[critique] Celebrating the Coming Epiphany

On Sunday, Gusti posted a facebook note (a sermon, essentially) entitled "The Wisdom of the Star." Excerpt:

We have to pass through Herod to get to Jesus, I’m afraid. We have to look straight into the fear that grips our hearts.

But if I am wise—if you are wise—if any of us are wise—we know exactly where this Star of fear and doubt is heading, and we don’t want any part of it. Not in this new year. Not in this new decade.

The great 20th century theologian Karl Barth urged Christians to approach the world with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. And I agree. The wisdom of our time sheds light on the biblical tradition, and the wisdom of the biblical tradition sheds light on our time.

But here’s the thing. The wise ones don’t stop with Herod or the Arizona Daily Star or the intimidation or the name-calling, not even in the name of the prophetic tradition that is so important to us at St. Mark’s.

The wise ones don’t stop with fear. They keep going. Because they are following the star of Christ, and they won’t stop until the star does. And this star rises on a baby who is not afraid to be born in a manger to an unwed mother far away from home. And this star rises on a baby who is not afraid to tell the truth in the temple as a teenager while his parents search for him frantically. And this star rises on a baby who is not afraid to denounce the devil in the desert as a disciple . . . or touch the most tragically ill as a teacher . . . or cry out in the agony of crucifixion as a Christ . . . or rise up through resurrection as a Redeemer.

Because this star that we follow is about light and hope, not darkness and despair, and this wisdom we cling to transcends violence and destruction and fear and intolerance . . . and we may not have any idea where the star will lead us in the end . . . but we must follow it at all costs if we have any hope for salvation.

The wise men brought what they had. They followed a star. And they never, ever followed Herod’s star again.

So we bring our treasure to this place of hope, as the wise men do, whatever treasure we have, even if we can’t imagine how God will use it. Gold. Frankincense. Myrrh. What can a baby do with these things, we might ask?

But God can take anything we have to offer and use it in ways we never imagined. There’s that first century college education fund to start that we didn’t know existed. Maybe Jesus can go to rabbinical school now. There’s that flight into Egypt that has to get paid for somehow. There’s an adult Jesus ministry that needs to get seed money from somewhere. Who knows? Maybe that gold, frankincense and myrrh really were good baby gifts. Maybe they have gone on giving, even up to today.

So bring your gifts to God on this Epiphany Sunday—and every Sunday—following that star of hope and light and wisdom and grace. Keep praying toward the light on this Epiphany Sunday—and every Sunday—keep looking all around . . . at the wise women and men from every part of the world, right here in this sanctuary, right here on this journey to Bethlehem together, bringing every treasure we possess . . . to share with a baby, who will share it with the world.

And God will use our gifts in ways we never imagined possible. In this new year. And every year. Amen.

I was really struck by that line that opens the excerpt. Because when I was debriefing morning church with my housemate and her guest on Sunday, I commented that I don't really understand why the magi stop at Jerusalem and ask Herod for directions if they have a star that they're following, so I was really struck by "We have to pass through Herod to get to Jesus, I’m afraid. We have to look straight into the fear that grips our hearts."

I was telling Ari last night about Tiffany's Epiphany Sunday sermon and about how Tiffany really grooves on being a prophet of woe -- by which we mean talking at length about how the world sucks -- and how despite my constant critique (and even cynicism) I am always asking, "But what is the Good News, Tiffany?"

I was reminded of how the first episode I saw of House (1.07 "Fidelity") I said it was too cynical for me ("Everybody lies") and I couldn't watch it.

Ari and I talked about how there's a difference between dwelling in how much the world is a broken mess versus critiquing individuals/institutions.

I said critiquing is what I do -- or, at least, pointing people to critiques other people have made (e.g., James Cameron's Avatar).

Ari said, "You're a vessel for critique."

I laughed and thought of Mary (bearer of the Christ Child) except of course this is more like being the bearer of John the Baptist and oh yeah.

