Un petit baiser pour le cinéma Français

Au cours des longues annéees de ma vie américaine, j’ai eu l’occasion de dire des tas de choses désagréables sur la pauvreté du cinéma français pourtant surnourri de subsides publics. J’ai même publié un article méchant en Anglais sur la question.( “Can protectionism ever be respectable? A skeptic’s case for the cultural exception, with special reference to French movies.” The Independent Review 9-3:353-374. 2005.)

Malgré tout, de temps en temps, le même cinéma me procure une agréable surprise, souvent une si minuscule surprise qu’on aurait pu la rater. Je viens de regarder “Emma”, un film sorti en 2011. C’est l’histoire d’une jeune fille mal dans sa peau. Il y a une scène avec un garçon de quinze ou seize ans quelle n’avait pas vu depuis leur petite enfance. En vacances dans la même maison, ils sont assis ensemble sur un lit. Ils parlent de tout et de rien, évoquant même la peluche que le garçon aurait volé, jadis, à la fille.

Soudain, le garçon se penche et dépose un baiser sur le genou (couvert) de la fille. Il y a dans ce geste infime toute la tendresse du monde. C’est le geste juste, plus que juste. Après cela, la fille lui appartient corps et âme, bien entendu.

Malgre tout ses péchés, je pardonne beaucoup au cinéma français pour ce simple baiser au genou.

Mais bien sûr, c’est un film français où donc, le tordu, l’insolite, le gratuit remplacent l’émotion, l’imagination, et même l’érotisme. Le petit ami se revèle vite être plus précoce voyeur qu’ enthousiaste pénétrateur. Enfin, personne n’est parfait, comme on dit.

A la fin du film, aussi la fin des vacances, la jeune fille dit au revoir à son demi-frère. Elle se fait la réflexion, dans son fors intérieur, qu’elle souhaiterait être plus libre des ses paroles, pour pouvoir lui dire, “Je t’aime” -  “comme dans un film américain.”

* “Instead of the eager penetrator you would expect, the boyfriend turns out to be mostly a voyeur.”

My MOther: NO Sentimentality; NO Bull!

I am getting on in age and my mother has been gone for a long time. Yet she is in my mind, probably in my brain cells, all the time and even sometimes in my voice. (That one is scary!) I wrote about here extensively in my book of memoirs: I Used to Be French: An Immature Autobiography. Here are some excerpts:

My mother Yvette (née Adolph) acted semi-deranged for much of my childhood. Thus, she would repeat contentedly that I was the kind of toddler who would not come home from the park without a spanking at each landing, sometimes at each step. (She exaggerated, for sure, but it could well have been a spanking at every other landing according to my vivid recollection.)

…

On Thursday mornings, when there was no school, right after breakfast, I would return to the small bedroom I shared with two brothers and sprawl across the unmade bed with a novel. (At least, I was reading, I now think, as an envious parent and as a teacher!) Around eleven am, my mother would explode into the room and attempt to whale on whoever seemed responsible for an unmade bed. It was difficult to determine who the culprit was because we took turns sleeping in the double bed according to a complex rotation schedule. When the boys became too big to hit, she turned genuinely indignant. As we raised our elbows to protect our faces, she would hurt herself and demand that we stand at attention and accept the blows. We declined, of course. (“Are you crazy, Mom?”) As we grew up, she was hurting herself more than she was hurting us and she gave up beating us. Interestingly, that made her calmer.

…

My mother had been trained as a seamstress in a good technical high-school. Frequently, when my father was working at night, she would hustle the five children through a hasty dinner of coffee with milk, bread, butter, jam and cheese and then, send all to their rooms. She had to do that behind my father’s back because he belonged to the old French school that believes that if you don’t get two five-course, balanced, cooked meals a day, you will sicken shortly. The kids liked the practice. There was an air of vacation about it. Mother would then lock herself in the dining-room with fabric, her sewing-machine, and her big scissors. By morning return café-au-lait time, she would have a new outfit of extreme chic with appropriate gloves and detachable collars. Once, she produced in two nights matching tweed overcoats and golf pants for the three boys. Even little boys could see that the outfits were exquisitely elegant though the pants felt scratchy. No matter, we had to wear them to church and for a part of Sunday afternoon to do her honor.

…

As long as she had helpless offspring at home, my mother never saw a children’s costume contest she did not like. She would enter as many of her children as would submit. The last time it happened to me, I was nine or ten and tall for my age. She dressed me up as a Roman legionnaire, with a cardboard armor ingeniously painted with stove silver coating. It almost killed me, not the armor, the embarrassment. I never wore a costume again until I was twenty-five though I must admit I have retained a certain flair in that area. At least, I was never one of those social cowards who go to a Halloween party in jeans and keep a cowboy hat in their car just in case everyone else turns out to be costumed. (You know who you are, spineless scum!)

