Category: Commentary

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The Dark Streets of London

The Cinch Review

What are the riots in London about? I’m sure they constitute evidence of many things. Londoner Mick Hartley observes that a lot of commentators are “using the occasion to strengthen their own particular prejudices.” He has no grand explanation but identifies old-fashioned “teenage bravado” as on one of the chief things underlying the activities. And of-course the plain old desire for “free goodies.” And as he points out: “What’s changed is that now, with their Blackberries, they can get a flash mob together pretty damn quick, and they can stay ahead of the police.” They are the Blackberry riots. Continue reading “The Dark Streets of London”

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How Osama bin Laden met his end

The Cinch Review

Osama bin Laden

(Click for explanation of picture if needed.)

The article by Nicholas Schmidle in the New Yorker—“Getting Bin Laden”—seems to be the most detailed account yet published on the mission to kill the al-Qaeda leader. Although it provides background and a postscript, it focuses largely on the SEAL mission itself. Of-course any piece like this is only as good as its sources, and we don’t really know who Schmidle’s sources are, but the story comes across very credibly, to this reader at least, and I definitely recommend reading it in full. It should fill any American’s heart with awe at the caliber of those wearing the uniform and putting themselves on the line every day. As the article makes clear, the mission that night was in some ways not unusual at all; these kinds of dangerous and daring attacks on Taliban and al-Qaeda targets are executed on a regular basis. The unusual things in this case were (1) venturing so far within Pakistan and (2) the name of the primary target. In some ways, as scary and nerve-wracking as it is even to read the account months later, this mission was significantly easier than the average one, in that Osama bin Laden’s compound was not well-defended. Of-course it’s easy to know that after the fact, aware as we are now that there were no booby-traps or suicide vests awaiting the SEALs. They couldn’t know those things that night. Continue reading “How Osama bin Laden met his end”

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Breivik: Neither Jesus nor Robert Spencer inspired his bloodlust

The Cinch Review

It is something which adds bitter insult to grievous injury, when a brutal killer is rewarded after the fact of his crimes by having his twisted personal manifesto widely publicized and analyzed, before the eulogies for the victims have even been heard. Often when it happens the killer himself is dead, but not so in the case of Anders Behring Breivik, who will apparently have the opportunity to enjoy his notoriety for many years to come, since Norway does not practice capital punishment (and in theory he may be released after 21 years in prison). Inevitably his 1518 pages of writing, titled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” will be pored over in an attempt to explain his demonic acts.

Since I already wrote something two days ago regarding the common description of Breivik in the media as a “fundamentalist Christian,” a follow-up on that point based on his writings seems called for, at least in my own mind. There’s no possibility of my reading his entire opus, but I thought a quick probe of his “Christianity” might be possible by simply doing a word search for the name Jesus. Unsurprisingly, the references I found this way betrayed no particular faith and even less any sensitivity to Christian teaching. He seems to stitch in cold references to Christianity merely as part of his process of documenting whatever it is he thinks he is documenting. On page 1307, he explicitly states that he has no “personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God” but instead believes in Christianity “as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform.” I speculate that he may find that this position leaves something to be desired when he meets his Maker. But I know of no kind of “fundamentalist Christian” (a term which in itself is poorly used far more than it is ever accurately used) who would say such a soulless thing. Continue reading “Breivik: Neither Jesus nor Robert Spencer inspired his bloodlust”

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Mistaken and Dangerous: David Brooks on “Death and Budgets”


In a recent New York Times op-ed titled “Death and Budgets,” columnist David Brooks points to the example of a writer named Dudley Clendinen to illustrate what Brooks apparently feels is the correct way to face death, especially from that which we call terminal illness. Dudley Clendinen is sixty-six years-old, and has a diagnosis of A.L.S. (Lou Gehrig’s disease). He wrote a piece himself for the Times called “The Good Short Life” in which he explains his decision to forgo a variety of treatments that could keep him alive for some additional years, albeit in a progressively more disabled state. Essentially he says that he is plumping to let the disease take its course, and he thinks it likely that he will die from aspirational pneumonia some time in the next several months (although he is not opposed to giving himself a shove into death by some other means if he deems it necessary).