I think that part of it is that critique is an active, creative, enterprise. I say that I'm much better at critique than I am at constructive suggestions for how to improve things, but even targeted critique gives you a place to start. Bemoaning the state of the world leaves you without any agency -- the Powers are corrupt, the world's a mess, it's all so overwhelming and beyond our control. But if you tell me that language I use is hurtful or that media I'm enjoying perpetuate harmful ideas or that I'm marginalizing people in what I claim is an inclusive community ... I can do something about that. Not only is it a learning process (and I think learning is inherently exciting) but it's something I can actively be a part of -- even if that just means pointing out to someone the flaws in a movie they're talking about.

[Iran] Neda, interventionism, media, etc.

Blake Huggins said, "The Revolution will not be Televised. It will be tweeted."

One of the big things going around re: the Iranian election is:

دنیارابگوییدچطورآنهاانتخاباتمان دزدیده اند
Tell the world how they have stolen our election

I literally saw someone comment: "This quote could have been from any one of several million people here in the U.S. in 2000. Truly, we have more things in common than we imagine. I'm sad for them." I could have slapped them. Regardless of whether Bush stole that election or not, the people insisting that Gore won were not getting killed by the government for saying so.

One of the first things I came across about the election was Daniel Larison commenting on a George Friedman piece about polling, questioning whether Ahmadinejad really could have stolen the election. (Though some days later I read a BBC piece "Iran: Where did all the votes come from?", which is very doubtful about the legitimacy of the official results.)

My early reaction to all the news about the election was that I am really not invested in whether the Iranian election was stolen or not. (I winced when at a church service the first Wednesday after the June 12th election, one of the worship leaders said something about the courage of the people of Iran in the face of a stolen election.) What seems to me the big problem is that peaceful demonstrators are getting violently opposed by the government.

***

Matthew Yglesias wrote:

Obama *always* stays “two steps behind them”

I missed an excellent post the other day from Spencer Ackerman citing Trita Parsi of the NIAC:

It was important, Parsi said, for any non-Iranian organization wishing to show solidarity with the opposition to ensure that “anything they do is two steps behind the opposition and not two steps ahead.”

I just wanted to point out that this has always been Obama’s MO. He’s always a step or two behind where his supporters want him to be, getting pulled along by their enthusiasm, rather than out ahead of them where he might get cut off. It’s a community organizer’s MO. You never get out ahead of your constituency. Instead you shape the playing field so that your constituency’s desires flow towards where you think they should go, and allow them to carry you along behind them.

Somewhat relatedly, Andrew Sullivan quoted Kevin Drum responding to TPM's Jacob Heilbrunn.

***

ann1962 wrote:

I understand the point they are making, but she isn't their daughter or my daughter. I will not take that claim from her parents. Now her parents don't have her, they shouldn't lose the claim to call her *their* daughter.

http://jezebel.com/5298676/neda-is-my-daughter-i-have-one-just-like-her

In an unrelated context, fillyjonk on Shapely Prose wrote:

Part of the reason we show such public interest in — and sense of entitlement to — women’s bodies is that they’ve historically been used to represent things that are at once greater and smaller than “individual woman.” When we’re accustomed to women’s bodies signifying virtues and values and cultural mores — instead of signifying, you know, a woman’s body — it’s no wonder we start to feel they’re public property.

From "We Watched a Woman Die. Now Let's Look Away" (Posted: June 25, 2009 at 7:57 AM By Vanessa M. Gezari):

Hanna is right about the Neda video. We really don’t have any idea what it records, except a young woman bleeding to death in the street. And ultimately that’s what is most arresting about the film: the experience of watching someone die. Like so many others, my reaction to it has been visceral. The first time I saw it, I burst into tears. Later, I focused on the whites of her eyes, the blood streaming from her mouth.

My interest in these details has nothing to do with my support for the protesters in Iran or my anger at her assassin, and it says absolutely nothing about who that assassin might be. It springs from my awareness of the vulnerability of the human body, and my physical empathy with this particular body in the moment it becomes a corpse. Meghan gets at this when she writes that the sight of Neda dying “is so difficult to hold in the mind that we have to transform it,” and that in making Neda’s death stand for more than the death of a single young women, we “rob it of meaning.” This is the same problem we encounter when we mix art, which captures the reality of life and death, with politics, whose aims are far more utilitarian. I don’t mean to suggest that the Neda video is art. But like art, it captures a profoundly significant moment in human existence, and that’s why it moves us. It’s the record of an individual death, not a revolutionary struggle.

I followed through the links in this post to co-bloggers and to the posts they reference and so on. I recommend it.

[Sidebar: According to the Guardian, "The police did not hand [Neda Agha Soltan's] body back to her family, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques, the neighbours said."]

***

Even though I "seem to be very impressed by right-wing blogs like HotAir, and far-right ideologues and apologists like Volokh," in my (albeit somewhat limited) blogrolling I haven't encountered the rhetoric that Andrew Sullivan references in this cartoon.

Interesting reading includes "Bombing, Sanctions, And Rhetoric" (Posted on June 21st, 2009 by Daniel Larison).

I appreciate seeing the Left divided on this issue (see below excerpts from two posts from friends of friends). I don't think big issues like this have simple, always-true, answers, and I get frustrated when people talk as if they do.

ethrosdemon: This is the problem with the long-range FP strategy that Obama is going with: yeah, it makes sense as long-term FP strategy, but sometimes shit happens and you have to react. The problem with having a strictly non-interventionist FP is that it's morally repugnant. This is same damned thing that happened in the Clinton administration. Why does the American left have to have no teeth? Interventionism doesn't not equal warmongering. Christ, and they even have Joe Biden in the administration. He must be losing his entire mind. LISTEN TO JOE BIDEN, YOU IDIOTS. I don't even think there's all much we can even do (I mean, because, you know, engaged in two wars on either side of Iran...*takes a valium*). I understand all that, but so? Isn't what Obama sold us to get in the Oval Office the dream that we'd Do Better? This is not doing better.

liz_marcs: I can understand the neo-con call for us to do something even though I completely disagree with them and think it's probably the last thing we should do. The arc of history is against the U.S. in this, in it's for the best that we do our best to stay out of the clash between the protesters and the Iranian government. The U.S. coming in on the side of the protesters is exactly what the government wants, so they can blame the protests on "foreign influence" and discredit what the protesters are trying to accomplish.

And what they're trying to accomplish is justice, to force the government to live up to its promises and govern only by the consent of the governed. If the protesters succeed, will their democracy look like ours? Hell, no. It won't and it shouldn't. But it will be theirs and that's the point.

Who wouldn't want to do something after reading and seeing everything that's available online? Who wouldn't?

But in the end, I think President Obama struck the right tone here in reminding the Iranian government that world is watching, and that the rights of the Iranian people need to be respected.

It's hard sitting on the sidelines, but sometimes you have to because history needs witnesses.

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David Adesnik wrote:

OBAMA TAKES A PAGE FROM JIMMY CARTER'S PLAYBOOK: In today's news conference, President Obama came down hard on the Iranian regime for its failure to respect its citizens' universal rights. At the same time, the President insisted that he was absolutely, in no way, not at all meddling in Iran's internal affairs. In his words:

I've made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is not interfering with Iran's affairs...If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect those rights and heed the will of its own people. It must govern through consent and not coercion.

So the United States is not meddling, but it is threatening to make Iran's position abroad dependent on its actions at home.

Obama's paradoxical statement on this subject reflects a much deeper and enduring tension in the liberal approach to international politics. On the one hand, liberals cherish non-intervention. On the other hand, they cherish human rights. Is there any way to reconcile the two?

[...]

