The Blog from the Core - Thursday, December 09, 2004

Armstrong on "Apocrypha"

A monumental new paper at Biblical Evidence for Catholicism.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/09/04 06:08:55 PM
Categorized as Religious.

Project: The Game!

I think this is hilarious. I also think those guys will go far.

(Thanks, James.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/09/04 05:53:29 PM
Categorized as WorldWideWeb Stuff.

"Eminem Is Right"

Another monumental essay at Policy Review, this one by Mary Eberstadt.

Also published in this month's issue (brackets and quoted ellipses in original):

.... Papa Roach, Everclear, Blink-182, Pink, Good Charlotte: These bands are only some of the top-40 groups now supplying the teenage demand for songs about dysfunctional and adult abandoned homes. In a remarkable 2002 article published in the pop music magazine Blender (remarkable because it lays out in detail what is really happening in today’s metal/grunge/punk/rock music), an award-winning music journalist named William Shaw listed several other bands, observing, “If there’s a theme running through rock at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it’s a pervasive sense of hurt. For the past few years, bands like Korn, Linkin Park, Slip-knot, Papa Roach, and Disturbed have been thrusting forward their dark accounts of dysfunctional upbringings.... As the clichéd elder might mutter, what’s wrong with kids today?” Shaw answers his own question this way: “[T]hese songs reflect the zeitgeist of an age group coping with the highest marital-breakdown rate ever recorded in America. If this era’s music says anything, it’s that this generation sees itself as uniquely fractured.”

As he further observes, so powerful are the emotions roused in fans by these songs that stars and groups themselves are often surprised by it. Shaw relates the following about “Coby Dick” Shaddix of Papa Roach, who wrote the aforementioned song “Broken Home”: “He’s become used to [fans] coming up and telling him, over and over: ‘You know that song “Broken Home?” That’s my f— life, right there.’ ‘It’s a bit sad that that’s true, you know?’ [Shaddix] says.” Similarly, singer Chad Kroeger of Nickelback reports of a hit song he wrote on his own abandonment by his father at age two: “You should see some people who I meet after shows.... They break down weeping, and they’re like, ‘I went through the exact same thing!’ Sometimes it’s terrifying how much they relate to it.” That Nickelback hit song, titled “Too Bad,” laments that calling “from time to time / To make sure we’re alive” just isn’t enough.

Shaw’s ultimate conclusion is an interesting one: that this emphasis in current music on abandoned children represents an unusually loaded form of teenage rebellion. “This is the sound of one generation reproaching another — only this time, it’s the scorned, world-weary children telling off their narcissistic, irresponsible parents,” he writes. “[Divorce] could be rock’s ideal subject matter. These are songs about the chasm in understanding between parents — who routinely don’t comprehend the grief their children are feeling — and children who don’t know why their parents have torn up their world.”

That is a sharp observation. Also worth noting is this historical point: The same themes of adult absence and child abandonment have been infiltrating hard rock even longer than these current bands have been around — probably for as long as family breakup rates began accelerating....

Confer.

See also "When War Must Be the Answer".

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/09/04 05:37:47 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

Cella's Review

Vide.

(Thanks, Jeff.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/09/04 07:56:00 AM
Categorized as Blogosphere Stuff.

The Twelve Rules of Christmas

A list at The Rutherford Institute:

Unfortunately, Christmas has become a time of controversy over what can or cannot be done in terms of celebrating the holiday. In order to clear up much of the misunderstanding, the following twelve rules are offered: ....

(Thanks, Cindy.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/09/04 07:35:33 AM
Categorized as Political.

Who's Really in the Closet

In Hollywood and environs, that is.

A revealing article by Ben Stein at The American Spectator, Dec. 6:

.... This is the way it is here. We meet in smoky places. We give the high sign, we nod knowingly. We are like members of the Maquis in Occupied France. Or early Christians emerging from the catacombs in Caligula's Rome. We are the GOP in Hollywood, and on the West Side of L.A. The culture here is so dominantly left-wing, PC, vegan, hate-America that many of us feel we have to behave as if we were underground.

At a self-help meeting where men and women confess to drug use, betrayals, thefts, homicides with cars, at a break, a woman stealthily came up to me last Saturday and motioned me into a corner outside the room in Malibu. "I want to tell you there are some of us who agree with you. We have to keep it quiet because we want to get our kids into the right schools, but we're there. We're there. And there are more of us every day." Then she scuttled off into the night. Slamming crack can be spoken of with a smile, but not voting GOP. That could be dangerous....

"Hmmm," said a man who had recently been the star of a sitcom but who had seen his whole life crumble under the weight of some truly horrific family violence. "Republican Jew. Republican Jew. Republican Jew who's famous. Who lives in Beverly Hills. Republican Jew who has more stuff than I have. I don't like it."

"It's a free country," I shrugged.

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe."

This is one of the worst little recent examples of how people here feel about Republicans (and Republican Jews, who simply blow their brains out, to use an old hippie phrase ). But rants, screaming about how we're trying to control women's bodies, draft their sons out of their BMW's and send them to war, scowls and frowns at Morton's, hysterical calls from the network when I appeared on TV backing Right to Life — these are real. Feeling like outsiders, feeling as if we're going to get our cars keyed if we have Bush stickers on them, getting trash thrown on our yard for having up a Bush sign — these are real. Getting denied screenplay credits because I worked for Nixon, those are totally real....