…

I was aware early that my mother used her talent to gain face and to pull rank on almost all other neighborhood women. Nevertheless, watching her cut and sew through the dining-room glass door also exposed me early, to the concept of creativity in general, and of visual creativity, in particular. I also picked up the broad notion that creativity not served by solid skills is pointless. Rather late in life, in my fifties, I began to paint, without hesitation about a possible dearth of talent although I am quite critical. I was able to do it, I think, because I had retained from observing my mother two key ideas: Skills will reveal talent, if any; with practice, skills can only improve.

…

My mother’s living example of inventiveness was at the antipodes of the narrow, sober petty-bourgeois values the rest of my environment projected. She contradicted with the creations of her hands what she preached with her mouth.

A couple of weeks, I had a good idea. I have a small grand-daughter who is intelligent, tough, creative, and amazingly reasonable. (I feel free to brag about her because she does not have many more genes in common with me than with, say, a gopher.) I convinced that smart little girl her to adopt my mother’s name, “Yvette,” as her second middle name. (The second is Mercedes, like the car, of course).

I am sure my mother would have approved. She would have approved of everything: the grand-child, her new second middle name, the lucid description of herself in my memoirs. She would even have approved of the slightly mercenary aspect of the publication of these excerpts on my blog.

Hi, Mom! You are safe. Right here inside my head.

Sorry I was not able to control the paragraphing in this piece. I am very bad but I do have wonderful qualities!

L’Amérique et les armes (mise a jour) et la pensee pre-scientifique francaise.

La presse francaise ne manque pas de petits articles legers et au ton suffisant, contrastant l’intelligence et le bon sens des Francais a la balourdise et a l’illogicalite des Americains. Y manquent presque toujours la question essentielle:

Que suggerent les faits ? 

Dans le cas du port d’arme, la question se pose ainsi: L’armement de la population americaine est-t’il une cause probable de mortalite elevee par arme a feu?

La question devrait se poser sur le plan de la comparaison des chiffre idoines plutot que celui de la speculation plus ou moins badineuse. ( Cette derniere constituant le camouflage habituel des Francais ingnorants ou trop faineants pour meme se poser la question.)

Un petit article recent  du Figaro en-ligne illustre bien ce peche mignon:

États-Unis : les armes font la loi

• Home ACTUALITE International
• • Par Nadjet Cherigui
  • Mis à jour le 10/05/2013 à 15:58
  • Publié le 10/05/2013 à 15:51

Jacques J. Delacroix continue: Je n’en veux pas a Mademoiselle Cherigui de n’a voir pas fait l’etude mais bien d’eviter meme de soulever la question . Je ne suis pas sur si elle omet de le faire par ignorance profonde et par manque d’imagination ou bien si c’est une forme de mauvaise foi pure et simple.

J’ai l’impression que ce type de mauvaise foi est commune dans les medias francais. Je me trompe?

Cette maniere d’aborder la realite me fait une impression de primitivisme, comme ci la pensee publique francaise restait medievale, en tous cas, comme si elle s’arretait avant le Siecles des lumieres, comme si il s’agissait d’une maniere pre-scientifique d’aborder le problemes. Grace a l’Internet, les faits sont pourtant de plus en plus faciles a trouver.

Voci quelques faits faciles a recueillir sur les armes et les crimes en Amerique ( et mes commentaires, bien sur car nous sommes sur un blog).

Le taux de crimes à main armée (presque toutes avec armes a feu) a chute environ de moitié depuis 1990.

Pendant la même période, tous les chiffres liées à la possession d’armes privées ont augmenté.

D’accord, ça ne prouve rien. Il n’y a pas nécessairement cause à effet.

Quand même, si je gagnais ma vie le revolver à la main, j’y regarderais à deux fois avant de m’en prendre à un porteur de revolver de calibre plus ou moins égal.

Quand même, si je pensais évoluer dans un milieu où de nombreux citoyens sont armés à titre privé, je songerais sérieusement à me reconvertir dans la fraude bancaire.

French Laissez-Faire

On May 1st, in France, there is a tradition (the origin of which I don’t know)  that men give a small  stem of Lilly of the Valley to their female relatives and friends. It’s a rite of Spring, obviously. On that occasion and only on that occasion, private parties are allowed to sell the flowers in the street. Still, there are rules and regulations involved. You risk a significant fine if you violate Lilly-of-the-Valley sale rules.

May 1st, there is always a massive march for socialism in Paris. Would I make this up?

Sex Equality

I do much of my work at home these days. This sometimes gets on my wife’s nerves. Although she was born and reared in another country, she has adopted and digested the American belief that the inside of  houses naturally belongs to women.

