Category: Culture Matters

Art Serving Peace and Humanity in the Heart of Jenin

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters3 Comments

Journalists, film-makers and people from the media education establishment in Britain and Ireland were reminded at the 13th Cleraun Media Conference in Dublin in mid-October (19th-21st) that journalists in their work should never “lose sight of the primary importance of people – their value and their dignity”. The advice came from Ms. Kate Shanahan of the Dublin Institute of Technology’s journalism school. Ms. Shanahan is a former producer with Irish television who began her career in print journalism with one of Ireland’s national newspapers.

Ms. Shanahan’s words of advice were exemplified in the work of German film-maker Marcus Vetter whose award-winning documentary, Das Herz von Jenin – The Heart of Jenin – was shown at the conference.  The film was introduced by Marcus Vetter himself and was followed by an in depth discussion on the history of its making and the events it recorded.

The Heart of Jenin is a film set against the background of one of the world’s most protracted and bitter human and political tragedies – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East. The film shows how a group of people embroiled in this conflict were able to rise above it by virtue of the exercise of a single but enormously powerful act of human generosity.

It tells the story of how Ismael Khatib, a Palestinian father of a young boy fatally injured by an Israeli bullet during an incursion of the military into the West Bank town of Jenin, decides to donate the organs of Ahmed, his dying son, to enable several other children to live. Seven young people were the beneficiaries of this act, some Arabs, others Jewish. Of these seven, five have survived and are now living normal lives in their own communities.

The climax of the story comes when two years after his heroic act, Ishmael visits some of the families and the children to whom his son’s organs have given new life. One visit in particular, the most difficult of all, stands out both as an example of the triumph of humanity over hatred and prejudice and as a symbol of the peace and reconciliation which people dream of for the Middle East.

One of the beneficiaries of Ishmael and Ahmed’s donation was the little daughter of David Levinson, an American-born orthodox Jew. In the early part of the film we see David – in news footage from the time – waiting in the hospital as the word has come that a donor has been found whose heart might be suitable for his daughter. David is asked some questions about his view should the donor turn out to be an Arab. This, he expresses quite clearly, would not be what he would want.

The story then moves on two years and we know that David’s little daughter is alive and well and living a normal life. David knows that the person who has given his daughter and family this great gift is a Palestinian Arab, someone whom he has up until that time considered his mortal enemy. He is now about to meet him in his own home and the camera of Marcus Vetter is there to record the meeting.

There is no doubt but that the encounter begins with tension. David is awkward. Ishmael is also awkward. David then expresses his regret at his insensitive remarks of two years earlier. There is an uneasy but real reconciliation. Then David calls in the little girl and she walks over to Ishmael, he holds out his hand and she playfully hits it. Then there is a gentle embrace and with this the whole atmosphere of the meeting seems to change. Further conversation takes place, David eventually gives a parting gift to Ishmael and says what a pity it is that they had not met before. They part, expressing a hope that they will meet again.

The message of the encounter is understated. Nevertheless it is loud and clear for all to see and hear. The whole is a wonderfully moving document in witness to the power and effect of simple human goodness and generosity.

Nor does the story end there. It is still unfolding. In the aftermath of these events, the Ahmed Khatib Centre For Peace was established for the children of Jenin. Ishmael now devotes his time working in this centre with the children of this war-torn and impoverished city. Neither did the film-maker’s story end there. In the relative peace of the region, prior to the outbreak of the two intifadas of the past 20 years, Jenin was a city in love with Cinema. It had a multitude of picture houses scattered through its narrow streets. The violence brought an end to that and when Marcus Vetter went there to film Heart of Jenin there was not one left standing. He and his friends decided that the people of the city should not only have an opportunity to see their account of this inspiring story but see much else besides. They have now founded the Cinema Jenin Project, rebuilding one of the town’s old cinemas and establishing around it a film-school. Young film-makers and students of film in Europe are now involving themselves in the project to help the young inhabitants of Jenin to learn more about the art of film-making –  and in the process, perhaps, let their art also be a means of promoting peace, human dignity and respect for life.

Moving On

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters, Faith MattersLeave a comment

We have got to move on from here. The Church in the 16th century took the bull of corruption and abuse by the horns and moved on to the Catholic Reformation. It must do the same now. Another tranche of documents – 10,000 pages of them – are in the headlines in the US this week, detailing more records of abuse. Mind you not all 10,000 pages will be disturbing. Some of them record complaints about the long hair-styles or Elvis-style sideburns of some of the clergy of the time. But some of them are indeed disturbing. This time they come from the files of the diocese of San Diego, California. Good. Read then, beat our breasts sincerely and contritely – but then move to do what we should have been doing when these ugly heinous crimes were being committed. We are not doing a service to anyone, least of all the victims of abuse, by just continuing to beat our breasts. If the corruption within the Church in the early modern age was the occasion of driving good men out of the Church, the corruptions of our own age have had no less drastic consequences. It is time to address these consequences.

