dr. elsewhere here
If I haven't yet mentioned my pride in knowing a new Congressman from Tennessee's 9th District (Memphis, my old stompin' grounds!), then let me belatedly express how impressed I have been in Steve Cohen's remarkably sophisticated showing fresh on the Hill. His House website offers a couple of videos of his strong floor statements, as well as his astute questioning of AG Mukasey just last week, grilling him on his flimsy position regarding prosecution of contempt charges against Miers and Bolten, now highly relevant.
Well, seems Steve's young national career has just gone quite public, as a black minister from Murfreesboro - a full four hour drive from Memphis - has apparently sent out some pretty overtly anti-Semitic fliers blasting the fact that Steve is Jewish, and not Christian, and not black.
And Cohen was on Colbert!
Now, aside from the shameful fact that Steve is the first and only Jewish Congressman from the state of Tennessee, and aside from the sad fact that there is this pathetic history of tension between blacks and Jews in this country, and aside from the fact that the Memphis Baptist Ministerial Association has objected to a white Jew representing a 65% black district, one would just have to ask...
How do these folks intend to convince the whites of this country (75%) that a black man like Obama can represent them?
And oh, by the by, Congressman Cohen openly supports and endorses Barack Obama for President.
17 comments:
If Cohen was on Colbert, he's probably in the running for VP on the Obama ticket. I like the match; it's a second bite of the 2000 half-Tennessee, half-Jewish apple (Gore/Lieberman), since half-ennobled, half-disgraced.
Okay, Vanderbilt, here's your GE College Bowl toss-up question of three parts, answer all three:
1. If a Jewish couple leave their new-born in the forest and the kid is raised by wolves, is the kid Jewish?
2. If an Xtian couple leave their kid in the forest and the kid is raised by wolves, is the kid Xtian?
3. Same as above but the couple are black.
Damned good point, doc. If some demagogue says that Cohen cannot represent black constituents, then that same demagogue should argue that Obama cannot represent whites.
aitch: I'll have a go at answering your questions.
1. Under Jewish law, the kid is a Jew if his mother is a Jew. However, if the kid marries a wolf in that pack, then his Jewish relations must sit shiva for him. Unless the wolf is Jewish.
2. There is no such thing as an "Xtian." The word "Christian" is not so very long. Let's not embrace a puerile and silly abbreviation.
The kid is not Christian because he has not undergone either Baptism or conversion.
3. The kid is indeed black.
Christians are members of a religion. Black people are members of a race. Religions are chosen; races are not. I personally like the idea of widespread intermarriage, which will end all racial controversies once and for all.
When it comes to canines, I prefer the mongrel to the purebred.
Is Judaism a race or a religion? That question has been debated endlessly, and will not be settled here.
I'll simply ask anew a question which many have asked before: If Jews do not intermarry or seek to convert, then how do we explain the Falashas?
aitchD, cohen was on colbert's 'better know a district,' or whatever the hell it was. not at all running mate material; no 'colbert bump' to watch for.
so you'll know, vandy is not in memphis.
as for the questions, what joe said.
Vandy was the formative stamping ground for Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, and John Crowe Ransom at the same time, and therefore not only is Vandy in Memphis, but it's also everywhere in the English-speaking world.
Many years ago in the paper I read that a 'white' woman gave birth to twin boys, one "white" and the other "black". My initial reaction was WTF, notwithstanding the article's explanation that the woman had (evidently) been impregnated by two different men around the same time, which she allowed probably had happened. If she's Jewish (according to Annie Hall's grandmother), that could explain the Ethiopian Jews (though I prefer an explanation like in "The Gods Must Be Crazy"). Anyway, your follow-up question isn't so easy:
Which of those twin boys would grow up to answer: "Am I my bro's keeper?"*
*a variation of the Car Talk Puzzler about the town with only two barbers, and which one would you choose
(no, the twins weren't Michael Jackson and George Hamilton)
Joseph said: -- There is no such thing as an "Xtian." The word "Christian" is not so very long. Let's not embrace a puerile and silly abbreviation. --
No, I won't follow your advice about that or accept your characterization. I was writing to dr. elsewhere's blog and was being mindful and respectful of her long presence; in particular, her stylistic form of 'Xtian' for 'Christian' in the past, though I don't know if her style has been consistent, ironic, or merely bloggy, but it shouldn't be an issue unless you're prepared to start parsing the Decalogue and also deciding which commandments you personally agree with and which you reject. Just so you know what page I'm on: I admire all religions and respect none of them.
aitchd, the xtian shorthand has never bothered me, and i'm quite sure i've used it before. no disrespect intended, as the abbreviation itself was first used by the xtians themselves.
your characterization of 'vandy' being everywhere, however, is not so compelling, tho their pr offices would no doubt love it.
Okay, I was being nostalgic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Criticism
If the Germans invented the Ph.D, as Gore Vidal claims, then the guys from Vanderbilt (Brooks, Warren, and Ransom) invented the English major. I'm on record (not here) as suggesting that those Vanderbilt guys did untold damage to American university students owing to the mass-scale adoption of their textbooks for half a century by English departments and the resulting tyranny of literary studies. Hey, a compelling case can be made that Vanderbilt did to 'the life of the mind' what U of Chicago did to the marketplace. Another compelling case can be made that the Berkeley FSM (1964) essentially was a renunciation and rejection of Vanderbilt, although the Brooks/Warren/Ransom stranglehold began to loosen around the same time that Elvis returned from overseas after serving in the United States Armed Forces.
