July 12, 2004
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Character and Values
In
response to this morning’s Wizard-of-Id example (see 1:22 PM entry) of
a political Bob-Hope-style Christian wisecrack (a style more apt to
make me gag than laugh), some further quotations:I need a photo-opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard.
— Paul Simon
The Washington Post on the gigolo candidate in Boston Monday:
“In
a lunch speech to more than 1,000 women who had donated $500 to $2,000
to his campaign or the Democratic Party, Kerry was joined on stage by
his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry…. He focused his comments on
improving health care and creating more jobs — notions that he said
‘are not Democratic values. They’re not Republican values. They are
American values.’ “Let us pass over Kerry’s ignorance of the difference between desiderata (things considered desirable) and values (principles, standards, or qualities considered desirable).
A definition of “values” in a different sense, one that might appeal to the late St. Laurance Rockefeller, dead on 7/11, who majored in philosophy at Princeton:
“In
an artistical composition, the character of any one part in its
relation to other parts and to the whole — often used in the plural:
as, the values are well given, or well maintained.”– Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, 1913
Rockefeller
is, I hope, now in a place where he can discuss this definition with
Bach as it applies to, say, that composer’s “Goldberg Variations.”Here below, another sort of Goldberg Variations seems appropriate to the times we live in …
The following composition was inspired by Whoopi Goldberg’s remarks at last Thursday’s Radio City Music Hall Democratic Party fund-raiser.
Democratic Political Art:
Motherhood and Apple Pie
Sources:
Ike Turner, Bad Dreams album,
Mom’s Apple Pie album (X-rated),
and Log24 entries of
July 9-10 and July 12.Update of 3:17 AM July 13, 2004:
A place in Heaven next to St. Laurance
seems to have been reserved:
