I'm already sick of today

I'm just going to have to stop reading the news for the sake of my blood pressure:

Overweight celebrities such as Gavin and Stacey star James Corden are making dangerous weight gain appear normal, a medical expert is warning.

Professor Michael McMahon of Nuffield Health says fat stars are seen as role models, helping to make being overweight acceptable.

He says it is akin to the dangers of skinny media images and anorexia.

For fuck's sake. There are about three fat celebrities, and they're all named in that article. And James Corden and Ruth Jones are famous for one show, and Beth Ditto's had one album. That's it, I'm seriously stretching to think of another celebrity who might credibly be called fat. Chris Moyles doesn't count, he's in radio. But apparently the danger of fat people not self-hating for five consecutive waking fucking minutes is so great that we must consider any deliberate portrayal of anyone larger than the accepted standard as a dire threat to the sanctity of our nation. How on Earth can a few fat celebrities possibly outweigh (AHAHAHAHA) the entire modelling industry?

The excellent Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister said it best:

If you're fat, you're not only meant to be unhappy, but deeply ashamed of yourself, projecting at all times an apologetic nature, indicative of your everlasting remorse for having wrought your monstrous self upon the world. You are certainly not meant to be bold, or assertive, or confident—and should you manage to overcome the constant drumbeat of messages that you are ugly and unsexy and have earned equally society's disdain and your own self-hatred, should you forget your place and walk into the world one day with your head held high, you are to be reminded by the cow-calls and contemptuous looks of perfect strangers that you are not supposed to have self-esteem; you don't deserve it. Being publicly fat and happy is hard; being publicly, shamelessly, unshakably fat and happy is an act of both will and bravery.

The patronising tone of this bullshit is just too much for me.

Researchers found many obese people refused to take any action about their situation with almost one in five not contemplating doing anything to lose weight.

Imagine that! As many as twenty percent of overweight people think you should shut your fucking gob about what you think is best for them!

Tired of this shit. I'm off to found a commune or something.

Say what?

In an article about the Metropolitan Police's botched handling of the G20 protests, something jumped out at me:

Chairman of the committee Keith Vaz said the public "clearly don't understand" the reasons for using kettling and other public order strategies.

"What's acceptable, what's within the police rule book - the use of distraction tactics, for example, slapping or hitting people - shocked the public," he told the BBC.

Wait. Unprovoked violent attacks on protesters is an official police tactic?

You're right, Vaz - I don't think the UK public quite understands that.

Easy Pickings

In September I start my MA in History of Philosophy, and if all goes to plan I'll start my PhD in philosophy a year after that, meaning that in five, six years tops I should be a doctor of philosophy and looking for work. This is an intimidating prospect, for all that it's far off - competition is fierce for academic jobs given how few are available.

But here's a ray of hope - I could become Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto! I would certainly do a better job of it than Professor David Novak, the latest to tilt at windmills and try to make a secular case against gay marriage.

His arguments here are a rehash of long-debunked idiocies, with a patina of pretension. You've heard it all before: the point of the institution of marriage is allegedly to encourage, protect and to a certain degree control procreation and the raising of children. Ergo, vis a vis, concordantly, no queers allowed. I'll quote him directly:

If the public reason for the institution of marriage is to facilitate procreation and the exercise of parental rights and obligations as well as filial rights and obligations, then it follows that marriage should be limited to heterosexual couples. Only they are capable of procreation.

No, it does not follow at all. I have a knife that was designed to cut vegetables, but I am violating no moral law if I use it to open a package. The public reason for the institution of the playground across the road is for children to play in, but I can still have a go on the swings. This is the genealogical fallacy: marriage was "originally meant" for one man and one woman to raise kids in, and nothing can, will, or should ever change. As an aside, here, it's absurdly ahistorical to claim that this is marriage's Eternal Purpose. Control of virginity, economic domination of women, not ringing any bells here?

To the well-known objection that we commonly allow men and women to marry despite their inability or unwillingness to have children, Novak waves an airy hand and quote some Latin:

But I would answer that objection by citing the old legal principle: de minimis non curat lex, which could be translated (freely) as: The law is only made for what usually obtains. The fact is, the overwhelming number of people who marry are fertile and are of an age to be fertile.

But, given the comparative portion of straights to non-straights, this would still be the case given gay marriage.

And then, of course, in reality many gay couples actually do raise children together. But Novak thinks this is gross and mean:

First, consider surrogacy or artificial insemination. This involves a violation of a child’s natural right to have both natural parents raise him or her.

Oh, please. Yes, it is quite properly the assumption that a child's birth parents will raise them. But how on Earth does that become a hallowed right? Where is that right found? Novak barely bothers to argue for this very strange-sounding right, except by a lazy appeal to the presumed feelings of "overwhelming numbers" of children, a tactic eerily reminiscent of this hilarious and revolting NOM ad. Why should, of all things, genetic resemblance - because that is the only criterion for "natural parenthood" being invoked - create mind-forg'd manacles binding two people? That's Blake, by the way. See, we can all quote old things and sound smart. Novak's bizarre hostility to the idea goes so far that he calls it a "conspiracy ab initio to prevent the child so conceived from being raised by —often not to even recognize—his or her own natural mother"! "Ab initio" means "from the start", by the way - why Novak couldn't just say that, I don't know.

The paragraph continues on in that vein, all a hysterical condemnation of homosexuals and liberals based on phantasmagoric "natural rights". He even manages to slip an anti-choice message in there! That's a bonus.

What about adoption, though? Some bright-eyed moppet cruelly abandoned by the doubtless God-fearing heterosexual couple whose natural and decent copulation brought said moppet into this vale of tears, couldn't this kid be raised by Two Daddies? Novak grudgingly admits that it's probably better for an orphan to be raised by a gay couple than to labour their short life in some Dickensian workhouse, but het couples should still be given preference! Why?

That is because a heterosexual couple can better simulate—perhaps improve upon—the heterosexual union that produced this child and should be raising this child. It better simulates the duty of the natural parents to this child, a duty they would not or could not exercise. This, by the way, is not arguing empirically that opposite sex couples are necessarily better at raising children than same-sex couples. My arguments are based on the concepts of rights, not on the concept of utility. Thus my arguments are a priori, not a posteriori.

Because heterosexual parents look more like the kid's genetic parents! What an utterly specious bit of logic. It's a fun concept to play around with, taken to its logical conclusion ("Okay, apparently Timmy's mum liked Star Wars, how do you feel about that? And would you consider dying your hair? We're really trying to create as much resemblance as possible...") but an utterly silly standard for adoption. The logic here seems to be "heterosexual unions do produce children, therefore heterosexual unions ought to raise children". This involves two logical leaps in one bad argument - from "do" to "ought", and from "produce" to "raise"! Kids, try and colour in the blanks! Why a heterosexual couple's duty to children in their care differs substantially from a homosexual couple's duty to children in their care would seem to be the cornerstone of this argument, so it's a shame that Novak doesn't even bother to mention it.

This is illogical, insubstantial nonsense, which I strongly suspect is an attempt to justify a pretheoretical dislike of homosexuals. Surely someone, somewhere, can do a better job than Novak.

On Rationality

So, among the myriad sins of the New York Times is that they let Stanley Fish blog, which seems unfair, like how people used to make bears dance. This meandering shout-out to Terry Eagleton has mostly attracted criticisms of Eagleton, but since I haven't read Eagleton (nor will my limited book budget stretch to buying publications I already know are idiotic from the quotes pulled by its supporters) I'll settle for stepping up to Fish on the nonsense he's peddling.

And, conversely, the fact that religion and theology cannot provide a technology for explaining how the material world works should not be held against them, either, for that is not what they do. When Christopher Hitchens declares that given the emergence of “the telescope and the microscope” religion “no longer offers an explanation of anything important,” Eagleton replies, “But Christianity was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place. It’s rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov.”

Eagleton likes this turn of speech, and he has recourse to it often when making the same point: “[B]elieving that religion is a botched attempt to explain the world . . . is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus.” Running for a bus is a focused empirical act and the steps you take are instrumental to its end. The positions one assumes in ballet have no such end; they are after something else, and that something doesn’t yield to the usual forms of measurement. Religion, Eagleton is saying, is like ballet (and Chekhov); it’s after something else.