I wish that those running against Cohen would withdraw.
I couldn't stand to have a vote from one person who was influenced by that false prophet minister.
wow, aitchd; you blame vandy for the new criticism? it's not even mentioned in that wiki article. and when i was there, poststructuralism was all the rage. but then, i wasn't in that dept, so instead witnessed the various influences of foucault and AI compete.
dr, I mentioned Vandy above, as the place where Brooks, Warren, and Ransom, the NC's founders, found each other, but I don't blame Vandy, I blame the Eng depts everywhere else for the tyranny. You are very lucky. I'm curious, was Kafka assigned reading in your day? (He hadn't been translated into English until 1947, meaning he wouldn't be assigned widely until the 1970s.)
aitchd, assuming you may still be checking in here:
yeah, there was incredible tyranny in the whole field of literary criticism, but to my mind it was no better with the poststructuralists. in fact, it may have been worse, though i wasn't in academia for the NC period, so i just can't say.
and really shouldn't say much at all, since literature is not my professional field. i only became exposed to literary criticism because of my utter fascination with language, and the psych and philosophy of that of course addressed the criticism issues of the day.
which was in the late 80s, though i'm not that young; took that hippie hiatus for a full decade before i picked up studies again.
and yes, i was required to read 'metamorphosis' as a senior in high school. great teacher, she was, who also required us to read 'tolkien'. i got such a great education!
and grad school at vandy was terrific, at least for psych. as for the founding place for NC brethren, this is the first i've ever heard of that, so it's not like vandy even claims that so much.
epilogue: dr, you're even luckier than I imagined! I wasn't around either during the NC cyclone, but I embraced the post-structuralists because they should have been easy to read and accessible to American students who had been (unlike the French theorists) acculturated by TV, radio, and popular culture, and had already developed their intellects to grasp multiple meanings from hypothetical, multiple perspectives. The French theorists were composing their tyrannies when The Beatles were composing Rubber Soul and Revolver. By the time of The Beatles (aka White Album), the absurdity of trying to teach the French lit theories to American students was akin to trying to get a fish to comprehend wetness, although in places like Memphis, of all places, they were still burning Beatles records. Cue "All Along the Watchtower".
aitchd, this is getting a little silly, but still fun.
i actually had trouble with the deconstructuralists, which is what we called them. they really did exhibit a tyranny no less stringent than the NCs, to my mind. and it was inherently self-contradictory, as well, which never got much attention, but whatever. i sure enjoyed reading the philosophers, nonetheless; foucault is such a trip, but he never quite acknowledged that his deconstructions were ultimately REconstructions. whatever.
the larger contradiction, to my mind, tho, was the way the deconstructuralists insisted that power was all about who could manipulate the knowledge in a society. so i watched while these deconstructuralists imposed themselves as THE power, and then wondered if any of them ever got that irony.
speaking of irony, i actually saw the beatles (7th row center) in memphis, in the middle of that 'more popular than jesus' kerfluffle. and then, also saw hendrix there, as well. but not dylan (the band; does that count? front row center for that one).
Wow (like it used to mean), dr, you can talk it walk it sing it and play it! I saw Monterey Pop and Woodstock at the movies on a double-bill, and I thought it was heavy. I missed seeing Hendrix across the street (!) and Led Zeppelin who opened for him (where I saw James Brown and His Famous Flames from the FIRST row in the gym!), and the year before at a local radio station when my former college roommate/then-current dance-show producer showed me Jimi's 8x10 and said "Look at this animal" - what I devoted myself to was practicing and hoping to play drums for Janis, it was my dream, and, well, you know the rest. No you don't. David Crosby said about Janis, "What would she be doing today? We're talking about major art." Who knows, but something about Janis has to do with why I love Hillary. Plus, she's my gen's last shot at getting it right. Silly, I know. Cue The Eagles' "The Sad Cafe".
Um, Miles Davis spoke to me after a gig at the Cellar Door in Georgetown - he seldom spoke even to his musicians. But to see The Beatles! You're our Magi!
I doubt that you'll read this, aitch. But my Mom met Miles. (She knew ALL the jazz greats. I'll tell the story one day.) And she used to joke: "Have you heard about the Miles Davis doll? Wind it up and it turns its back on you."
My favorite Miles Davis story was told by Alex Haley. According to Haley, Miles would sometimes call him up and utter just one word:
"Chili."
Click.
This meant: "I have made some chili and I would like you to come over and have some."
I've been known to do likewise.
Haha, I almost closed my comment above asking if anyone reading here saw Coltrane. I hadn't yet, and then he died. Sam Cook(e) died around the same time, shortly after their influence Nat Cole died. Hey, I met Alex Haley also! He spoke at our school in a classroom, before Roots was finished. He told his "My Furthest Back Ancestor: 'The African'" story, about how he heard certain words and phrases on his aunt's porch when he was a boy, and then took those words to Africa with him many years later and found the river named on his aunt's porch, and the village, and the old man who knew the history that had been given to him...
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