To avoid tension between us, we have adopted two new rules:

1 I may not talk to her or address her in any way until 1 pm every day;

2  She may address me in any tone of voice, at any level of voice volume, about any topic, at any time of day or night.

PS I am awaiting a woman, any woman, to declare, ” If you story it s true, this is outrageous.” A friend of mine is taking bets on how long it will take.

 

Débat sur le menteur.

Mon essai “Un Menteur bien français” affiché sur ce blog le 9 Avril a aussi été affiché sur le blog-copain Notes On Liberty où il a donné lieu à cette réponse indignée:

“Je ne connais pas ce type, mais avant de taper sur les Français il conviendrait de ne pas oublier les tonnes de calomnies dégueulasses racontées par une certaine presse américaine ( un grand nombre !) contre la France après 2003 et l’Irak . Au point qu’aujourd’hui tous les Américains qui n’ont pas fait d’études les croient encore . En termes de proportions, mettre en parallèle les idoties de deux ou trois journalistes et le lynchage au rouleau compresseur lancé par Fox News et autres détritus n’est pas juste .
D’autre part les tabloïds n’existent pas en France . Tout ce que balancent le Sun et ses copains en Grande-Bretagne est bien plus énorme que ce que dit ce type de TV5 .

Alors oui la presse est un problème en France, mais c’en est un bien plus honteux chez les Anglophones .”

S’il n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer! (Je jure que je n’ai rien fait de semblable. Pourtant, c’ était tentant.)

Lettre admirable de “Phildange” dont Google Translate ne parviendra surement pas à rendre toutes les nuances, malheureusement.

Pour ce commentateur, je suis “ce type”. Il ne s’agit pas là simplement de l’expression d’une impolitessee gratuite mais d’une façon infantile de jetter le doute sur ma légitimité:

Ce “type”, cet inconnu qui se croit permis de critiquer, comme si c’était permis à tout le monde.

Ce choix sans doute semi-conscient est le fruit d’un autoritarisme séculaire et jamais vraiment jette aux orties malgré trois ou quatre révolutions. Pour critiquer, même pour dire publiquement des vérités criantes, il doit falloir être élu, ou encore mieux, nommé.

“…les tonnes de calomnies dégueulasses racontées par une ‘certaine’ presse américaine...”

Je me souviens bien de propos désagréables sur la France à l’époque de référence. Je ne me souviens pas de “calomnies”, du tout. Le mot “calomnie” implique nécessairement le mensonge, le langage délibérement faux. S’il y en a eu “des tonnes” on se demande pourquoi Phildange n’en cite pas meme une. (UNE SEULE). Mon critique ment-il comme le journaliste de TV5 ou dit-il simplement n’importe quoi comme le font souvent les Français, surtout quand ils étouffent de colère puérile?

Une “certaine” presse, dit-il. Mais pourquoi ne pas la nommer? Le critique craint-il les poursuites? Cela n’arrive pas ici, aux Etats-Unis. On peut dire ce qu’on veut de la presse, même de manière irresponsable. Phildange est-il encore implicitement pris en flagrant délit d’invention (comme son copain de TV5)?

“.. les idoties de deux ou trois journalistes …” Il n’a pas compris que je mets expressement en cause, de toute voix, les supérieurs, les lecteurs, les collègues, des idiots en question qui ne leur ont pas administré une salutaire tappe sur le tête. Est-ce si difficile à comprendre?

D’ailleurs, le présentateur de TV5 en question n’est pas un idiot. C’est un menteur.

“..Fox News et autres détritus …” Je regarde Fox News souvent et depuis longtemps. Je n’y ai jamais vu ou entendu de “lynchage”. Phildange veut-il seulement dire qu’il n’aime pas le penchant conservateur de Fox? Si c’est le cas, pourquoi ne pas simplement le dire? Ou alors, il lui faudrait donner, un exemple (UN SEUL) de lynchage? Un “lynchage” ne serait-il pas simplement une expression dêfavorable exprimée clairement selon Phildange? Est-il possible quer Phildange trouve simplement que la liberté de la presse va trop loin?

Quant aux “autres detritus” je ne sais pas si j’ai eu le moindre contact avec eux . Il faudrait que mon critique soit plus clair, qu’il nomme ses cibles. Ceci exigerait qu’il sache lui meme de quoi il parle. Je soupçonne qu’il n’a jamais regarde Fox News du tout, pas une seule fois. Je soupçonne aussi que les deux mots: “Fox” et “News” constituent pour lui et pourt ses petits copains une incantation maléfique: “Sataaan” “Lucifffer!”

Je ne peux pas en être sur, c’est sur; j’imagine seulement!

