VP Debate

Brief thoughts - Biden won, no surprise. His greater experience and familiarity with the issues was clear. For Palin it was not a repeat of the Katie Couric interviews. Because there were lower expectations for her performance the greater disparity between the expectations and what happened will seem like more of a victory for her than if Biden had performed at her level. None of this is surprising.

Here's what I found interesting:

1) There was much more subtle hostility in this debate than in the first presidential debate. Palin started a lot of her statements with a "I'm talking as though I'm naive and don't really understand the big world of politics, but it's only so I can come back and dis' you" (e.g., the "I must really be a Washington outsider since I don't understand how you say one thing and then go and say another" line). Biden at many points had a "You don't know what the hell you're talking about" opening, which is probably more fair since he was addressing perceived factual inaccuracies.

2) We all know that the Obama campaign has tried to tie McCain to Bush, saying a McCain administration would be another 4 or 8 years of the Bush administration. Last night, however, I heard Biden tie McCain's name to Dick Cheney at least two or three times.

More help

So I decided to submit the photo of the soccer game in front of St. Peter's Basilica.

Now I need you to go here and vote for my photo.

Help me out

I need help selecting a photo to submit to a scholarship competition. Here are the contenders. Vote for the one you like best. Larger versions can be viewed here in the Villa Borghese and Amalgamation albums.

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I call bullshit

The intro to my Experiencing Theatre textbook:

In the theatre we are always aware that we are watching real people play fictions that have a greater reality than our own lives for the duration of the performance. So the image we see on the stage is not passive, but rather one that stimulates us to consider our lives more deeply. It can be a spur to social consciousness and political action, and sometimes performance itself can be an act of protest or conscience. No electronic form can excite and unsettle us in this way. Despite the accessibility and easy consumption of film and television, the theatre continues to be the stage for examination of the deepest questions surrounding human existence.

Shenanigans.

Notre Dame de Paris

Sunday night I finished reading Notre Dame de Paris, commonly titled The Hunchback of Notre Dame in English. ***mild spoiler alert***

I never saw the Disney film and was only mildly familiar with the story. As it turns out, the tale is a tragedy.

Initially I was greatly disappointed. This was not because I thought it was poorly written, but because I wanted some redemption for the leading characters.

Now I think the ending is tragic, but perfect (I am thinking now of Stranger than Fiction, and my readers will understand if they've seen that film).

Each of the leading characters - Frollo, Esmerelda, and Quasimodo - loves someone he or she cannot have, and it leads to each character's demise. One wishes that Frollo would repent and stop terrorizing Esmerelda so that he would become the noble man he once was. One wishes that Esmerelda would stop obsessing over Phoebus, the captain of the guard, a terrible man who only tries to use her and then abandons her. One does not necessarily wish that Quasimodo would stop loving Esmerelda, but perhaps that this love did not cause such torment and end so terribly.

This one was not as wonderful as Les Miserables, but I did not expect it to be, and it is still a great literary work. Victor Hugo is confirmed as my favorite author.

Destroying innocence

I recently began reading The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (but put it aside for the moment to finish another work by Victor Hugo). I was struck by Fyodor Karamazov's relationship with his second wife.

[Fyodor] was tempted only by the innocent girl's remarkable beauty, and above all by her innocent look, which struck the sensualist who until then had been a depraved admirer only of the coarser kind of feminine beauty. "Those innocent eyes cut my soul like a razor," he used to say afterwards with his disgusting little snigger. However, in a depraved man this, too, might be only a sensual attraction. As he had gotten no reward, Fyodor Pavlovich did not stand on ceremony with his wife, and taking advantage of the fact that she was, so to speak, "guilty" before him, and that he had practically "saved her from the noose," taking advantage, besides that, of her phenomenal humility and meekness, he even trampled with both feet on the ordinary decencies of marriage. Loose women would gather in the house right in front of his wife, and orgies took place.

I instantly recalled this line from Les Miserables which describes the young girls playing before the nuns in the convent where Jean Valjean finds refuge.

The gaze of sinlessness does not disturb innocence.

I am guilty of crushing innocence to escape its gaze, like Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov.

I recall conversations with people who have not been exposed to evil, to sin, or have not committed it themselves. I have called them sheltered and encouraged them to expose themselves or partake in it.

I wonder why, though people are critical of scandal, they seek it and love it. The words of Hugo describe why they act as they do and why I have acted as I have.

If we can destroy innocence, or prove that it does not exist where we believe it may, we can escape that uncomfortable gaze of sinlessness that forces a conscience to operate. So long as I perceive no just judge who can praise or blame me I remain guiltless and at ease.

Election 2008

Senator Barack Obama will not receive my vote until he stops pretending that abortion is a primarily theological issue and acknowledges that if the right to life is not guaranteed to every living human, no other right is guaranteed. This trumps all other redeeming qualities since the next president has a good chance of appointing a Supreme Court justice.

Vote Senator John McCain for president in November 2008.

Obama

McCain