Of course, what religion does exactly is not a question any of this lot are interested in answering. This appeal to literature and ballet is smoke and mirrors, because then they'd be in agreement with the atheists. We're happy to treat the Bible as a work of literature, fold RE classes into English classes and regard somebody who treats the New Testament as a guide to life with much the same suspicion as we'd regard somebody who treats the Iliad as a guide to life. But no, religion isn't just literature, it's something more. Well, then, what the bloody hell is it?

After what? Eagleton, of course, does not tell us, except in the most general terms: “The coming kingdom of God, a condition of justice, fellowship, and self-fulfillment far beyond anything that might normally be considered possible or even desirable in the more well-heeled quarters of Oxford and Washington.”

ARGH. You know, what I find the most apoplexy-inducing thing in this paragraph is Fish's blithe "of course", there. It really exposes the poverty of these arguments. Fish and Eagleton happily excoriate atheists for not understanding "what religion is going for". Look how stupid Hitchens is for thinking that religion explains the world! And then, "of course" Fish and Eagleton can't tell us what religion is for. Do you know, at the end of this article Fish has the nerve to sigh over how irritating it is to waste energy over the "shallow arguments" of "school-yard atheists"? I think I need to go to bed.

The Swift Defense

Auntie reports that the Rev. Peter Mullen, a Church of England vicar, is in trouble for, well, posting this on his blog:

It is time that religious believers began to recommend specific utilitarian discouragements of homosexual practices after the style of warnings on cigarette packets: Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS. In addition the obscene "gay pride" parades and carnivals should be banned for they give rise to passive corruption, comparable to passive smoking. Young people forced to witness these excrescences are corrupted by them.

Mullen sadly lacks the courage to stand by this, resorting as he does to that refuge of cowards, the I Was Only Joking Defense, coupled here with the Some Of My Best Friends Defense:

I wrote some satirical things on my blog and anybody with an ounce of sense of humour or any understanding of the tradition of English satire would immediately assume that they're light-hearted jokes. I certainly have nothing against homosexuals. Many of my dear friends have been and are of that persuasion. What I have got against them is the militant preaching of homosexuality.

I can't imagine they'll stay his friends for long. But you can judge for yourselves how funny Mullen is; though he has removed his blog from the web, Google's all-seeing eye has it. A scan reveals Cullen not to be one of life's great thinkers, still less a noted wit. Some highlights:

Since [gay former MP Matthew] Parris will not dirty his hands by entering theological discussions with his readers, perhaps I might answer for religious believers in the purely utilitarian terms which even the lofty Parris is bound to engage with. We disapprove of homosexuality because it is clearly unnatural, a perversion and corruption of natural instincts and affections, and because it is a cause of fatal disease. The AIDS pandemic was originally caused by promiscuous homosexual behaviour. Such promiscuity is itself an evil because its perpetrators merely use others indiscriminately for their own gratification, treating their fellows as sex objects and as means to an end rather than as ends in themselves. I should have thought that Parris, having rejected religious belief, might want to construct his moral beliefs on this Kantian humanistic imperative. But I suspect he is not really interested in morality of any kind - except as a special plea to excuse his lust for gratification at whatever cost to human dignity and the sanctity of human life.

I'll wager Mullen's routine has 'em rolling in the pews of a Sunday. There's some corkers in here, from labelling "clearly unnatural" behaviour observed in monkeys, turtles, birds, bees and educated fleas, to the apparent believe that sex between male homosexuals involves some sort of genesis whereby virii spring into existence ex verpa, via Mullen's impressive ability to see into the hearts and minds of England's homosexuals (a power perhaps worthy of this blog's namesake) and use of Kant as an argument-winning trump card regardless of his relevance to the discussion.

In my neverending struggle to see everyone's good side (I'm prematurely campaigning for my own canonisation), Mullen does have a talent for verse - the above-linked Google cache contains a clever ditty about a civil ceremony to which Mullen predictably objected. It's no substitute for decency or intellect, but you take what you're given.