Peut-être vaguement animé par un résidu d’honnêteté, Phildange abandonne a la fin carrément les Etats-Unis et leurs presses pour passer sa colère sur le Royaume -Unis et ses “tabloids”. Cette fuite en avant peut surprendre, sauf si on est au courant de la ténébreuse conspiration qui emplit la moitiê de la tête de la moitié des Français (surtout la gôche):

Une monstrueuse entente “Anglo-Saxonne” grosse, grande, vigoureuse, gavée de nourritures rudes autant que malsaines, encerclant et étranglant obcènement, une vaillante petite France légère, spirituelle, raffinée qui refuse de succomber et qui tient levé bien haut malgré tout l’étandard de la civilisation.

De quoi étonner les ancêtres, les Angles, justement, autant que les Saxons, pas mauvais bougres, ni les un ni les autres, au moins pour des barbares. Et puis, bien sur, la nouvelle de l’existence de cette conspiration doit abasourdir certains “Anglo-Saxons” comme les Néo-Zelandais tout là-bas, dans leurs jolies iles au bout du monde. Ils faisaient leurs régates tranquillement; ils ne se doutaient même pas qu’ils étaient ligues avec d’autres contre la France lontaine, ce pays de bons fromages et de mauvais philosophes!

Enfin, Phildange termine par une autre contre-vérité: “ les tabloids n’existent pas en France”. Il y a peut-être une définition du “tabloid” qui m’échappe. Dans le cas contraire, il me faut bien rappeller l’existence de l’hebdomadaire “France-Dimanche” dont la bêtise aggressive avait bercé mon enfance. D’après Wikepedia, il aurait encore 450,000 lecteurs, ce qui n’est pas si mal dans un pays ou on lit peu.

Pas un mot de mon sujet dans toute cette attaque: Le présentateur de TV5 a-il ou non menti?

J’avais laissé pendre par la fenêtre, un peu au hasard, deux ficelles et quatre brins de laine. Phildange s’en est saisis et il en a tressé une grosse corde pour se pendre!

Un autre Français, bardé de vrais diplômes et lui -même producteur de qualité dans certains media m’a fait la communcation ci-dessous par courriel. (Je ne le nommerai pas à moins qu’il ne m’en donne expréssement l’autorisation.)

“En tout cas, tu m’as ouvert les yeux, sur cette histoire d’extradition. En France, en gros, on pense tous comme ce journaliste ( même lorsqu’on est, comme moi, un amoureux des États-Unis) et j’ai même regarder un doc entier sur Assange… Et j’avais effectivement compris que la Suède était le chemin trouvé par le méchant pour l’extradition vers son pays. 

C’est grave. Ça veut dire que n’ayant pas trouver le temps de lire moi- même, de m’informer correctement, je colportais ce que j’avais vaguement entendu à la radio, à la télé, aux mêmes sources et sans plus d’effort que ce journaliste de TV5 sans aucun doute. 

Ça voudrait donc dire que j’enfile des conneries à longueur de conversation sur une tonne de sujets. Que je serai complètement formaté, manipulé, moulé dans la pensée unique… Autant se taire. Comment ne pas comprendre que tu n’aies presque plus envie de discuter. Autant se taire en se qui me concerne, en tout cas. Et se boucher les oreilles pour ne pas s’énerver. 

Bref, la journée commence bien. Je crois que je vais me recoucher! 

Bonne nuit à toi, “

Je lui ai répondu que son indignation me donnait de l’espoir. Et vous?

Un Menteur bien français

Les Français, les habitants de mon pays natal, ne sont pas assez soucieux de vérité. Ils ont tendance à raconter un peu n’importe quoi, à ne pas corriger les mensonges , et à occulter par omission leurs crime collectifs (tel que le massacre de manifestants Algériens pacifiques à Paris, le_____ )

Par ailleurs, il y a des Europeens pour qui l’anti-Américanisme sert de philosophie politique. Il n’est plus nécessaire de s’emmerder à étudier les difficiles textes sacrés du Marxisme comme au bon vieux temps. Le “bon vieux temps”, c’était quand il n’y avait guère que deux intellectuels français qui ne se déclaraient pas – d’une façon ou d’une autre – “Marxistes”. Aujourd’hui, il suffit de hair l’Amérique. C’est cool, même si on est obligé de l’exprimer dans la langue de l’enemi car les Russes, aussi bien que les Chinois -ainsi que les Albanais d’ailleurs – usent du même mot: “cool”. (Les Albanais sont les habitants de ce grand pays communiste qui avait déclaré l’Union Soviétique, puis la Chine, “déviationistes” – pas assez Marxiste-Léniniste -dans les années soixante-dix!)