On a related note, Carter often tried to assert that focusing on human rights is not intervention, because international law recognizes human rights. Thus, in his first address to the UN General Assembly, Carter insisted:

All the signatories of the U.N. Charter have pledged themselves to observe and to respect basic human rights. Thus, no member of the United Nations can claim that mistreatment of its citizens is solely its own business.

Yet in another prominent address on human rights, Carter stated,

In the life of the human spirit, words are action, much more so than many of us may realize who live in countries where freedom of expression is taken for granted. The leaders of totalitarian nations understand this very well. The proof is that words are precisely the action for which dissidents in those countries are being persecuted.

So words represent a dangerous threat to totalitarian governments, but they are not a form of intervention. Got it?

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I often like Will Wilkinson (though I think he can also be a real jerk sometimes -- but I should know by now that this isn't necessarily a dealbreaker), and he has a series of smart posts (reposted with most recent on top):

"History Repeats Itself" by Will Wilkinson on June 23, 2009

As I admitted below, I don’t know much about Iran, but I suppose exiled Iranian journalist and filmaker Lila Ghobady does. She says:

There has been no real election. Candidates are all hand-picked and cleared by a central religious committee. It is a farcical imitation of the free nomination/ election process that we have pictured in the free world. There is no possibility that a secular, pluralistic, freedom-loving democratic person who loves his or her country can become a candidate to run for president (or any other office) in Iran.

Twelve years ago, we went through the same process. Mohamad Khatami became the favorite of the western media, which called him a “reformist” who spoke beautifully about freedom of speech, civil rights and dialogue between cultures. But when he became president there was a crack down on a student uprising – a crackdown against the same students who voted for him. Many were killed, many disappeared, and many were tortured. Artists, authors and intellectuals disappeared and were found “mysteriously” murdered. The smooth-talking president Khatami, whom westerners loved, never tried to stop the violence and never showed sympathy to his supporters. Instead, he openly avowed that his responsibility was to respect the wishes of the supreme leader, Ayotollah Khameni, and to protect the security of the Islamic regime.

Now, the passionate and oppressed young generation of Iranians are going through exact same situation. They are supporting Khatami’s friend, Mousavi. It is sad that history repeats itself so quickly in my beloved country of birth. The people of Iran were fed up with poverty, injustice, corruption and international embarrassment with the knuckle-dragging, anti-Semitic, war-mongering cretin who was President Ahmadinejad. They chose to support a bad choice – Mousavi – rather than the worse choice, Ahmadinejad. However, when an election is really a selection, choice is an illusion. Mousavi is from the Islamic regime; he is inseparable from it, and all its abuses and cruelties.

The reality is that Iran has not had a democratic, free election for the past 30 years. Mr Mousavi, if elected, will not make any changes, not because he is powerless to do so (as Khatami’s supporters claimed during his presidency), but because he doesn’t believe in a democratic state as his background shows. He belongs to the fanatic dictatorial era of Ayotollah Khomeini and he believes in the same command-and-control system of government. We should not forget Khomeini’s statement in one of his speeches after the revolution about democracy. He said that “if all people of Iran say ‘yes” I would say no to something that I would believe is not right for the Islamic Nation”.

Let us not forget that Mousavi was Prime Minister of Iran in the 1980s when more than ten thousand political prisoners were executed after three-minute sham trials. He has been a part of the Iranian dictatorship system for the past 30 years. If he had not been, he would not be allowed to be a candidate in the first place.

Do you have any reason to think she’s wrong?

Ghobady observes that no matter who comes out on top, he would stone her for her many “crimes” against Islam. This is not the situation I prefer, but it does seem to be the situation we have.

***

"Further Meditations on the Objective Meaning of Green Twitter Avatars" by Will Wilkinson on June 23, 2009

Some people were really ticked off by my Twitter avatar post, and I can see why. I guess it’s bad enough to accuse people of empty moral posturing. It’s another thing to accuse people of empty moral posturing that helps the people who worked like crazy to start an unjustified war in Iraq. So let me say that I completely understand the impulse to express solidarity with Iranians who seek freedom. I feel it very strongly myself, but I also don’t trust it. Why not?

Because I realize that I have no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t understand Iranian politics very deeply. I will now proceed to make some mistakes that prove this. For example, I did not know until this episode that Mousavi was Prime Minister of Iran for many years under Khomeni, which pretty much guarantees he’s no angel. I did not understand anything about the internal divisions within the Council of Guardians and the Assembly of Experts. Indeed, I still don’t completely grasp how these various bodies are related to each other. What I gather is that that Khameni and Ahmadinejad are aligned against former Prime Minister Mousavi and former President Rafsanjani (who is now the head of the Assemby of Experts, the body that chooses the Supreme Leader. Thank you Wikipedia). I don’t really grasp whether Mousavi and Rafsanjani are in it together, or are in a “the enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine” sort of thing, or what. As far as I can tell, the ruling axis got worried A’jad might lose the election, botched the vote-rigging, but validated the result anyway. I don’t know who would have won had the vote been counted (I think this remains quite unclear), but in any case, it seems clear enough that Ahmadinejad is staying in power despite a pretty transparent flouting of the rules of an already deeply anti-democratic constitution. This provided a great opportunity for the anti-Khameni/Ahmadinejad faction to encourage a popular uprising, which I am sure is fueled by real discontent with the current regime. And much of this discontent I am sure is surely rooted in an authentic desire for a more liberal and democratic Iran.

Is that what we get if the Mousavi-Rafsanjani axis comes to power? A more liberal and democratic Iran? I honestly don’t know, and I don’t think many people do. I do know that these guys are deeply embedded in the larger status quo power structure, have had power before, and their records don’t look so good. They may well represent improvement, but I don’t honestly know that. As far as I know, the outpouring of desire for change that we see so clearly on YouTube is being exploited by one faction of the Iranian ruling class to depose another. I’d like to see the whole theocratic structure of Iran fall. I’d like to see the whole country radically liberalize, but I think that’s unlikely, largely because I doubt very much that that’s what most Iranians want. I want Iran to be free, and I want Iranians to want to be free. And I’m quite willing to cheer for freedom. Go freedom! But given my ignorance of exactly what and who I’d really be cheering on should I alter my Twitter avatar to reflect the campaign color of the former PM of the Islamic Republic of Iran, I think the intellectually and morally responsible course of action is to watch with colorless hope.

I am, however, quite confident that the powerful faction within American politics that argued for and got a war in Iraq has been arguing for a much harder line against Iran in order to set up a familiar dynamic of sanctions, UN Security Council demands, and so on. [...]

***

"Signaling and Solidarity" by Will Wilkinson on June 19, 2009

So folks on Twitter have been turning their avatars (little profile photos) green to show solidarity with the protesters in Iran. There are websites to help you do this. But why do this? How does it help? I want the Iranian people to live in freedom, just as I want all people to live in freedom. But the point of the gesture eludes me, unless the point of the gesture is to be seen making the gesture by others who will credit you for it. Like so many political gestures, it is vanity dressed up as elevated moral consciousness. It doesn’t help. Is it harmless? Unlike the stupidly grandstanding House resolution, the ruling regime probably won’t be pointing to verdant Twitter avatars as evidence that the uprising is an American plot. So I wouldn’t worry about that. Here’s what I do worry about. When people feel pressure to signal, and it’s free, they’ll signal. But sending the signal creates a small emotional investment in the overt message of the signal — solidarity with opponents of the ruling Iranian regime. As every salesman knows, getting someone to make a big, costly commitment is best achieved by getting them to first make a tiny, costless commitment. The tiny, costless commitment of turning Twitter avatars green is thin edge of the persuasive edge for the neocons who would like to sell the public a war in Iran. Since I would rather not be Bill Kristol’s useful idiot, I will conspicuously leave my avatar as is, and continue hoping for the best.

