Instapundit)

Dave Barry provides the best report on the primary season so far: “ The voters of New Hampshire have made their decision,” he writes, “and the big winner is: Change. Here’s the final vote tally:

Change—43 percent;
Hope—28 percent;
Hope For Change—17 percent;
Hair—9 percent;
Experience—2 percent;
Dennis Kucinich—1 percent.”

Looking ahead to the coming primaries, he adds: “I would say that the issue most on the minds of voters there, at the moment, is: Change. Although, of course, that could change.”

Meanwhile,

let’s take a moment to look back on both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries, and ask ourselves if these two non-representative states—which have, between them, roughly the same total minority population as Gladys Knight and the Pips—should play such a huge role in selecting our presidential nominees. This is a very complex issue, with many strong arguments on both sides.

No, sorry, correction: It’s actually a simple issue. The Iowa/New Hampshire system is insane. It’s like a 50-table restaurant with a big, varied menu, except that only two tables are allowed to order. If these two tables order clams, for example, or Michael Dukakis, that’s what gets served to all the other tables.

(Hat Tip: Matthew Continetti)

There’s been much speculation as to why all the pollsters got the New Hampshire primary so wrong, at least on the Democrat side of things. For the Republic primary, the polls were decently accurate, indicating that the general process and methodology were sound. So what went wrong?

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times open their pages to two analysts—Karl Rove in the Journal and Andrew Kohut (president of the Pew Research Center) in the Times—to try to explain “Why Hillary Won” and why pollsters have been “Getting It Wrong.”

They both point to the same underlying phenomenon: Hillary won the blue-collar vote, and Obama won the white collar vote. Rove put it like this:

Sen. Hillary Clinton won working-class neighborhoods and less-affluent rural areas. Sen. Barack Obama won the college towns and the gentrified neighborhoods of more affluent communities. Put another way, Mrs. Clinton won the beer drinkers, Mr. Obama the white wine crowd. And there are more beer drinkers than wine swillers in the Democratic Party.

They interpret this data, however, in pretty substantially different ways. Rove suggests that Hillary’s and Obama’s respective campaigns and debate performances resonate with different classes in different ways.

Mrs. Clinton won a narrow victory in New Hampshire for four reasons. First, her campaign made a smart decision at its start to target women Democrats, especially single women. … Second, she had two powerful personal moments. … Third, the Clintons began—at first not very artfully—to raise questions about the fitness for the Oval Office of a first-term senator with no real accomplishments or experience. … The fourth and biggest reason why Mrs. Clinton won two nights ago is that, while Mr. Obama can draw on the deep doubts of many Democrats about Mrs. Clinton, he can’t close out the argument.

Kohut, on the other hand, doesn’t talk much about the substance of their platforms or campaigns, but suggests that there is actually a well-established phenomenon at play: “Another possible explanation cannot be ignored—the longstanding pattern of pre-election polls overstating support for black candidates among white voters, particularly white voters who are poor.”

He goes on to attribute part of the victory to ignorance and racism that pollsters don’t adequately take into account:

Poorer, less well-educated white people refuse surveys more often than affluent, better-educated whites. Polls generally adjust their samples for this tendency. But here’s the problem: these whites who do not respond to surveys tend to have more unfavorable views of blacks than respondents who do the interviews.

So which is it? What explains New Hampshire? Is it a substantive difference in the campaigns, or latent racism? Or both? Have Rove and Kohut each picked up half the story?

So the jury administrator cries out: “If anyone has a problem with the English language, please step up and form a line here.”

So I raised my hand and said, “Yeah, I have a problem with the English language: ough–what’s up with that? I mean, bought, through, dough–make up your frickin’ mind.”

She replied, “I will shoot you dead if you do not sit down and shut up.”

Nice talk from a civil servant . . .

Man, have things changed since the first time I served. Here in Queens, there are plush comfy chairs instead of the old metal foldy ones, vending machines galore, flat-panel TVs, Internet connections, saunas, even a tanning bed.

This is also criminal court, which means that if I wind up on a murder-suicide case, this could take a while. (Lack of a defendant is no excuse. We take justice very seriously here in Queens.)

I wonder if they check Google after every use of the public computers. If I typed in “DIY guillotine” and they found out, would they let me go?

Probably best not to chance it . . .

Here’s a nice article by John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter on how Benedict XVI spends his time not by simply denouncing the evils of the world, but by offering Christianity as a positive alternative, what Allen calls “affirmative orthodoxy”:

By “affirmative orthodoxy,” I mean a tenacious defense of the core elements of classic Catholic doctrine, but presented in a relentlessly positive key. Benedict appears convinced that the gap between the faith and contemporary secular culture, which Paul VI called “the drama of our time,” has its roots in Europe dating from the Reformation, the Wars of Religion, and the Enlightenment, with a resulting tendency to see Christianity as a largely negative system of prohibitions and controls. In effect, Benedict’s project is to reintroduce Christianity from the ground up, in terms of what it’s for rather than what it’s against.

This spirit of “affirmative orthodoxy” was clear in Benedict’s first encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est, in which the pope laid out a philosophical and spiritual basis for the church’s teaching on human love. His encouragement for the International Theological Commission to set aside the hypothesis of limbo offers another example. Without softening the traditional teaching that Christ’s grace, normally mediated through baptism, remains essential for salvation, Benedict nevertheless put the accent on hope.

The best concrete example of affirmative orthodoxy that Allen gives comes from a 2006 interview with German journalists before his trip to Bavaria:

Question: A month ago you were in Valencia for the World Meeting of Families. Anyone who was listening carefully, as we tried to do at Vatican Radio, noticed how you never mentioned the words “homosexual marriage,” you never spoke about abortion, or about contraception. Careful observers thought that was very interesting. Clearly your idea is to go around the world preaching the faith rather than as an “apostle of morality.” What are your comments?

Response: Obviously, yes. Actually I should say I had only two opportunities to speak for 20 minutes. And when you have so little time you can’t say everything you want to say about “no.” Firstly you have to know what we really want, right? Christianity, Catholicism, isn’t a collection of prohibitions: it’s a positive option. It’s very important that we look at it again because this idea has almost completely disappeared today. We’ve heard so much about what is not allowed that now it’s time to say: we have a positive idea to offer, that man and woman are made for each other, that the scale of sexuality, eros, agape, indicates the level of love and it’s in this way that marriage develops, first of all, as a joyful and blessing-filled encounter between a man and a woman, and then the family, that guarantees continuity among generations and through which generations are reconciled to each other and even cultures can meet. So, firstly it’s important to stress what we want. Secondly, we can also see why we don’t want something. I believe we need to see and reflect on the fact that it’s not a Catholic invention that man and woman are made for each other, so that humanity can go on living: all cultures know this. As far as abortion is concerned, it’s part of the fifth, not the sixth, commandment: “Thou shalt not kill!” We have to presume this is obvious and always stress that the human person begins in the mother’s womb and remains a human person until his or her last breath. The human person must always be respected as a human person. But all this is clearer if you say it first in a positive way.

On one hand, this should be obvious. More is accomplished when Christianity is presented as the prescription for society’s ills than when it is offered only as a litany of proscriptions. Sadly, however, many pulpits continue to preach “no” without a cogent “yes” to replace what is denied. And so when we would seek to denounce modern sexual laxity, we can instead advocate the better option of conjugal life. When we would simply denounce death, we can uphold life even in its most nascent stages as something worthy of cherishing. When we would denounce the sin and evil of the world, we can also proclaim the greater truth of the redeeming power of Christ.

One of the talking-head morning shows has predicted that N.Y. Mayor Michael Bloomberg will announce his candidacy for the presidency in April. Pat Buchanan says he will only hurt Clinton/Obama and help the GOP by putting New York into play.

If Bloomberg becomes president, you will not be able to get a decent french fry anywhere from sea to shining sea, and the only new housing will come with bidets in the guest bathroom and jai lai courts in the hall closet.

And any major infrastructure projects will remain filed under “Boondoggle.” (See subway, Second Avenue.)

But the murder rate will continue to drop. So there’s that.