Je regarde souvent TV5. Il s’agit de la chaine internationale francophone. Il y a des informations internationales en Français cinq ou six fois par jour sur TV5. J’ignore le nom du présentateur principal des informations. C’est un homme (de visage européen) alors que la plupart de ses collègues sont des femmes. D’après sa diction et son accent, je suis 96% sur qu’il est français. Il a une quarantaine d’années ou un peu moins. Ce n’est pas un jeunot. Pourtant, il dit souvent des conneries, très souvent même. Parfois, c’est pire que des conneries parce-qu’il ne s’agit pas d’ignorance ordinaire mais de préjugés bêtes et méchants.

Le Samedi 6 Avril, aux informations du soir, il a commenté la carrière politique naissante de Julian Assange. Il s’agit du héros qui a mis sur l’Internet de nombreuses information militaires américaines classifiéees secrètes. (Il en a affiché tellement qu’il serait étonnant qu’aucun agent des services américains, en Afghanistan, our en Somalie, ou ailleurs, n’est trouvé la mort à cause des agissements d’Assange.) Assange est aujourd’hui réfugié à l’Ambassade de l’ Equateur à Londres. Il tente ainsi d’échapper à l’application par le Royaume -Unis d’une demande d’extradition émanant de Suède (SUEDE). Les autorites judiciaires suédoises veulent l’interroger au sujet d’accusations de délits sexuels portées contre lui par deux Suédoises. Il ne tient pas à répondre, le pauvre!

Selon Assange, la demande suédoise ne serait qu’une grosse ruse pour l’extrader vers les Etats-Unis (les ETATS-UNIS). Un petit problème: Il est surement plus facile pour les autorités judiciaires américaines de faire extrader à partir du Royaume Unis qu’à partir de la Suède. Le Royaume-Unis est le cousin pas trés éloigné, son système légal est très familier. Cela fait deux cents ans qu’on extradie d’un bord à l’autre de l’Atlantique. Pourquoi passer par une grosse ruse suédoise qui serait cousue de fil blanc si elle existait? Pourquoi aussi deux accusations de délits sexuels, toujours très difficiles à prouver ?

Selon l’annonceur francais de TV5, en se faisant élire quelquechose en Australie, son pays natal, Assange gagnerait une sorte d’immunité contre toute demande d’extradition. Il ajoute, avec la plus grande clarté, sans aucun détour, qu’Assange fait ainsi campagne pour se sauver de l’ extradition vers les Etats-Unis.

Une autre problème concernant la version des faits de ce Français menteur: Il n’existe aucun chef d’accusation contre Assange où que ce soit aux Etats-Unis. Personne ne peut l’extrader vers ce pays puisqu’il n’y est accusé d’aucun crime (ZERO). Il serait d’ailleurs extraodinaire qu’il soit jamais accusé de quoique ce soit où que ce soit dans ce pays (sauf de viol, peut-être, mais je n’en sais rien, pour être franc.). En effet, le Premier Amendement à la Constitution protège sans réserve le droit de propager l’information. La complicité d’espionnage par la diffusion n’est pas elle-même espionnage en raison de ce grand principe constitutionnel:

“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.”

No. NONE. Aucune. Pas du tout!

L’espionnage est punis par la loi. La diffusion des produits de l’espionnage ne l’est pas. Si elle l’était, les autorités compétentes auraient commencé par poursuivre le New York Times, par example qui, tout autant qu’Assange, a diffusée le butin du soldat de deuxième classe voleur falot qui passe en jugement en ce moment-même. Faire condamner le grand New York Times aurait quand même plus valeur d’example que de faire geindre cet autre pâlot qu’est Assange.

En mal de brillant politique, l’annonceur de TV5, fier représentant de la liberté de la presse francophone, a purement et simplement inventé des poursuites judiciaires américaines inexistantes autant qu’impossibles. On n’y voit pas d’autre mobile qu’un préjugé aveugle et bête. C’est pas cool, ça!

J’ éspère que je vais apprendre un jour son nom. Il s’agit du même “professionel de l’information” ignare qui avait déclaré gravement, il y a plusieurs mois “l’extinction” du puma d’Amérique du Nord (par ces salauds d’Américains. Qui d’autre? Peut-être même à la mitraillette.) Or, les pumas pullulent en realité et posent même un certain danger. (Voir ma petite histoire sur ce blog: “Les pumas de Bécon-Les Bruyères.”) Cet homme ne sait rien. Serait-ce le neveu de quelqu’un d’important dans quelque bureaucratie de l’information? Mais même si c’est le cas, où sont les corrections, les cris d’indignation des auditeurs, de ses collègues, de ses chefs? J’attends.

Je me demande combien de mensonges imbéciles et malveillants de ce type il faut commettre dans la presse francophone pour avoir enfin les ennuis de carrière qu’on mérite. Je me demande aussi s’il s’agit bien de la presse francophone ou seulement de la presse française.

