Monthly Archive for October, 2006Page 5 of 13

Lil Bugglett

Published
by
michael lee
on 23 October 2006
in asides and life
. 8 Comments

Anyone wanna guess what Sophia’s going to be for All Hallow’s Eve?

Lifting the veil

Published
by
phil
on 23 October 2006
in faith and theology and politics
. 9 Comments

A recent conference pointed up the problem of the treatment of women in Islam:

“The keynote speaker, Syrian-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan, an outspoken critic of Islam, described an “honor killing” of a young Middle Eastern woman that occurred with the help of her mother. In a later exchange, another participant, Libyan journalist Sawsan Hanish, argued that it was unfair to single out Muslim societies, since women suffer violence and sexual abuse in every society including the United States. Sultan pointed out a major difference: In many Muslim cultures , such violence and abuse are accepted and legalized.”

These problems are not the exclusive province of women in countries dominated by Islam. The treatment of American Muslim women presents similar difficulties. Many European nations with Muslim minorities report honor killings of women who are raped, by husbands, brothers, fathers, et. al.

“Not long after I picked up the free Saudi book, Mahmoud Shalash, an imam from Lexington, Ky., stood at the pulpit of my mosque and offered marital advice to the 100 or so men sitting before him. He repeated the three-step plan, with “beat them” as his final suggestion. Upstairs, in the women’s balcony, sat a Muslim friend who had recently left her husband, who she said had abused her; her spouse sat among the men in the main hall.

At the sermon’s end, I approached Shalash. “This is America,” I protested. “How can you tell men to beat their wives?”

“They should beat them lightly,” he explained. “It’s in the Koran.”

He was doing the dance.”

I continue to wonder why American feminists are not more outspoken in their condemnations of Islamic traditional treatment of women, which is horrendous by nearly any standard. Is more feminist ink spilled on the Southern Baptist church than on Islam? It’s difficult not to suspect that conflicting imperatives (of being “for” women but also “for” multiculturalism and “against” the evil fascist regime of Bush) have caused a certain paralysis of rhetoric.

The irony: no more “anti-choice” regime is possible than a state ruled by Sharia, where the women and their abortionists are simply to be killed.

The Parable of the Good Tele-Evangelist

Published
by
aly hawkins
on 22 October 2006
in asides, emerging church and faith and theology
. 0 Comments

Adam over at pomomusings stirs it up with The Parable of the Good Tele-Evangelist, complete with surprise twist at the end. Good stuff.

Protest Songs: The Arrangement

Published
by
aly hawkins
on 22 October 2006
in art and culture and life
. 5 Comments

One of my favorite singer-songwriters of all time is Joni Mitchell. Her 1971 Blue has been in the #1 spot on my Desert Island Albums List for at least 10 years, and will probably never get bumped. There’s so much craft on that record it makes me want to hurl, purely out of jealous spite. Blue / Here is a song for you / ink on a pin / underneath the skin / an empty space to fill in.

Rammity-fratchit. I’ll never write a lyric that perfect.

Over the years, Joni has written more than her fair share of protest songs, but something I love about her is that she’s never been afraid to question and criticize the values, actions and assumptions of her hippie, lefty peers — not just those of the “other side.” She’s able to somehow look down the road and see where today’s popular ideas will lead to tomorrow’s problems, and she always seems a bit reluctant to throw in her lot with what everybody else “knows” is the right path. Another lyric from “Blue” demonstrates this hesitancy:

Acid, booze and ass
Needles, guns and grass
Lots of laughs, lots of laughs…
Everybody’s saying that hell’s the hippest way to go
But I don’t think so
I’m gonna take a look around

In 1969, Joni wrote a song for the Elia Kazan film The Arrangement (based on his 1967 novel of the same name), starring Kirk Douglas and Faye Dunaway. It’s a ponderous and preachy piece of work that tells the story of an advertising executive (Douglas) who lives a double life, and begins to regret “selling out.” He eventually has nervous breakdown. (Happy stuff.) Kazan ended up not using Joni’s song for the soundtrack, probably because he recognized that she’d told the story better than he had, with more finesse and subtlety. (This is my own opinion, without documentation to support it.) She chose to tell the story from the “other woman’s” (Dunaway) point of view, and manages to accuse and sympathize by equal turns. She put the song on her 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon…’cause why waste a perfectly good protest song, even if it was rejected by a McCarthy-era whistleblower?

You could have been more
Than a name on the door
On the thirty-third floor in the air
More than a credit card
Swimming pool in the backyard

While you still have the time
You could get away and find
A better life you know the grind is so ungrateful
Racing cars whisky bars
No one cares who you really are
You’re the keeper of the cards
Yes I know it gets hard
Keeping the wheels turning
And the wife she keeps the keys
She is so pleased to be
A part of the arrangement

You could have been more
Than a name on the door
On the thirty-third floor in the air
More than a consumer
Lying in some room trying to die
More than a credit card
Swimming pool in the backyard
You could have been more than a name on the door
You could have been more than a name on the door
You could have been more
You could have been more
You could have been more

Now, it might be tempting to hear this song as a run-of-the-mill whine about The Man, but I think there’s some deeper wisdom to take away, especially since (as I mentioned) Mitchell tends to be a bit more balanced in her perspective than many of her contemporaries: What are we about? What are our priorities? What are we truly pursuing, and is it worth what we must leave behind to get it? Are we becoming who we are meant to become, making choices along the way to get us there? Are we being shaped into better people, or are we salving our feelings of regret or uselessness with empty pleasure?

Next week: “The Mystery of Iniquity” from Lauryn Hill’s MTV Unplugged.

TBAIP, Part 1: Teri

Published
by
michael lee
on 21 October 2006
in groupthink and life
. 41 Comments

Welcome to the first post in a new series, which I’m calling This Blog Attracts Interesting People (TBAIP). Here’s how this works - I pick somebody who is a regular reader, and I ask them some questions. They have to either answer the questions, or send me $480 (cash only - I don’t trust you people).

First up in the batting order is Teri, sometimes known around these parts as Grammy. In real life, Grammy is the very hawt mother of Chad, and the grandmother of Ella, an accomplished Marriage and Family Therapist, a leader with Crisis Pregnancy Centers, and part-time bikini model. Those of you out there in readerland who are hipsters-in-training with your $200 vintage beaded pants, if you want to know what the real thing looks like, ask Teri about her days as a real-life Hippie! (if you can catch her between acid-induced flashbacks, that is)

So, Teri, lend us your time, and answer these questions 3.

1) I’m giving you a magic megaphone. It is purple, with sparkles, but that’s not what makes it magic. What makes it magic is this: if you say something into it, the person you are talking will actually hear you. No defensiveness, no dissembling, no nodding then forgetting. You can see how useful this would be. If you brought this megaphone to work with you, what phrase do you think you would most often say with it during therapy sessions?

2) Let’s talk about Paul. What’s the deal? I mean, nice guy and all that, and he seems to be slightly above average in the intelligence, personality, wisdom, patience, income, friendship, godliness, compassion, and snappy dressing categories, but apart from that, what did you ever see in the guy? Here’s what I really want to know: free-as-a-daisy hippie chick marries “the man”. 30-some years later, who won? Is he more like you, or are you more like him?

3) I hope this isn’t awkward for you, but I’m actually trying to build a Teri from scratch, using spare parts from other bikini models, and a few facial features from Michelle Pfeiffer. Once I get Clone Teri up and running, I’m planning on sitting her down with some books and DVDs, so that she has some of the same influences on her thinking that you’ve had. What should go on the required reading / watching list?

Swing away, my dear. Feel free to take them one at a time if you want.