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Originally Posted by Ann Drysdale
I got de-railed by having to look up C.H.U.D.s. I have now filed them with Bozos, Narcs and Hipsters as part of my Lehrian introduction to the language of now.
During the course of my research I found some interesting videos and a trailer wherein the word "bathroom" was used in a way that I found more conventional from a British point of view (in that the naked lady about to be destroyed by the Powers of Evil was taking a shower rather than a shit) and this interested me hugely.
But I have read all the links, which didn't so much, because I don't know the protagonists as well as, perhaps, I should. Sad about Quadrant, because of Les.
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Anne, you crack me the hell up! And, as an aside, I confess that, although I already knew the meanings of Bozos, Narcs, and Hipsters, I looked up C.H.U.D. in The Urban Dictionary, just to be sure I knew it, and found that, indeed, it simply refers to people who are ugly and stupid.
Anyway, I agree, entirely, about "Quadrant." That piece sickened me, which is sad, because I know that others have published there, and I never knew the journal to be anything but "form-friendly." Thanks for the heads up, Quincy.
Regarding The New Yorker's interview of First Things' editor Mark Bauerlain, I can't say that I'm surprised about anything in the interview except that, well, The New Yorker actually interviewed Mark Bauerlain. While I am aware that many poets whom I know, and respect, regularly publish in this journal, I have always avoided it, in part because I have no material in which I can imagine the editors taking interest, but primarily because I am completely disinterested in any journal whose avowed purpose is "advanc[ing] a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society." That purpose, alone, unnerves me. If one were to try to explain the meaning of this purpose to, say, someone lacking a college degree, I fear that the explanation would at least be very similar to "laying the foundations for a Judeo-Christian society." And if the person looked confused, and shrugged at that, how might the journal's purpose be broken down further? This is pure speculation, of course, but it might be "Working toward a Christian America." While I doubt that the editors would typically lower themselves to that sort of base, fundamentalist Republican rhetoric, does it, honestly, sound like that far of a jump?
More to the point in regard to this article, the fact that Mr. Bauerlain supports Donald Trump primarily as a corrective to oppressive political correctness only adds to my concern. And please note that while I do consider myself an old school liberal, I certainly do not identify with the New Left. In other words, I share at least some of Bauerlain's concern about the somewhat recent phenomenon of certain people, who tend to identify with groups of people, using the tools that have been dubbed "political correctness"--which, used appropriately, can still be used to combat genuine oppression of minorities--opportunistically, merely to gain power for their groups, usually at the expense of identified "enemies"--a topic for another thread. But while I recognize this problem, I also recognize that it was, and is, a predictable problem for any ideology that gains power. For example, Christianity is certainly one of the starkest examples of a potentially helpful ideology that has been abused, in just this way, for about two thousand years. Therefore, I not only disagree with--but in fact, find it insane--to conclude, as Bauerlain does--that a good, and balanced, way, of correcting the problem of the abuse of political correctness is to support a president who is, currently, endangering the lives of countless minorities with his racist policies in, and outside of, this country, and also endangering the lives of everyone within this country with his utter lack of, and apparent contempt for, diplomacy with other countries.
As I feel I have gone on quite enough here, I will leave the two journals about which I did not speak for others to discuss.
Jeff Holt