A Wide Net; Cyprus Lesson; Conversations with my Ghost; Unfeminism; the Blooming Sequoia

I am too busy, because I am completing my memoirs and because I am refinancing ( a real bitch!), to do proper postings. So, here are pellmell thoughts  to stay in your minds and in your hearts during this dry spell. (That goes for my enemies too. I love being in their hearts, festering.)

Yesterday and today, I had hits from India, Mauritania, Ecuador, Yemen, and Estonia among others on this blog. I don’t  know many actually read my stuff. I hope all the hits correspond to actual readers although I cannot be sure, obviously. That is the miracle of the Internet. In spite of all the garbage it carries, like a large river, it’s good for development, the development of knowledge, in this case, and of rationality. There is a special spot in my heart for forthright, brave, tiny Estonia. Read up on it.

Once in a while, I even  have a spirited discussion on the Internet with people I would not meet in the other life, the life many persist in calling “real.” I am glad I cast a wide net on the Internet.

This week  the Cypriots gave the world a lesson. Hardly anyone  noticed because our commentators keep spreading boring cliches instead of looking for that which is both unusual and meaningful. Their government tried to make palatable the prospect of taxing bank deposit by promising to do it only to the rich. Ordinary Cypriots did not take the corrupting bait. They still said “No!”

I am like them: I don’t want to tax more the rich, the very rich, the billionaires,  the crooks, the mafias, the zebras, the giraffes, anyone! I just want the  federal government to shrink radically. I don’t know a single liberal who is aware of this principled position, not one.  Listen to them on this blog’s “comments” section. Their heads are full of silly stereotypes about conservatism as a political philosophy. I think they are not evil but lazy.

A couple of days ago, a high-school buddy recognized me through the excerpts of my memoirs on this blog (“I Used to be French: An Immature Autobiography“). Frankly, I had not thought of him for fifty years. His name  acted like a key that unlocked a door I had not entered in decades. It’s not that the door was double-locked or anything like this. The door was closed and I had no reason to bother to look for a key. I just ignored it. It contained no treasure in fact, just a few objects of interesting memory. But inside, there was also a ghost, the ghost of me when I was a teenager.

I don’t know if the French have high-school reunions. They might because they imitate eventually everything that America does.  If they had reunions and I knew it, I would probably not go. First, I failed there. I would sound stupid saying one hundred times in one evening, “No, I did not get it.”  Or I would have stopped going after ten years, when the  prospect of scoring with the girls you secretly lusted for as a teenager begins to  turn into a nightmare. I have no wish to see my own aging in others’ waistlines. I would think unkindly both of those who looked worse and of those who looked better than I. Does this make sense?

My high-school buddy reminded me of an episode of which I have nearly no memory. He recalled a time when he and two girls and I were waiting for admission to an expensive swimming pool . (That was the same  central Paris swimming pool. “Piscine Molitor,” that figures into the great movie “Life of Pi ” and that gave  its hero his name.) My classmate must have expressed admiration for the light gray flannel pants I was wearing. (That part must be true; I was already a flea market super-champion then, a superman picker.) He says I gave him the pants. I think he means then and there; I am not sure. I love the  story, of course. It depicts me, the young unformed me, as a generous person. Or was it only the love of the grand gesture?

URGENT UPDATE THE NEXT DAY: I did not give him the pants, I sold them to him. It means that I made up in my own mind by myself a story of generosity. That’s awful! Too bad, it was a good story.

I don’t know about you but I really enjoy this kind of adventure that comprises tiny, bearable elements of disorder. The Internet does not replace reading books though. It’s different but equally attractive.

Random pearls of wisdom: I overhear parts of a conversation while treating myself to  a rare greasy breakfast at my local diner:

“You have to kill them with silence.”

I stop the waitress who said this to ask,

“Is that what women do to men when they are angry?” She never skips a beat, “No – she says – that’s unscientific; women can’t do this, I mean, stay silent.”

Smart women like this are dismantling stone by stone the phony monument put up by feminists over thirty years. It’s good that there are women equal to the task because feminists have been partly successful in  emasculating American men. (Many of the poor saps actually think showing sensitivity will get them laid!) How can I be sure? I am old enough that young women actually confide in me on the topic.

There is a completely incongruous redwood tree in my front yard about which I bitch periodically. It’s breaking up my portion of the sidewalk. It’s already cost me over $10,000 in sewer  repairs. One of these days, in a big wind, it will fall on my house, I fear. It gives us unwanted shade.

I like redwood trees but there are tens of thousands in the forest a mile away. This is not New Jersey or New Mexico; it’s not a rare tree around here. The city of Santa Cruz forbids me from cutting it. (Yes, it’s on my property.) The city has the criminal stupidity to demand a fee before it will even hear my appeal!