***

Apparently HuffPo's Nico Pitney caused a stir, though I didn't see anything about that (on any side of the controversy) in almost any of the blogs I read.

"Mr. President, Iran Has a Question: How Obama is using the media to destroy and improve the traditional press conference." By John Dickerson [Posted Friday, June 26, 2009, at 3:30 PM ET]

[policing the body] "uncontrollable appetites" (fat, food)

Last Wednesday (June 17) GMA had MeMe Roth on (whom I had read about the other day via the Notes from the Fatosphere feed). (BigLibertyBlog also blogged about the GMA piece.)

I think even if I hadn't been prepped at all, I still would have been a bit "huh?" at the ridiculously softball nature of the interview. Yes, you don't want junk food to even be an option at "in loco parentis" places, I understand the logic behind that. But what sort of twisted logic is, "So that the kids aren't doing nothing while everyone else is chowing down on junk food, they can pull out a plastic container and put the junk food in that and bring it home and we'll discuss whether they're allowed to have it maybe after their piano lesson or something"? One commenter said, "if MeMe doesn’t want her children to have cupcakes, donuts, and juice pops, she could always just instruct them to politely refuse the treats. There were kids at my elementary school who were taught to do that because of allergies, religious dietary requirements, and parents who had strong beliefs about what foods were good and bad for them, and aside from a question here and a pitying look there, it wasn’t a big deal."

And wtf "Show me an American who understands moderation?" Seriously? We should ban junk food from everyone's presence because no one is capable of consuming in moderation? (And how the eff did obesity rob her mother and grandmother of "their health, and their hope, and their aspirations"?)

And, um, you told the YMCA that if they didn't get some food out in addition to the ice cream buffet in the next hour you were going to start throwing food out? No wonder the cops got called.

A friend of mine sent me this article on MeMe Roth. From the end:

When I ask her if she's ever been anorexic, she gasps: "No! I've never even been on a diet!" So I ask her what she eats in an average day. On this, Roth is reticent. She now runs a private nutrition counselling business, she says, and because of that, "I don't spend a ton of time telling people what I do personally. What works for me may not work for other people."

That's fine, I say, but just as an example?

"I eat beans like nobody's business," she says hurriedly. "I eat more black beans than anyone else I know."

I try to pin her down to something more specific. Let's just do a sample day, I say. What about breakfast? Roth grimaces. "I hate to say this, because I think it's counter to what most people should do, but I never in my whole life have enjoyed breakfast. For me, it doesn't work as well as other things."

Right, I say. So how about lunch?

She squirms visibly. "You're taking me where I don't want to go ... What works for me doesn't work for a lot of people."

Well, you've said that, I insist, so taking that into account: lunch? Roth hesitates. "I discovered when I was in college that I work best when I get a workout in and eat after that. Sometimes I'll delay when I eat until I get a workout in. But I don't let a whole day go by without running four miles."

OK, I go on, but supposing you couldn't work out until four o'clock in the afternoon - would you not eat until after that?

"I might."

I look at my watch. It's 3.30pm. Alarm bells start to ring in my head. How about today, I ask. Have you eaten at all today?

Roth is a little quiet.

"No," she says.

There is a pause.

"But I feel great!"

***

That same day, Sweet Machine complained about the obsessive attention to what President Obama eats. She wrote:

Maybe the very reason that Obama can sometimes just pick at his fries instead of shoving them into the presidential gullet is that he knows he can have fries another day if he likes. The man is the president of the United States, after all. Do we really want him to obsess over whether he should order his salad dressing on the side?

I know that this isn’t the first time that a President’s gustatory preferences have been drummed up into a national incident, but this idea that people will eat themselves fat because the Obamas ate fish and chips—while in London!—is only possible in a culture where we are so deeply alienated from our own bodies that we cannot be trusted to use food. Are you insulted? I sure as hell am.