Moving on is not the same as forgetting. We must never forget what has happened – we cannot, in fact, ever forget it. It is and always will be part of us. It is part of our fallen condition, the effects of which we have all inherited.

We were reminded of this by Pope Benedict in his address at Oscott College in Birmingham in September. “As we reflect on the human frailty that these tragic events so starkly reveal, we are reminded that, if we are to be effective Christian leaders, we must live lives of the utmost integrity, humility and holiness. He then quoted an Anglican priest to express his hope for the future: ‘O that God would grant the clergy to feel their weakness as sinful men, and the people to sympathize with them and love them and pray for their increase in all good gifts of grace’” Those words were the prayer of the Rev. John Henry Newman, now Blessed John Henry Newman, delivered in a sermon on 22 March 1829.

The Pope made no bones about the impact of the scandal on the moral credibility of Church leaders. “I have spoken on many occasions of the deep wounds that such behaviour causes, in the victims first and foremost, but also in the relationships of trust that should exist between priests and people, between priests and their bishops, and between the Church authorities and the public.”  But he went on to acknowledge the new awareness “of the extent of child abuse in society, its devastating effects, and the need to provide proper victim support should serve as an incentive to share the lessons you have learned with the wider community”. He did not make the obvious point that clerical abuse was but the tip of the iceberg of child abuse. He sees no point in that kind of defence but those looking on should be ready to concede it, if they are at all interested in fairness. What he did propose was much more positive: “Indeed, what better way could there be of making reparation for these sins than by reaching out, in a humble spirit of compassion, towards children who continue to suffer abuse elsewhere? Our duty of care towards the young demands nothing less.” At the heart of the response must be, he said, “Integrity, humility and holiness”.

Looking forward, with the supernatural vision that is the hallmark of his office, he said that his prayer would be that among the graces of his visit to Britain “will be a renewed dedication on the part of Christian leaders to the prophetic vocation they have received, and a new appreciation on the part of the people for the great gift of the ordained ministry. Prayer for vocations will then arise spontaneously, and we may be confident that the Lord will respond by sending labourers to bring in the plentiful harvest.”  

Finally, as if to underline that essential platform of the spiritual and supernatural on which that harvesting work can only be based, he spoke to them of the Eucharist – in the context of the imminent publication of the new translation of the Roman Missal for the English-speaking world. “I encourage you now to seize the opportunity that the new translation offers for in-depth catechesis on the Eucharist and renewed devotion in the manner of its celebration. ‘The more lively the Eucharistic faith of the people of God, the deeper is its sharing in ecclesial life in steadfast commitment to the mission entrusted by Christ to his disciples’ (Sacramentum Caritatis, 6).

Then, in final words of encouragement the Pope seemed to echo back to that age when the failures and corruption of churchmen five centuries ago drove good men into a revolt which still divides Christendom. He spoke about the generosity needed for the implementation of the Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus, that apostolic instrument by which members of the Anglican Communion might be reunited with their fellow Christians in the Roman Catholic Church. “This should be seen as a prophetic gesture that can contribute positively to the developing relations between Anglicans and Catholics. It helps us to set our sights on the ultimate goal of all ecumenical activity: the restoration of full ecclesial communion in the context of which the mutual exchange of gifts from our respective spiritual patrimonies serves as an enrichment to us all. Let us continue to pray and work unceasingly in order to hasten the joyful day when that goal can be accomplished.” Now that is moving on.

Threatened but Never Vanquished

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

In some ways it is hard to know what to think about the Irish Times survey, Sex, Sin and Society, the details of which were landed on our breakfast tables last week. The one thing that it is not hard to do is to suspect the choice of week in which to publish it – coinciding with the visit of Pope Benedict to Britain. On the surface it represents nothing less than a slap in the face to the Pope and anyone who might be hoping for a society of the future which might be prepared to re-embrace the values of Judaeo-Christian civilization.

If it is a true reflection of the state of public opinion in Ireland on sexual morality – and there have been good letters to Madam Editor questioning the credentials of the survey – it has revealed in all its stark reality the abysmal desert of moral relativism of which Pope Benedict spoke to us on the eve of his pontificate in 2005 and which he has reminded us of again this week. If this is the new norm of morality then we really have gone a long way down the road to a neo-pagan society.

It is shocking to some of us but clearly not to the majority – if, again, the survey can be taken as an accurate reading of what the majority of Irish people now think sin and sex are all about. The process by which this has happened – is happening – was outlined by Peter Hitchens in his column in the Daily Mail on Monday  (13/08/10) when he reminded us that shock always fades into numb acceptance. He was writing in the context of the reception being accorded to the Pope in Britain but what he said can apply equally to this island. “Much of what is normal now would have been deeply shocking to British people 50 years ago. We got used to it. How will we know where to stop? Or will we just carry on forever? As the condom-wavers and value-free sex-educators advance into our primary schools, and the pornography seeps like slurry from millions of teenage bedroom computers, it seems clear to me that shock, by itself, is no defence against this endless, sordid dismantling of moral barriers till there is nothing left at all.”

