Welcome to the Wednesday (EBD) edition of SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight’s selection artfully juxtaposes a (lyrically) austere, Old Testament-inspired song with selected scenes from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s (also austere) 1964 film The Gospel According To St. Mathew. The combination is not, as one might expect, doubly austere, but rather lyrical and rapturous, and almost transcendent.
Like other neorealist directors Pasolini used non-professional actors almost exclusively, and in The Gospel According to St. Mathew he took this approach a step further: many of the seemingly endless cast aren’t actors at all, amateur or otherwise, and don’t act, or speak, or perform any actions at all; rather, their faces, and the hardship and concerns written on them, as seen in seemingly endless, lingering close-ups, are used to serve the – biblical, in this case – narrative.
Serves tonight’s song too, as it turns out. This one won’t be to everyone’s taste – what is, really? – but I like it, and you never know how long a particular video will be available, so here it is: an interesting visual treatment of Bob Dylan’s When He Returns.
Your Reader Tips are welcome, as always, in the comments.
ET, the American people will endure while visiting their wrath on Hussein and his puppetmasters at every opportunity. They will take the long view of kings:
Meanwhile, I raise my glass to Kate and to all of you for Hogmanay and New Year’s.
Black Mamba, re miniature schnauzer alert:
I feel very badly for the poor puppy who lost her life saving her mistress’s, but keep getting this picture of one of Kate’s dogs — SUPER SCHNAUZER — holding the attacker at bay, just long enough for Kate to confront him with her hunting gun and string him naked and upside down till the police arrive.
I know; poor doggy.
akmal sheikh’s piece of chinese real estate:
3w.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1239471/Akmal-Shaikhs-desolate-tomb-pictured-time.html
A couple of months ago Theodore Dalrymple wrote a phrase that stuck with me: commenting on a left-ish academic essay that portrayed crime as “an arbitrary social construction,” he wrote “There is in the article a moral exhibitionism, which is generosity of spirit at other people’s expense.”
The following passage from Roger Scruton’s essay “Totalitarian Sentimentality” nicely limns that same loudly-announced “generosity” which receives accolades while others give:
“The compassion displayed by the liberal is precisely that — compassion displayed, though not necessarily felt. The liberal knows in his heart that his ‘compassionating zeal,’ as Rousseau described it, is a privilege for which he must thank the social order that sustains him. He knows that his emotion toward the victim class is (these days at least) more or less cost-free, that the few sacrifices he might have to make by way of proving his sincerity are nothing compared to the warm glow of approval by which he will be surrounded by declaring his sympathies. His compassion is a profoundly motivated state of mind, not the painful result of a conscience that will not be silenced, but the costless ticket to popular acclaim.”
“Files released to the National Archives show that soon after becoming prime minister, Lady Thatcher privately complained that too many Asian immigrants were being allowed into Britain.
“The documents, which are published today under the ’30 year rule’, shed further light on Lady Thatcher’s attitudes on race and immigration, political issues that have remained controversial ever since.”
(…)
“She said that ‘with some exceptions there had been no humanitarian case for accepting 1.5 million immigrants from south Asia and elsewhere. It was essential to draw a line somewhere’.”
Thatcher expressed her views publicly as well. From a television interview:
“’People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture,’ (Thatcher) told World In Action.
“’If we do not want people to go to extremes we ourselves must talk about this problem and we must show that we are prepared to deal with it,’ she added. ‘We are not in politics to ignore people’s worries. We are in politics to deal with them.‘” (emph. mine)
The Telegraph notes:
“(Thatcher’s) comments were held responsible for a collapse in support for the National Front, which had been gathering momentum in working class communities.”
AGW is a scab.
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“It Was “Too Cold” For Union Members To Protest A Hedge Fund Yesterday
There was supposed to be a protest yesterday at Brigade Capital Management, a Manhattan hedge fund. The teamsters, a group of union workers, had planned to protest Brigade, UBS, Barclays and the other creditors of YRC, a trucking company, in hopes of urging them to tender their bonds and cooperate with a debt to equity deal.
Without the debt swap, which would allow YRC to “erase” or side-pocket their debt and restructure, the trucking company apparently might be forced into Chapter 11. But with a debt swap, the bondholders will get a 95% stake in the company.
A protest at a hedge fund is a rare event and The Business Insider was on the scene at Brigade yesterday waiting to talk to the protesters, but they didn’t show.
A bunch of cops had been dispatched to the office at 399 Park Ave and for awhile there was kind of a scene. Then they heard that the protest was cancelled.
Apparently the Teamsters postponed because Brigade and the other creditors are either cooperating or no longer hold YRC bonds, but the security detail at the Brigade office said they had heard of a different reason for the canceled protest.
“We were told the protest was actually scheduled for yesterday, Tuesday, but they postponed because of bitter cold,” the head of security told us.
“It was probably too cold for them again,” said security of the protestors.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2418542/posts
EBD – I’ve reads hundreds (at least) of Theodore Dalrymple’s articles and three of his books. Off the top of my head my all time favorite quote of his is this, re. the attitude of the authorities towards a severely psychotic prisoner whom Dr. D was trying to get transferred to a mental institution:
“The doctors to whom I proposed to send the patient accepted the conditions in which he lived with a Buddha-like calm that would have been admirable had the suffering been theirs.”
“…that would have been admirable had the suffering been theirs.”
That’s perfect, a clever/dry way of making flesh, with words, “the costless ticket” of the sanctimonious. One could apply variants of that to describe the “generosity” of the g-tit left’s alm-givers – maybe something like: “They calmly and beatifically showered financial support on everyone they saw, with a spirit of generosity that would have been admirable had the money been theirs.”
It’s easy to bear other people’s pain. And it’s easy to spend other people’s money. On that cheerful note: Happy New Year!
(That’s twice for me. Clearly I am very altruistic.)
Putin on the Knife!
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“Ouch! Putin Answer About Terrorism Stuns Press Conference to Silence
Transcript: “FRENCH JOURNALIST: Don’t you think that by trying to eradicate terrorism in Chechnya you are going to eradicate the civilian population of Chechnya? VLADIMIR PUTIN: If you want to become an Islamic fundamentalist and be circumcised, come to Moscow. We are multiconfessional. We have very good specialists. I can recommend one for the operation. He’ll make sure nothing grows back.”
Blog comment: It is frightening to think how much Putin must dominate Obama in private negotiations. And what must Putin think about Americans reading Miranda rights to apprehended terrorists?”
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2418656/posts
The tenth anniversary of Y2K is nigh.
I wonder how many “reviews of the decade” will mark Y2K as the first and/or the most important event of the decade. What a difference 2 seconds can make.