Miscellaneous Debris

Four random but interesting links for today:

“On Being Postacademic” — After earning tenure at a research university, the dream of all young academics like myself, Kenny Mostern resigned and entered into the world of non-profits and political analysis. I find this article in which he justifies his decision absolutely fascinating, both because he happened to resign from my department (though I never really knew him) and because he says so much that I have been thinking lately. I’ll go ahead and give away the end:

Even in postmodern times, do-it-yourself art, the art of people who survive through other means, retains a political potential, an intellectual energy, a form of commitment to community building that I believe has fundamentally dissolved in the professional world of the academy.

And, yes, I know the critique of that position. So what?

“The Painter of LightTM” — I can’t even remember how I stumbled up this site — Images: A Journal of the Arts and Religion — but I like it. Gregory Wolfe’s editorial takes on many of the same questions that I’ve been writing about lately: What is the proper response to Christian kitsch? Can ten million people be wrong? How do we step away from the commodification of culture in order to have a genuine experience? And what is wrong with sentimentality? (I have other questions about Thomas Kinkade, but since Wolfe doesn’t go into them, neither will I.) Thanks to Wolfe for my new quote of the week:

The great theologian, Cardinal Henri de Lubac, once wrote: “There is nothing more demanding than the taste for mediocrity. Beneath its ever moderate appearance there is nothing more intemperate; nothing surer in its instinct; nothing more pitiless in its refusals. It suffers no greatness, shows beauty no mercy.”

“OJ Stupid: Bush’s Iraq Gambit” — Christopher J. Preist’s 4,500 word analysis of current events should be required reading for every American of voting age. Priest is a modern Renaissance man — comic book writer, minister, political commentator, and fellow blog-ist. His site is a great way to lose a day of work, and this article is a powerhouse.

Doing The Pepsi Challenge between Bush’s proposed resolution and the Tonkin Resolution conjures up possibilities that’ll have me sleeping with the light on for quite awhile. Or, am I just being unreasonably cynical? Maybe. But, in the final analysis, the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy boils down to this: these men are either evil or stupid. There’s really not much middle ground. Rallying America for a just cause would seem to invite if not require bipartisanship, and eschewing even the appearance of politics. No component of Bush’s mealy, meandering attempts to convince us of the rightness of his cause presents any compelling reason why the whole matter couldn’t be tabled until the new congress is seated in January. The merits of his case are not my issue here so much as the timing, the urgency being so seemingly transparent. For all I know, the president has a valid case for this policy, but he squanders it on brazen political opportunism, which makes me question his ethics and, therefore, his judgment.

“Make Your Own Bush Speech” — It ain’t mature, or even in good taste, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.