What is the defence? Teaching should be the defence, but when has any of your readers last heard a teacher, clerical or otherwise, comprehensively explain the unadulterated moral teaching of Christ on the sixth commandment of the Decalogue? Milton’s words seem as relevant today as they were in the 17th century:

The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed,

But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread…

There is no doubt but that there is a great deal of rank mist in the air. The Irish Times misread the Pope again today headlining its front page story, “The Pope Fears for the Future of Christianity”. He does not. He believes Christ two thousand year-old promise that He would be with us for all time, even to the end of the world. What he does fear for is mankind cut adrift from Christianity and he spelt out in no uncertain terms what things that can lead to. That is what we must all fear.

But we must also hope. Remembering that in a certain sense and at a certain point in human history, Christendom was reduced to three people standing around the foot of a Cross, we surely have grounds for hope. Despite all the negativity and rank mist we have witnessed over the past weeks, months and year, the demonstration of Christian faith, liturgical splendour and ecumenical good will we have witnessed in Britain over the past few days, show us that what was happening at the foot of that Cross is happening still and all the ugly demonstrations of bad will – or just plain blameless ignorance –  which seem to threaten it will never vanquish it.

Strange Fruit

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters3 Comments

“History may be servitude, History may be freedom,” the poet T.S. Eliot observed in Four Quartets. When it is the former it can also be lethal, as Britain and Ireland were reminded last week. The virus of Irish Nationalism produced another shocker with the revelation that a parish priest in Northern Ireland was the prime suspect in one of the worst atrocities in the three decades of mayhem and murder known as “The Troubles”. Bad history must bear a large part of the blame for this particular manifestation of evil, as it must for much of Ulster’s tragic tale over those 30 years.

The Chesney case, like recent scandals of clerical abuse, appals because of the shocking incongruity of a man committed to the beatitudes of the Christian gospel allegedly taking command of a para-military cell and committing mass murder in the pursuit of a political goal.

It was 1972, the bloodiest year in the recent history of Northern Ireland, the year of Bloody Sunday and the year in which 496 people died in political violence. An undeclared civil war was raging. On the morning of July 31 the local IRA unit detonated two car-bombs in the village of Claudy in County Derry. Nine people were killed, including three children. More than 30 were injured. In the weeks following, it emerged that one of the suspects was a priest in a small neighbouring parish, Father James Chesney.

He was never charged. He was never even questioned. His superiors, with the collusion of the civil authorities, eventually moved him out of the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom into the Republic of Ireland. He died of cancer in 1980. Officially he is only the number one suspect but few people now have any doubts about his crimes.

The Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman released a report last week sketching the case against Fr Chesney. Together with records of police intelligence, including interviews with Cardinal William Conway, it contains the text of an anonymous letter sent by a “Father Liam” to the police in Northern Ireland in 2002. The writer claimed that he had met Fr Chesney at a house in Donegal in late 1972. In a long conversation Chesney broke down and confessed his role in the bombings. “He said that he was horrified at the injustices done to the Catholic people… He became a member of the IRA and was soon in charge of a small number of volunteers,” the letter revealed. He had been ordered ordered to place bombs in Claudy to relieve pressure on the IRA brigade in Derry city”.

According to the letter, Chesney had wanted to give warnings of the bombs so the streets could be cleared but when they stopped at nearby Dungiven, the IRA men could not find a telephone box in working order.

“This horrible affair has been hanging over me like a black cloud,” Fr Chesney allegedly said. “I must talk to someone in authority before I die… I must meet my maker with a clear conscience. The souls of the deceased are crying out not for vengeance but for justice.” The police now think that errors and inconsistencies suggest that the letter was not written by a priest. But it may represent Fr Chesney’s state of mind.

Why didn’t the authorities act? Probably because they feared a bloodbath. What might have followed the arrest of a Catholic priest for the murder of nine innocent Catholics and Protestants did not bear thinking about.

The Claudy atrocity was the culminating one in a month in which nearly 100 people lost their lives. Just 10 days earlier, more than 20 bombs exploded in Belfast over a period of 75 minutes, killing nine people and injuring a further 130. Ulster was a powder keg. The arrest of a Catholic priest might have set a light to the fuse. For Catholics it would have been the last straw in victimisation; for Protestants the confirmation of everything they believed about the Catholic Church.

But commenting last week, Mark Durkan, former leader of the moderate nationalist party, the SDLP, while accepting the concerns people might have had, still holds that it was a grave error of judgement. The oldest of axioms should have been given priority: “Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall,” he said.

The real story behind this murkiest of murky affairs will probably never be known. Rumours are even spreading that the real reason for the non-arrest of Chesney is that he was an undercover agent for the security forces. But the mystery — if it is a mystery rather than just another example of Realpolitik at work – of the decisions taken by the agents of justice is only one part of story. The other is the mystery of how a man trained to live by and serve the gospel of Christ could end up in the place in which Chesney eventually found himself – allegedly a perpetrator of mass murder.

Perhaps there is no mystery. One of the patriotic icons of Irish history was the 1798 rebel priest Fr John Murphy. We can be sure that Fr James Chesney regarded himself as another Fr Murphy. To compare the two might enrage nationalists who revere one as a martyr while despising the the other as a terrorist. But this is the problem with bad history. The truth is that Chesney and Murphy responded to oppression in a similar way.

Fr Murphy led a rebellion against the forces of the Crown in the failed rebellion of 1798. He triumphed for a short period but was eventually captured, tried and barbarically executed. His story is retold in graphic detail in a ballad which is a virtual second Irish national anthem, Boolavogue.

Back in 1998 a long historical article about him appeared in An Phoblacht, the weekly newspaper of Sinn Fein, the Provisional IRA’s political arm. It tells the story of a priest, somewhat at odds with his pro-government bishop, but initially obedient in “getting people in his parish to hand in whatever weapons they held in a hope that such a gesture would relieve the terror being inflicted on the people of County Wexford by the crown forces.”

“But the Yeomanry continued their reign of terror. That radicalised Father Murphy to the point where he aligned himself with the highly organised United Irish structure in Wexford, particularly in the Ferns district.” A contemporary, Edward Hay, writing in 1803, says that seeing what was happening he advised the people “that they had better die courageously in the field, than to be butchered in their houses”.

Fr Murphy and others then organised and procured arms for a growing army. In the first major engagement with the opposing militia he routed them and nearly wiped them out: 105 out of 110 were killed while only six of the rebels died. The town of Enniscorthy was the next target. An Phoblacht recounts how “The attack, led by Edward Roche and Father Murphy, saw the town taken with high casualties on both sides; several hundred United Irishmen and around 100 of the North Cork Militia garrison lost their lives.”

Fr Murphy’s eventual capture and execution made him a hero. Militant nationalists used his story to inspire Irish armed resistance for 200 years. To give you an idea, An Phoblacht described him as a patriot cut down by the tyranny of the British and the servility of the Catholic hierarchy: “While men like Father Murphy… played an important role in the rising and in many subsequent attempts by republicans to wrest Ireland’s independence from Britain, the true history shows that far from being with the people in their fight, the Catholic Church has been guilty at the very least of obstructing them and usually being in active collaboration with the imperial forces in Ireland.” No doubt that was Fr Chesney’s view as well when he packed explosives into three cars which would explode on the streets of Claudy.

An Phoblacht’s account of the Murphy story rationalises the option for armed resistance and violence. It is dangerous but ultimately can be countered with the incontrovertible truth that violence only perpetuates violence and diminishes humanity in appalling ways. But the mythological and emotional account of the career of John Murphy and the entire rebellion of 1798 is much more dangerous. This is the version of the story lodged in the consciousness of the Irish race “wherever green is worn”, presenting Fr. John Murphy in the image of a pious martyr for faith and fatherland. It is much more difficult to deal with.

The hero worship of half-truths is one of the most lethal potions available to mankind. The priest-terrorist of Claudy is another sad example of the slavery induced by bad history. The mythology of Irish Nationalism must bear a large share of the responsibility for 30 years of suffering endured by the people of Britain and Ireland.

(This post was first published online in www.MercatorNet.com which carries links to other material including the ballad, Boolavogue.)

Bewitching Ways of Wickedness

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

The Irish public was treated to a heavy diet of vengeance and voyeurism last week when a notorious rapist was released from prison. A media feeding frenzy ensued when the gates of the prison opened to release this apparently unrepentant criminal.
There were questions as to whether an early release was justified, although all the relevant boxes had been ticked. But questions are one thing. Mobs baying for blood, reporters and photographers on motorcycles pursuing taxis taking ex-prisoners to their destinations around the city and camping in the front gardens of their relatives is quite another.
By a remarkable coincidence, on the same day as the media circus Ireland’s Press Ombudsman, John Horgan, was giving a lecture on the media’s tendency to consider the unwelcome publicity which they could give to criminals as an intrinsic component of the punishment for their crimes. He disapproved, reminding listeners that the primary role in protecting society against criminality belongs to the police and the courts, and should not be outsourced to the media.
“Is the sentence passed by the media always life? Is someone who has been convicted of a criminal offence and has served his sentence always a criminal, and not entitled to basic human and civil rights?”
He contrasted favourably the “reticence” of countries such as Sweden and Holland about publishing information on people involved in criminal trials with the amount of media attention these cases attract in Ireland. This reticence was justified, he said, because the public shame arising from media publicity was arbitrary and selective, and furthermore involved “collateral damage” to innocent parties and could even create a risk to the life of the criminal.
The tabloids’ offence is not to be light, entertaining, and crisp. The offence of the tabloid comes at the point where it distorts, dissembles, and grossly exaggerates out of all proportion the significance of the events it chooses to cover. Mr Horgan also pointed out that the word “fury” had appeared in recent Irish newspaper headlines in 14 out of 18 days. “Isn’t there a risk that if you cry wolf too often, when there’s only a rather cross dog barking outside, that people will become desensitised to real risks, injustices and scandals? Have we the energy to be that furious, all the time?”
(More of this on http://www.MercatorNet.com : http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_bewitching_ways_of_wickedness )

The End of Cocoon Culture

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters5 Comments

Some years ago a friend in the US – Irish born and educated but now working in academia there – asked me if I was on email. I looked puzzled and confessed ignorance. He brought me up to date. Not long after he visited again and this time asked me about what impact the pc phenomenon was having here. Once again, after an embarrassing and confusing wrong turn in which I probably muttered something about  personal computers he enlightened me on the joys and sorrows of political correctness and the new morality which was going to liberate mankind from moral and political darkness – he didn’t think.

It has often been said that we on this side of the Atlantic – and in this island (Ireland) in particular – lag something like ten years behind America in our thinking, practice and political fads. Probably not anymore. Google, Facebook, Twitter were with us in the twinkling of an eye and with them, in the twinkling of an eye again, comes everything else. We are now in the middle of it as soon as it happens – economic collapses and all. Good, bad or a matter of indifference? Definitely good and certainly not the latter. To be always coming from behind is not the best option – although to talk of options is now somewhat wide of the mark. There is no longer an option, neither economically, culturally nor in any other way. Geographically cocooned cultures in the developed world – little pockets of culture protected by artificial shells with greater or lesser resistance to the forces battling around them are no longer possible. Cultural values will now largely have to stand on their own two feet – or whatever it is cultures stand on. This is good. Good, but clearly dangerous.

It is good because it makes us think and makes us really live by and understand the values which we might previously have defended with various institutional structures – but then fail to appreciate for their true value. Take the conundrum of the hour, marriage. On this topic we are in the most complete muddle imaginable. The details of why and where might go to clear up that mess is for another day. Take religion. The connection between the practice of religion and the human condition as it is reflected in the debate in the public square of this little cocoon on the eastern shore of the Atlantic is so wide of the mark as to make one despair for the human race. Again, we might leave that for another posting.

So welcome to the new global world and welcome to the great reassembly of forces for the cause of truth and sanity which it offers us. Good-bye to a world where we lived in our cocoon, went to sleep in one decade and then awakened in another to find strange forces invading our little space without knowing how to cope with them. Now we live and fight shoulder to shoulder with fellow warriors across oceans – from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean and back to the Atlantic again.

Whence this epiphany? Twenty years ago I had to wait for my friend to come home to Ireland for his vacation to find out what was afoot on the other side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile I lived on in quiet desperation – which is the Irish as well as the English way – with the local media establishment selecting what I read or listened to  and offering me their agreed opinions on the same . Today I open my laptop in the morning and look up The New York Times, The Washington Post or the The Wall Street Journal. I then check The Irish Times to see what the locals are up to and invariably find my blood pressure rising at the spectacle of one-sided myopia scrolling before my eyes. I then slip down to Sydney from where Mercatornet.com emanates and gives a varied commentary on events.

The enormous significance of this new way of living and looking at our world – for it is nothing less than that – was brought home to me last week when I stumbled across an item in The New York Times. Their front page offered a link to their “bloggingheads” feature where they flagged a short discussion between Mollie Ziegler Hemingway and the utterly heterodox Catholic, Frances Kissling. There were examining the future of the Christian left – in America, ostensibly, but in the new context that I’m proposing, it can be anywhere.  I had previously watched a similar discussion between Ziegler Hemingway and another blogging head on the incipient and inevitable conflict – as MZH saw it – between the gay rights movement and orthodox Christians. Two things were very attractive about both of these discussions. Firstly there was the way the discussion progressed. Both presented their arguments in an utterly respectful way, above all respectful to each other as persons. Secondly there was the reassurance I felt at the conclusion when I heard Ziegler Hemmingway present such a rational, wise and friendly take on where orthodox Christians are or should be on these issues. This was not the Summa Theologiae but in this sound-bitten age it was close enough to its spirit to make me say a heartfelt Deo gratias.

I then looked further. Who is Mollie Zeigler Hemmingway I asked? Where is she coming from? How did she get here? What else is she saying? Google of course led me to some answers and I found her among a great group of people – no least her husband and her two little children. It was all there –who she writes for, where she studied. She is a Washington-based writer, contributes to The Wall Street Journal, Christianity Today and the GetReligion website. She is a Lutheran and the kind of Lutheran about whom an orthodox (small “o”) Catholic will have to look closely to find the points of difference between the one and the other. But the bottom line is that she talks a lot of sense.

But that is not all. She is a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow of the Philips Foundation – about which, again, I knew noting until I started following the MZH trail. The Phillips Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 1990 to advance constitutional principles, a democratic society and a vibrant free enterprise system. In 1994, the Foundation launched its Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship Program to award grants to working print and online journalists to undertake and complete projects of their own choosing, focusing on journalism supportive of American culture and a free society. In 1999, the Foundation launched its Ronald Reagan College Leaders Scholarship Program to provide renewable cash awards to college undergraduates who demonstrate leadership on behalf of the cause of freedom, American values and constitutional principles. That description will, of course, make it an anathema to some. So be it.

Its website lists all its other Robert Novak fellows and I now return to my original epiphany: there are a lot of good people out there who are also talking sense and make those of us who may have felt somewhat like Davy Crockett in the Alamo, now feel a lot less beleaguered and under siege, indeed feel very much on a winning side.

The Distance Between Wonder and Curiosity: Whither Modern Journalism?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

Ireland’s former Minister for Justice and former Attorney General, Michael McDowell, supposedly “retired” from politics, asked some big questions of the Irish political and media establishment at a private dinner in Dublin last week. It may have been a private dinner but what he said ended up on the front page of The Irish Times nevertheless. For some people McDowell’s remarks put a question-mark over his retirement – he bowed out after his defeat in the last General election. Was he making a pitch for the formation of a new political grouping to confront the cosy and anodyne choices which the present set-up seems to offer the Irish electorate?

This is what the Irish Times reported: “There is a ‘gap in the market’ in Irish politics which will need to be filled if the next general election is to be more than just a contest between Fianna Fáil (the main party in the present government) and Fine Gael (currently the main opposition party)  to see who will govern with the Labour Party…If people wanted to stop the general election being like that, they had to do something about it rather than just complaining, Mr McDowell said.”

That is intriguing enough but we will have to wait and see if anything more comes of it. What was more intriguing but only alluded to in the reports was the fact that in his address Mr. McDowell devoted the lion’s share of his attention to the media itself, criticising it for its “holier-than-thou” posturing since our financial world began to unravel three years ago.

The Irish Times reported: “A large portion of his address was devoted to criticising the media, including The Irish Times and RTÉ. He agreed with Taoiseach Brian Cowen that media commentary about the economy was excessively negative. He objected to the media criticising the Government for not seeing the property crash coming, when they too had not predicted the financial downturn. He mentioned The Irish Times Ltd’s purchase of the property website myhome.ie for €50 million in 2006”.

Stanley Baldwin, a British prime minister in the early part of the last century once jibed that journalists enjoy “the privilege of the harlot down the ages – power without responsibility”. Kenneth Minogue, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics, quoted this in a powerful critique of journalism which was published in New Criterion back in 2005.

Professor Minogue accepted that we cannot live without journalism. We need information and the way we get the vast bulk of the information which we need for life in the polis comes to us from journalists. But some kind of decadence has taken hold. He connects this with Baldwin’s jibe insofar as it seems to “point to the profound idea that there is something essentially pathological about the whole activity that daily satisfies our often pointless curiosity about what is going on in the world.” He accepts that at its core journalism is a perfectly respectable and certainly a necessary trade, informing us about the world. However, he maintains that it has lost its integrity and has become, in some degree, a parody of truth. I suppose that Baldwin’s analogy went something like this: Just as the harlot panders to the indulgence of human sexuality, regardless of any sense of its true purposes and outcome, so the journalist can pander to the indulgence of that pathological curiosity that Minogue refers to and that all of us can be tempted to.

Is this not the problem at the root of McDowell’s complaint about the negativity of the media’s treatment of our financial predicaments? Is negativity endemic in the provision information at a popular level? No news may be good news but every journalist also knows that good news has to be very good to get itself into print or on the airwaves. The journalist has an inbuilt instinct to entertain first and inform second. The journalist has to first of all attract attention; then the information can follow. If bad news attracts more attention than good news then the bad news angle becomes the default option.

McDowell’s point might be illustrated by two contrasting reports on an Irish Central Bank quarterly bulletin in two Irish newspapers on the day following that dinner. The Irish Independent went into moan mode, emphasising the negative elements in the bank’s report:

“The euro-region recovery may ‘moderate somewhat’  in the second half of the year as governments withdraw stimulus measures and cut spending to reduce budget deficits, Ireland’s central bank said. ‘The euro-area recovery is expected to continue, but is now likely to occur at a more gradual pace than was anticipated’ in April, the Central Bank led by Patrick Honohan said in its quarterly report published today. ‘This primarily reflects the negative short-term impact of fiscal consolidation.’

“European governments from Ireland to Spain have been forced to step up budget cuts after the Greek fiscal crisis eroded investor confidence and pushed up borrowing costs. The euro- region economy may only show a ‘somewhat uneven’ recovery, the Irish central bank said, echoing remarks by European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet earlier this month. While a recovery in exports is expected to continue, domestic activity ‘appears likely to remain subdued,’ according to the report. Governments’ deficit-reduction plans could curb demand, hurting a recovery, it said.”

Dan O’Brien, the new Economics correspondent of The Irish Times, a trained economist and until recently working with the Economist Intelligence Unit, gave a more positive slant to the Bank’s report.

“Central Bank says economy to grow by over 2% in 2011”, said the headline. “The Central Bank”, he wrote,  “has predicted that the economy will grow by between 2 and 3 per cent next year, well above most expectations for the euro zone as a whole. The crisis in the euro zone, which peaked in May, does not appear to have damaged Ireland’s growth prospects, according to the bank’s Quarterly Bulletin .

“In its first economic forecast since the bailing out of Greece and the putting in place of a rescue fund for other weak euro zone countries, the bank argues that Ireland’s recovery remains on track”. He didn’t ignore the negative caveats in the report but he didn’t labour them either.

I suppose we will have to wait to see which made the better call but certainly if you wanted encouragement you would read The Irish Times on this occasion.

All this is of course at the higher end of the reporting spectrum and may not be so self-evidently rooted in some kind of pathology as Minogue argues in relation to trends in journalism generally. But the worry is that it is a symptom of the same infection – and clearly Mr. McDowell and Mr. Cowen feel the downward pressure which it is bringing to bear on our morale generally. What is the infection? Minogue’s answer is that journalism satisfies curiosity, but a curiosity which is only “a distant relative of the ‘wonder’ thought to be the source of philosophy and science.” How, he asks, can curiosity be a vice? “The answer”, he says, “is that we are often curious about things that are none of our business. The malicious village gossip is the most curious creature on earth, and finds a successor in the ‘door-stopping’ journalist and the paparazzo infesting the lives of famous people.”

If journalism tends to the negative rather than the positive, the pessimistic rather than the optimistic, is this simply because of a certain morbidity in the kind of curiosity it tends to pander to? “The most evidently vicious kind of curiosity is morbid,” Minogue maintains. Plato recognised this, he tells us, quoting from The Republic which tells of a character noticing the bodies of some criminals lying on the ground with the executioner standing beside them. “He wanted to go and look at them, but at the same time was disgusted and tried to turn away. He struggled for some time and covered his eyes, but at last the desire was too much for him. Opening his eyes he ran up to the bodies and cried, ‘There you are, curse you; feast yourselves on this lovely sight!’” Minogue comments: “Some modern press photography is remarkable, almost an art (that of sport, for example), but much that we see in tabloid journalism would disgust us had our sensibilities not been corrupted by learning to enjoy the satisfaction of this particular version of lust – the lust to see and know things of no concern to us.”

I suppose there are many who will say about all this – “So what?” For some it will be because the challenge of dealing with it suggests something that is even more distasteful – censorship. I heard an interview with Bret Easton Ellis on Irish (daytime) radio some time ago. I was amazed to hear Easton Ellis hold back on some descriptive references to his very explicit fiction. But I was more amazed to hear his Irish host mutter his disapproval at the suggestion that they would indulge in any self-censorship on behalf of their listening audience.

Ultimately all this is a question of the ways in which we chose to exercise our freedom, responsibly or irresponsibly, and that in the end boils down to the exercise of integrity in whatever field of human action we find ourselves engaged. If we chose to work outside that framework then we will deserve the jibe Stanley Baldwin made about the journalism of his day.

Filmstalker: Roland Joffé’s There Be Dragons trailer online

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

Roland Joffé’s There Be Dragons trailer online

FILMSTALKER writes:ThereBeDragons.jpgThat sounds impressive, Roland Joffé’s There Be Dragons, instantly you should be pricking up your ears. Then there’s the fact that the film follows two friends, one who turns to war and the other who becomes the founder of Opus Dei, Josemaria Escriva, and you should be even more interested.

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via Filmstalker: Roland Joffé’s There Be Dragons trailer online.

A Distasteful Display of Acrimony: Frank Rich on Mel Gibson

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters5 Comments

Frank Rich used to be the terror of Broadway. This was in the days when he was the main theatre critic of the New York Times. Any playwright opening there with a new play had to keep his fingers crossed that Rich would either not cover the opening or would take a liking to it – for whatever deep and mysterious reasons the said critic might chose to like it and give it a good review. Rich was an all-knowing an inscrutable God when it came to theatre and his bad reviews had such divine authority that plays he disapproved of could close after a week.

But eventually Rich moved on – whether because he got tired of his own negativity or the Times felt that his negativity was becoming too much of a cliché, we cannot say. For whatever reason dramatists could breathe again and were happy to be able to take their chances again with critics who seemed less dogmatic and less prone to the use of vitriol to beef up their reservations about their work. But he did not move far.  He now writes a regular column for the paper and nothing much has changed in terms of his style or use of vitriol-laced ink for his fountain pen.

This brings us to poor old Mel Gibson, the renewed object of Mr. Rich’s ire. Mel has once again made himself cannon-fodder for his enemies – and there is no doubt but that he seems to have as much capacity for making enemies as he has – at least until now –  for making money. Last week Mr. Rich was to be found gloating on the dire consequences for Mel’s career in the aftermath of his most recent alcohol-fuelled outburst. But apart from the distasteful spectacle of one man gloating on the fate of a clearly unwell fellow human being, what is remarkable about Rich’s cashing in on the self-destructive propensity of Mel, is his use of this as a pretext to launch a major attack on what he labels the “Christian right” of America. The Christian right, of course, includes all those who hold any candle for traditional Christian morality. No effort is made to distinguish the extremes form the mainstream.

Rich’s jubilation in his piece on July 16, “The Good News About Mel Gibson”, was not just at Mel’s fall from grace, or the fall from the place the last fall left him languishing in, but the further damage which this will inflict on all those causes Gibson espoused to some good effect when his celebrity status was still intact.

“Gibson is in such disgrace today, Rich writes, that it’s hard to fathom all the fuss he and his biblical epic engendered back then”. He is referring to the controversy aroused when Gibson was making and releasing The Passion of the Christ back in 2004. Gibson defended the movie against an onslaught of allegations that it was going to be an anti-Semitic rant. Rich’s line is that all this was a very clever spin – “publicity screenings for the right-wing media and political establishment, including a select Washington soiree attended by notables like Peggy Noonan, Kate O’Beirne and Linda Chavez. (The only nominal Jew admitted was Matt Drudge.) The attendees then used their various pulpits to assure the world that the movie was divine — and certainly nothing that should trouble Jews. ‘I can report it is free of anti-Semitism,’ vouchsafed Robert Novak after his ‘private viewing.’”

 “Uninvited Jewish writers (like me) who kept raising questions about the unreleased film and its exclusionary rollout were vilified for crucifying poor Mel. Bill O’Reilly of Fox News asked a reporter from Variety ‘respectfully’ if Gibson was being victimized because ‘the major media in Hollywood and a lot of the secular press is controlled by Jewish people.’ Such was the ugly atmosphere of the time that these attempts at intimidation were remarkably successful. Many mainstream media organizations did puff pieces on the star or his film, lest they be labeled ‘anti-Christian’ when an ascendant religious right was increasingly flexing its muscles in the corridors of power in Washington.”

 So Rich clearly reads the considerable critical and popular acclaim which The Passion garnered as the result of a clever spin job. He puts it all down to the then dominance – as he sees it – of a resurgent rightwing Christian lobby. Read Rich between the lines, however, and it very hard not to see someone who will consider any telling of the story Gibson retold so startlingly as anti-Semitic.

“Once ‘The Passion’ could be seen by ticket buyers,” he maintains, “— who would reward it with a $370 million domestic take (behind only ‘Shrek 2’ and ‘Spider-Man 2’ that year) — the truth could no longer be spun by Gibson’s claque. The movie was nakedly anti-Semitic, to the extreme that the Temple priests were all hook-nosed Shylocks and Fagins with rotten teeth.” This kind of paranoia puts the tendency sometimes found in the British press to read any re-telling of Irish history as anti-British propaganda deep into the shade. Why is it so difficult for human beings to face the simple truths of history?

He continues, “It seems preposterous in retrospect that a film as bigoted and noxious as ‘The Passion’ had so many reverent defenders in high places in 2004. Once Gibson, or at least the subconscious Gibson, baldly advertised his anti-Semitism with his obscene tirade during a 2006 D.U.I. incident in Malibu, his old defenders had no choice but to peel off.”

 That kind of crass judgement is enough to strain the tolerant spirit of any soul, and much more so the ultra-volatile Mel in one of his inebriated states of being. He is easy prey for Mr. Rich. But it is not really Mel whom Frank Rich is after. The “religious right” is his main target. Its supposed discomfiture at the antics of  its fallen angel is what he is really rejoicing in.

“The cultural wave that crested with ‘The Passion’ was far bigger than Gibson. He was simply a symptom and beneficiary of a moment when the old religious right and its political and media shills were riding high. In 2010, the American ayatollahs’ ranks have been depleted by death (Falwell), retirement (James Dobson) and rent boys (too many to name). What remains of that old guard is stigmatized by its identification with poisonous crusades, from the potentially lethal anti-homosexuality laws in Uganda to the rehabilitation campaign for the “born-again” serial killer David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) in America.” Clearly, forgiveness of any kind is going to play no part in the world of Frank Rich.

One glimmer of charity and light, however, came in Rich’s noxious – to borrow his own word – package in the New York Times, and that was in an online comment from a professor of psychology in a New York college, David Chowes:

“Pathological behavior can occur to any person of any political stripe. While I have not spent any time with Mr. Gibson, as a professor of psychology at Baruch College/CUNY, for years I have observed Mel Gibson. My conclusion: he has at least (a) destructive personality disorder(s) and, especially the strong possibility of bipolar disorder (aka, manic depression).

 “His alcoholism is often correlated with my hypothesis; his untempered temper; his (believe it or not) creativity as an actor and director; his self-destructive behaviours; his alleged violence and tantrums… One doesn’t have to be right-wing to display aberrant displays of behaviour. Abby Hoffman  (ultra radical activist in the ‘sixties and ‘seventies) was an admitted bipolar which was coupled with a number of personality disorders. He ended his life via suicide. (I knew Abby Hoffman.)

 We hope and pray for better for Mel Gibson – but the vulnerability of the man should, one might think, give pause for thought to those who feel it is their duty to bring down further someone who is in as low a place as he finds himself at present. This may not be Frank Rich’s real agenda of course – which makes it even more reprehensible.