Well, several years ago, my wife planted a  bush bearing small yellow roses not far from the redwood. There was not foresight, no planning, no knowledge involved, maybe not even a green thumb. For some reason, the rosebush loves it there. It spread to everything. It’s a good climber. Right now, it has climbed about fifty feet up the redwood tree trunk and branches. The redwood looks like it’s in bloom with many yellow flowers. A deep part of me loves this display of joyous anarchy. I wonder if it violates some city ordinance I have not heard of though.

God, I hope so, with all my heart!

World Rule from Chicago, Illinois

Ex -congressman Jessi Jackson Junior  has agreed to return the Michael Jackson hat he bought with money given to him by supporters to help  his political campaign.  (This is from the Wall Street Journal of 2 21/13)

Note that the Chicago voters who re-elected him recently don’t care (including the dead voters, Chicago-style).

Ex-congressman Jackson is not related to the late performer Michael Jackson whose hat he had purchased illicitly. The hat is thus not a pious family memento but something to show off at cocktail parties.

Th ex-congressman however is related to – he is the son of –   extortionist-in-chief Jessie Jackson (Senior).

And this was another racist blast, of course, from a racist conservative, of course.

Did I say anything about another Chicago politician presently occupying an important position? No, I did not. It’s all in your mind.

 

Telling the Truth and Tarentino, Liberals, the Secretary of State, and the President.

I have a liberal friend with whom I have fairly frequent serious discussions. He thinks of himself as a moderate liberal, even a centrist because his owns guns and his guns are dear to him. Yet, he voted for Obama and he can give a spirited defense of every aspect of Obama’s policies and actions. That’s a test, in my book.

He told me once, but only once, that the administration’s program of at-a-distance- assassination-of-the-untried was not a problem for him. He dos not see how assassinating an American citizen, for example, on the presidential say-so, could be a problem, ethical or judicial. He does not discern a slippery slope. That too is a test.

He and I have had repeatedly two bases of disagreement. First, we have different values, of course. Thus, he insists that it’s fine for him to use the vote to take my money by force in order to give it to someone that he, my friend, thinks deserves it more than I do because he, the other guy, does not have health insurance.

I disagree.

Note that this is an actual example of a fundamental value difference because my liberal buddy does not have to go there to achieve the same results. He could try, for example, to convince me to give up some money on the basis of expediency: It’s unpleasant, even messy to have the uninsured dying on my front lawn for lack of medical care. (As they do all the time, of course.) Or, he could persuade me on fellow-human grounds. He does not feel like doing either because, I think, he has no moral qualm about taking my earnings by force for a cause he judges good. That’s a big difference between us.

Then, we have a separate, major differences about dealing with facts, about reality. I, for example, thought that the large number of uninsured in the US in 2007-8 the Democrats touted to justify Obamacare was mostly a liberal myth. (Ask me.) He insists it was real. (Incidentally, I don’t think people need so-called health “insurance,” I think they need medical care. But that’s another story. Ask me.)

My liberal friend always starts from the assumption that, we are more or less equal from an informational standpoint. That’s not plausible as far as the two of us are concerned. You have to ignore the obvious to believe that.

I spent thirty years in academia. Even if the better part of it was in a business school, the density of liberals anywhere in academia is impressive. There is good research that shows that university professors are Democrats about six to one. When I was a professor, I did try to avoid liberals as best as I could but it was not really possible. I kept bumping into them. It was difficult to avoid conversation without being rude. Some took my professed conservatism as a personal challenge and invaded my space. There is even fairly good evidence, though circumstantial, that a leftist -feminist university administrator tried to make a spectacular example of me. I ended up ruining her day. (This is another story. Ask me.)

In addition I have lived in or next to the People’s Green Socialist Republic of Santa Cruz for twenty-five years. I listen to National Public radio every afternoon. (I do this for about as long daily as I listen to Rush Limbaugh.) I even take in “Democracy Now,” the intelligent leftist station, frequently (which is more than my liberal friend can say, I will bet. I mean that I will bet, literally.) So, no, we are not equal. I know vastly more about left and liberal positions, reasoning, and versions of the truth than any liberal knows about conservatism. I would know more than liberals do even if I did not want to know anything.

Whee, whee, whee, he says, but I am busy. I work. I don’t have time for the media like a retired college professor. Sure enough and, believe me, I am grateful that he works hard and thus contributes to my Social Security benefit. But his hard work and my gratefulness do not change anything to the fact that I know his songbook inside and out while he knows little of mine. This is not a football game where he would have little time to train. Should my liberal friend defer to me a little because of my superior knowledge? Well, it would make some sense, wouldn’ it? (Would it?)