99 Problems, But Race Ain't One

There's always complaints about a Glasto lineup. Kate bloody Nash my arse, for instance. And at the back of what charity shop did they find Will Young? Jesus wept. But these oddities have been overshadowed this year by National Heritage has-been Noel Gallagher's condemnation of the choice of Jay-Z to headline. My initial reaction - well, it was actually surprise that Gallagher was alive, I thought he'd died a few years back due to chronic lack of anyone caring. But then a quick glance at the NME website reveals Gallagher to be expressing a peculiar Toryism felt by a number of Glasto's target demographic. The "guitar music" thing is an obvious smokescreen - The Prodigy headlined in '95, Fatboy Slim's played a load, nobody's saying this is wrong for the festival. But the white middle-class boys here don't want to be shaken out of comfortable grooves. One NME.com commenter is particularly telling:

"The reaction we've got from people has been really positive"..... Really?!?! are you sure because all the reactions I've heard are pretty bad and not being able to sell tickets seems a pretty negative reaction. And also "amazing" and "Historic"hmmm... Not as amazing as Radiohead, Oasis or Led Zepplin would be....

Ah, Radiohead and Oasis - the music of the 90s, today! Led Zeppelin would certainly be "historic" in the Natural History Museum sense, once you dusted them off. Never been to Glastonbury, never intend to (junk food, not showering, and Radio One? That's just a weekend at home, except it's dry and I've got a Wii), but I thought it was all about modern, fresh, new music? Whatever your problems with Jay-Z, and I've got a bunch (it's the misogyny that really turns me off), he's a fantastic performer, and he's way too huge to ignore. But I'm not trying to preach hip-hop to the unwilling masses, I'm just disappointed by another reminder of how conservative the rock crowd can be. Give it a listen, at least.

Mind you, I can hardly complain about middle-class festivals. This year, I'm going to Latitude. It's got a fucking poetry tent. White people like it.

Frank Miller Redux

In my now-defunct (in fact, never really funct) other blog, last year, I wrote about Frank Miller's upcoming screen adaptation of Will Eisner's THE SPIRIT:

Anybody who could look at SIN CITY - whatever you think of it - and go "Him! That's the guy I want to make The Spirit!" is deeply misguided. Miller writes overwrought pulp about sociopathic caricatures of masculinity in trenchcoats who torture. And there's a place for that, but it's not in the pages of THE SPIRIT. I can see it now. The Spirit's going to drink hard and beat up criminals for information. Ellen Dolan's going to be the madonna and Sand Saref is going to be the whore. Ebony White, apparently, isn't in it at all.

Well, I was pointed by Lux to the official site the other day (check out that URL. Wow.) and it's even worse than I thought. Here's our cast of characters:

ELLEN DOLAN (Sarah Paulson), the whip-smart girl-next-door; SILKEN FLOSS (Scarlett Johansson), a punk secretary and frigid vixen; PLASTER OF PARIS (Paz Vega), a murderous French nightclub dancer; LORELEI (Jaime King), a phantom siren; and MORGENSTERN (Stana Katic), a sexy young cop.

Sort of gave up on that last one, didn't you, Frank? Better bloggers than me have pointed out that in Eisner's original comics, Silken Floss held two PhDs; "punk secretary and frigid vixen" is a bit of a demotion. And what's with the graphics on the site looking exactly like SIN CITY? Guys, I think people are going to notice if you just re-do the last film with different character names.

You'll be delighted to know that The Goddamn Frank Miller himself keeps a blog on the site, showcasing exactly why the ladies love him:

The director's job is, first and foremost, to be the warship's captain: to remain ruthless in his destination, while ready for what shoals and unforeseen opportunities present themselves. But to never, not ever, let anything stand in the way of the warship's purpose.

Phwoar. Take me, Frank.

But first, tell us about the movie.

One character presented a particular problem (no, it wasn't Ebony White - I saw no reason to try to update that ugly, best-forgotten stereotype of an earlier age, and never considered doing so).

Okay, Ebony's original portrayal in the comic was kind of problematic - he had big red lips and spoke like a minstrel. For that, though, he was an unusually prominent, positive and active black character at the time. And, you know how you update the character? Just don't have him act like a stereotype. Just let the Spirit's sidekick be a regular black kid! Darwyn Cooke did it perfectly well in his SPIRIT run recently, there's absolutely no reason it couldn't have been done here. In the name of anti-racism, Miller has removed the only sympathetic black character! Congratulations!

What makes this perfect is, right up there, "that ugly, best-forgotten stereotype". We all know how much Frank Miller hates him some stereotypes. Just ask frigid vixen Silken Floss!