David Brooks moves quickly to presenting Clendinen’s story as a valuable “backdrop to the current budget mess.” Health care costs being such a big part of it, he argues, wouldn’t it be great if everyone had the same attitude to death as Dudley Clendinen? Our society would save so much money by not having to provide great quantities of medical care to the elderly and terminally ill, when all it does is provide them with a few more years of living—and diminished living at that. His argument is really just that simple. Continue reading “Mistaken and Dangerous: David Brooks on “Death and Budgets””

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Blame It On The Boogie

The Cinch Review

The day Michael Jackson’s death was reported, Yours Truly wrote a brief note:

What can you say about the American tragedy and grim parable that the Michael Jackson story represents? I’m stumped for comment. There’s just one pointless phrase that keeps repeating and repeating in my head: “Blame it on the boogie.” It was a good tune.

And it was. It can be heard and watched via YouTube below, but beware: the special effects in this video are mind-blowing, and have never been explained nor duplicated.

That song is from the Jacksons (aka Jackson 5) 1978 album Destiny. To my mind, it serves as the marker for the beginning of Michael Jackson’s golden years. His 1979 solo album, Off The Wall, continued the upward trend, and it peaked with 1982’s Thriller. Then, his music entered a steep decline, which was apparently mirrored in his personal life. The golden years were short, but strong enough to establish him in many people’s minds as a talent of historic proportions. It’s hardly necessary to point out that Michael Jackson seems to be tremendously overrated by some, and yet on the other hand he is sometimes too quickly dismissed by others. For a few years there he had a great thing going. He embodied a mercurial synthesis of pop, soul and disco, augmented by really great songwriting and smart, tasteful production. It’s just amazing how quickly something so good can fall apart.

…

Here’s a slightly more somber but still enjoyable take on “Blame It On The Boogie,” from friends The Higher Animals.


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Libya: What kind of damned war is this?

The Cinch Review

Commander-in-ChiefThe madness continues in Libya, and regarding Libya. It’s no kind of war at all, says President Obama. The American military activity he has authorized in Libya doesn’t come under the purview of the War Powers Resolution, and therefore doesn’t require the approval of the U.S. Congress, because …

U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof.

See: U.S. forces might have bombed and shot at Libyans quite a bit early on, and may potentially do so again if circumstances demand it, but Col. Gaddafi and his forces understand that it’s just not appropriate to shoot back, and actually injuring or killing any Americans engaged in this operation against them would be a completely unacceptable faux pas. Therefore, no war. Continue reading “Libya: What kind of damned war is this?”

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More Abraham Joshua Heschel: on the Law, God’s Timing and Man’s Readiness

Abraham Joshua Heschel Who Is Man?

From his book God in Search of Man:

Man had to be expelled from the Garden of Eden; he had to witness the murder of half of the human species by Cain out of envy; experience the catastrophe of the Flood; the confusion of the languages; slavery in Egypt and the wonder of the Exodus, to be ready to accept the law.

Continue reading “More Abraham Joshua Heschel: on the Law, God’s Timing and Man’s Readiness”

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Sitting, Your Health, and Donald Rumsfeld

Rumsfeld standing desk

There has been considerable evidence accumulated through various studies that sitting for many hours each day—as so many people do as a matter of course at work, not to mention in recreational screen-watching—is extremely hazardous to one’s heath, especially when it comes to heart disease. A new report today has a cardiologist stating that it is every bit as dangerous as smoking. Continue reading “Sitting, Your Health, and Donald Rumsfeld”

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Abraham Joshua Heschel on the Bible

I was reading an essay by Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book The Insecurity of Freedom and was struck by this paragraph:

Into his studies of the Bible the modern scholar brings his total personality, his increased knowledge of the ancient Near East, his power of analysis, his historic sense, his honest commitment to truth—as well as inherent skepticism of biblical claims and tradition. In consequence, we have so much to say about the Bible that we are not prepared to hear what the Bible has to say about us. We are not in love with the Bible; we are in love with our own power of critical acumen, with our theories about the Bible. Intellectual narcissism is a disease to which some of us are not always immune. The sense of the mystery and transcendence of what is at stake in the Bible is lost in the process of analysis. As a result, we have brought about the desanctification of the Bible.

Similar things have no doubt been said in many different ways, but I think that is extraordinarily well put. Those words were written in 1963. They struck me when I read them more on a personal level than as a societal or institutional criticism, although the “desanctification” of the Bible surely has had plenty to do with the rotting away of the mainline Protestant churches in America. Continue reading “Abraham Joshua Heschel on the Bible”

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At an Hour You Do Not Expect

The Cinch Review

The story is sad more than anything else, even though the headline is “World NOT Wracked by Cataclysmic Earthquakes.” As doomsday cultists go, the believers in the May 21st Rapture and Judgment Day prediction always seemed to come across as nice people. I’ll leave out Harold Camping — the instigator of it all — because I don’t know enough to say how nice he may be, and he certainly has caused a lot of damage to some people’s material well-being with his preaching, and has likely damaged their faith as well. Continue reading “At an Hour You Do Not Expect”

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Obama: Pulling the Carpet from Under Israel

The Cinch Review

The last time President Obama attempted to fundamentally shift U.S. policy against Israel—when he tried to order the Israeli government to prevent Jews from building homes in Jerusalem—the backlash, domestically, and from Congress, was so severe that he had to back down. On this occasion, the situation is still developing—Netanyahu meets Obama today, and will himself address a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Tuesday—but I think in this case the damage to Israel is all but impossible to undo. (File it under “elections have consequences.”) Continue reading “Obama: Pulling the Carpet from Under Israel”

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Down in the Flood: Louisiana 2011

The Cinch Review

The news is not good:

In an agonizing trade-off, Army engineers said they will open a key spillway along the bulging Mississippi River as early as Saturday and inundate thousands of homes and farms in Louisiana’s Cajun country to avert a potentially bigger disaster in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

About 25,000 people and 11,000 structures could be in harm’s way when the gates on the Morganza spillway are unlocked for the first time in 38 years.

Opening the spillway will release a torrent that could submerge about 3,000 square miles under as much as 25 feet of water but take the pressure off the downstream levees protecting New Orleans, Baton Rouge and the numerous oil refineries and chemical plants along the lower reaches of the Mississippi.

[…]

The corps said it will open the gates when the river’s flow rate reaches a certain point, expected Saturday. But some people living in the threatened stretch of countryside — an area known for small farms, fish camps and a drawling French dialect — have already started fleeing for higher ground.

The song, in so many ways, remains the same.


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Spring in New York City

The Cinch Review

New York City, to those who love it, is very often beautiful, but only very rarely pretty.

There’s the strange beauty of an overcast day, with a low-hanging grayness shrouding the Empire State Building and the other clustered midtown skyscrapers. There’s the unique beauty of a subway car crammed with a motley herd of travelers — every race, creed, style of dress or undress, almost every economic class — sitting, standing, jostling, and (honestly more often than not) avoiding coming to blows. There’s the olfactory beauty of the varying and mixed up aromas of cooking that one encounters while charging down the street — the pizza places, the falafel stands, the donut shops and even the dirty-water hot dog carts (I don’t eat ’em anymore but I do like to smell ’em). Continue reading “Spring in New York City”

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Osama Bin Laden goes to Davey Jones’ Locker

The Cinch Review

The operation carried out by the Navy SEALS is obviously one for the history books. Bin Laden was living in a large walled compound (a “million dollar mansion”) in an urban area, not far from a military base, and he had to have had at least the tacit permission of elements of Pakistan’s security apparatus in order to do so. The danger to the SEALS was beyond calculation. They could not have a definite idea of what awaited them inside that compound. Yet, if all the reports so far are true, the operation was carried out with no American losses or injuries, in the space of forty minutes on the ground. That’s nothing short of fantastic. The military did their job with heroism and precision, and that has been the recurring story in the war that began on 9/11/2001. Continue reading “Osama Bin Laden goes to Davey Jones’ Locker”

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I Am the Man

The Cinch Review

The old Stanley Brothers tune has come a long way, but it’s still just the same arresting song it’s always been. I came across an excellent version of it today by an Englishman calling himself Neil Hankin — below.

Based on a true story, some say. From John, chapter 20 (and the Gospel reading at most Christian churches this morning):

Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

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Good Friday, via William Tyndale

William Tyndale's New Testament

William Tyndale was the first to translate the Bible directly from Hebrew and Greek texts into English, in the name of making Scripture available to the common folk. It was he who first looked at the Greek and rendered such ageless phrases as, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26); at the Hebrew and rendered, “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light” (Genesis 1). And likewise with so many other familiar and beloved phrases beyond listing. His translations of the Old and New Testaments are now estimated as forming the basis of about 80% of the later and greatly revered King James Bible. His work also formed the basis of the earlier Geneva Bible, which was the Bible in English that a fellow named William Shakespeare would have read. Continue reading “Good Friday, via William Tyndale”