Chesterton Recitation

on Exhibitionism

In fact, Britney was following to its logical end what has become the first rule of contemporary American girlhood: to show that you are liberated, take it off. Liberty means responsibility . . . to disrobe.
...
The problem with a Britney or a Bentley is not that they are floozies. It is rather that they are, paradoxical as it might seem, naive. They underestimate the magnetic force field created by intimate sexual information and violate the logic of privacy that should be all the more compelling in a media-driven age. People in the public eye always risk becoming objectified; they are watched by hordes of strangers who have only fragmentary information about them. When that information includes details that only their Brazilian waxers should know for sure, it's inevitable that, humans being the perverse creatures that they are, all other facts of identity will fall away. Instead of becoming freer, the exhibitionist becomes an object defined primarily by a narrow sexual datum.

The problem is not that these women are sexual, but that they should be more than that.

The Porn Myth

Brilliance shines through this article (more of a lament, really), which discusses the effects of pornography on men and [real] sex. Her diagnosis can hardly be more poignant than the response of a young man explaining to her why sex should come first in relationships.

“Why have sex right away?” a boy with tousled hair and Bambi eyes was explaining. “Things are always a little tense and uncomfortable when you just start seeing someone,” he said. “I prefer to have sex right away just to get it over with. You know it’s going to happen anyway, and it gets rid of the tension.”

“Isn’t the tension kind of fun?” I asked. “Doesn’t that also get rid of the mystery?”

“Mystery?” He looked at me blankly. And then, without hesitating, he replied: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sex has no mystery.”

...the only proper response to such soul deadening (for those nonreligious of you, think "life deadening") nonsense is this (or perhaps vomiting).

McSquirrels

Ben Pearson:

"I have this squirel that lives in my neighborhood. The neighbors feed it. So it just sits over there all day, and eats corn cobs. When the sun starts to set the squirel grabs an entire ear of corn in his mouth and walks accross my lawn to the other neighbors tree. On the way he takes at least five breaks, lays down. I think I saw him taking a nap. You see the thing is that this squirel is so fat that his belly drags on the ground and it is a lot of work to haul himself over to the tree he lives in. It's sad really. I wish I could help him out, but it is hard. I'm not sure whether I should put little squirel chairs in his path, or maybe lure him into my house and get him on a diet. If anyone has any advise please let me know. "

Money, Power, Sex ... and Abstraction

Blog and Mablog:

Now this is why intellectuals (high rpm) and pseudo-intellectuals (pseudo-high rpm) can sit up until two in the morning talking about how a particular French filmmaker was deconstructing the suburban instantiations of gnosticism with his gritty authenticity, while down the street another man puts them all to shame by getting up three hours later to go duck hunting with his son. Contemporary intellectuals tell us all to overcome abstractions, but whenever Joe Somebody in a red state says "Okay!" and heads off to a NASCAR race to eat corn dogs, the intellectual goes white in the face. "When we told you to walk away from the realm of abstractions, we didn't mean . . . to just walk away."

HT: Mark Horne

Ahhhh....Guinness

For those of you who can't hear the word 'evolution' without cringing and having a fit, don't click on this link to see a hilarious Guinness commercial.

Deadly Sins

While reading the news today, I noticed an interesting (yet frightening) similiarity between a Semi-Pelagian Narrower Catechism's ideas of sin (beware the heavy irony):

29. Q: What are the seven deadly sins?
A: The seven deadly sins are smoking, drinking, dancing, card-playing, movie-going, baptizing babies, and having any creed but Christ.

and the ideas of sin set forth by the Producer/Director of a 1927 film, King of Kings:

DeMille also ordered them not to be seen doing any "un-biblical" activities during the film's shooting. These activities included attending ball games, playing cards, frequenting night clubs, swimming, and riding in convertibles.

Note any similarity to people you know (though perhaps not the swimming part)?

Tolerance

Rick Garnett's comments on the Afghani execution of the converted Christian at Mirror of Justice definitely hit home.

Mirror of Justice: "I do not mean to be flip, but it seems to me that Sir Charles James Napier got it right. Napier was the British commander-in-chief in India, and he prohibited the Hindu practice of sati ('suttee'), i.e., burning widows alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands. When some Hindu leaders objected, Napier is said to have replied:

You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.'"

I'd also recommend John Coleman's thoughts over at Signs of the Times.

Update: The actual definition finally comes out from the Islamic presiding judge (credit to Kushiner over at Mere Comments):

"We will ask him if he has changed his mind about being a Christian. If he has, we will forgive him, because Islam is a religion of tolerance."