When we argue about politics, my friend has trouble staying on message. He keeps changing the subject very fast, too fast for me. I don’t have an explanation about why he does this although I have observed other liberals do the same: When you begin giving them several instances of the inanity of the warmist cult, for example, they will say, “ How about George Bush lying about weapons of mass destruction, hum!”

My friend also complains that I interrupt him. I do. That’s because, he frequently delivers himself of sentences of the form: “ As the sun rises in the west every morning….” It turns out that if you say: “All cats are black and it’s raining” the whole sentence is false. I did not make this up. I learned it as a freshman in college. It’s in Logic 101.

As a rule, I don’t make the rules and it’s not unfair or rude to expect the other guy who wants to argue with me to also play by those general rules. So, I usually stop him before he can assume that I agree with any part of the whole fallacious statement that follows his early false utterance. He could speak in a more disciplined manner. He could leave out the false statement about where the sun rises and get straight to his point. He could but he won’t. I suspect (I can’t prove it) that that manner of speaking is a form of self-serving self-deception, like this:

“So much stuff comes out of my mouth in such a short time that I can’t reasonably be expected to be responsible for everything I say. Don’t be an intolerant (and rude) bastard about it.”

Know what I have not said: My liberal buddy does not lie. I believe it would seriously disturb him if he caught himself lying. Small mistake, yes; lies, no.

Here is another deeply intellectual anecdote to illustrate where I am going with this.

One evening, my liberal buddy and I talk about what movies we have seen lately. Of course, we have both seen Tarentino’s latest gore fest, “Django Unchained.” (He is no more of a snob than I am.) And, here is a useful story within the story.

In the line for that movie, I bump into an important person. She is only a coffee shop acquaintance, but an acquaintance of long standing. I even held her hand a little when she was going through the agonies of tenure. She is a junior professor in one of the Humanities at a good university. She is one of my direction finders.

I don’t always know what’s intellectually cool but I always know who will know. My professor-acquaintance is one of those direction finders. I am not sure she is a real post-modernist in her heart because she is quite intelligent and thus probably not enamored of cliches or of deliberate obscurity. I am certain she is a post-modernist, or worse, at the faculty club. If she were not, how would she have obtained tenure?

Anyway, I ask my professor acquaintance jokingly in the Tarentino wait line, “ Are we slumming tonight?” She replies quickly, “Oh, no, Tarentino, Tarentino…” I can see she is embarrassed before her companion. I committed a gaffe (again). Tarentino’s products have high intellectual value somewhere, in a sphere where I don’t live. I thought I was going to see gore and fast action. It turns out there might be Culture and “signifié” there except I don’t know how to discern it. (And don’t ask me what that French-sounding word means; I don’t know that either.)

Well, back to my liberal buddy. I allow, in a bar, after only one drink, how I did not much enjoy “Django…” because there were too many mistakes of fact in the movie. I was distracted, in particular, by the segment where pretty, well-dressed young female slaves walk arm-in-arm in a southern plantation instead of attending to picking cotton. There were many other things I found disruptive of my attention. I wasn’t looking for historical accuracy, of course, but too many gross violations of accuracy interfered with my enjoyment of the bloodshed.

My liberal buddy looks at me in disbelief. “It’s a Tarentino movie,” he exclaims aptly – “What do you expect?” So, he is able to turn off his credibility measurement device. I am not. Or, his device is very blunt while mine is a bit sensitive. Big difference either way.

My liberal friend lives in a mental world that is different from mine. Its main component is a culture of indifference to fact. It’s a freely chosen culture of puerile, poetic representation of reality:

“There was a monster under my bed. My Daddy killed the monster.”

There was no monster, kid. Your Daddy did not kill any monster. Tough!

Secretary of State Clinton, testifying before the Senate on the Benghazi (Libya) massacre of Americans, said it well:

“What difference, at this point, does it make”… whether A happened in Benghazi, or B ( and one of your highest-ranking subordinates repeatedly made false statements to the American people) ?

In his inauguration address, President Obama announced a renewed offensive against the threat of climate change. He mentioned specifically :

raging fires;

crippling droughts;

more powerful droughts.

In fact, none of the above has been increasing globally for many years.*

The President is dealing in falsehoods on the first day of his new term.

His aides feed him statement without regard for their truthfulness; he is not interested in checking them; he does not have a fact checker; he knows none of his supporters is likely to call him on falsehoods. He is confident the media won’t look into them. They sound right, What else does anyone want? They are not positively in favor of falsehoods but they don’t care. They deeply don’t care. As I said earlier: The teenagers are in charge.

* My information comes from an article from the environmental activist (and trained statistician) Bjorn Lomborg in the Wall Street Journal of 1/24/13; “Climate-Change Misdirection”.