Does society need a mandatory time-out? We have weekends and vacations, sure, but even those are increasingly bent toward structured pursuits. Our leisure is often as scheduled and hectic as our work—and is, consequently, just as stressful. Sabbath, with its myriad proscriptions, offers what might be the only authentic form of leisure: the act and fulfillment of doing absolutely nothing productive. If that sounds like modern-day blasphemy, it’s because it is.

—Menachem Kaiser, The Case for the Sabbath, Even if You’re Not Religious”

I am drawn to this notion for a number of reasons, not just thanks to my recent conversion to Judaism. To be sure, Sabbath observance, lax though it may be in our household (thanks in part to an imminent wedding), is also a mainstay of our observance. Gathering together to light candles, drink wine, and eat challah was the first tradition we incorporated into our weekly lives even before I began the official process of conversion. It has become not just a regularly-occuring period to put work aside and let the brain relax, work through, and return with renewed vigor, but a ready-made reason to spend time together, to be casually (if ceremonially) among friends we respect, and to dedicate quality time to extracurricular projects that are important to us.

I am inclined to agree with Rachel, who told me once that she located religion’s importance in the way it structures life, makes it cyclical, provides spaces and rituals to manage certain inevitabilities. I get the sense that she was speaking of yearly cycles as well as life cycles. Religions help people understand and deal with “blessings” and “catastrophes,” mainly the latter: death, loss, bereavement. Sabbath observance, taking time out for its own sake, seems much less consequential, but is potentially a great deal more gratifying, and not just thanks to its frequency or its spiritual foundation. Indeed, most of the rituals religions provide can be made meaningful regardless of the observer’s belief in a god or gods; the question of the connection between meaning and belief at the heart of The Atlantic‘s article is, I think, quite subordinate to the importance of structuring in unstructured time.

I will note in conclusion and in passing how curious I find it that Sabbath observance, at least in modern American culture, has come to refer specifically to Jewish observance of Shabbat. The article I quoted above was written by a reformed Orthodox Jew, and is ostensibly a review of two books by a secular Jewish author. No one asks Christian politicians —or atheist politicians, as though there were such a thing!— if Sabbath prohibitions will affect their capacity to respond to catastrophes on Sundays, but the first question on everyone’s lips when Joe Lieberman became a vice-presidential candidate was whether he would be able to work on Saturdays.¹ And I suspect that the loss of widespread Sunday Christian Sabbath observance (now largely spatially and temporally confined to church services expected to end by noon) and its status as a de facto secular Sabbath, is at least part of the reason for publishing an article like this one.

Footnotes

1. The irony is of course that Judaism provides numerous built-in contingencies for which it is acceptable to break Sabbath laws, particularly in cases where human lives are involved. ↩

Today, some top editors got together to review the 2005 policy and decided to no longer use “pro-choice” or “pro-life.”

On the air, we should use “abortion rights supporter(s)/advocate(s)” and “abortion rights opponent(s)” or derivations thereof (for example: “advocates of abortion rights”). It is acceptable to use the phrase “anti-abortion”, but do not use the term “pro-abortion rights”.

—“NPR Changes Abortion Language”

This is terrific news. I have long believed that the patently false opposition between “choice” and “life” to be misleading at best, particularly considering the calculated insidiousness with which the latter option is capable of poisoning the debate over abortion rights. While I have always advocated for pro- and anti-choice, NPR’s focus on abortion rights, rather than the act itself, is certainly more objective, appropriate and, one hopes, acceptable to both sides. Let’s hope that this marks a sea change in the terms we use to prosecute this debate, and lends some deserved legitimacy to the notion that the debate is between allowing people to make a choice, or making that choice for them.

Cope attracted praise from musicians and computer scientists, but his creation raised troubling questions: If a machine could write a Mozart sonata every bit as good as the originals, then what was so special about Mozart? And was there really any soul behind the great works, or were Beethoven and his ilk just clever mathematical manipulators of notes?

Cope’s answers — not much, and yes — made some people very angry.

—“Triumph of the Cyborg Composer”

This comes from a very interesting article, but I take issue with the former of these questions and answers. As a student in an introductory counterpoint class, I wrote chorales, canons, and fugues in the style of Bach, of Beethoven, and of Brahms. Any second- or third-rate composer can write “in the style of” a great composer. What is “so special about Mozart” is that no one wrote like him until him. That someone, even a computer, can write like him after-the-fact is only as impressive as someone today painting in the style of Michelangelo.

The old authority and truth pretend to be absolute, to have an extratemporal importance. Therefore, their representatives (the agelasts) are gloomily serious. They cannot and do not wish to laugh; they strut majestically, consider their foes the enemies of eternal truth, and threaten them with eternal punishment. They do not see themselves in the mirror of time, do not perceive their own origin, limitations and end. They do not recognize their own ridiculous faces or the comic nature of their pretensions to eternity and immutability. And thus these personages have come to the end of their role still serious, although their spectators have been laughing for a long time. They continue to talk with the majestic tone of kings and heralds announcing eternal truths, unaware that time has turned their speeches into ridicule. Time has transformed old truth and authority into a Mardi Gras dummy, a comic monster that the laugh crowd rends to pieces in the marketplace.

Rabelais and His World¹

Footnotes

1. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984. ↩

The bits hit the virtual fan yesterday when the omgwtf-machine was whipped into a frenzy over the announcement, straight (no pun intended) from the mouth of our dear and glorious leader J.K. Rowling, that Dumbledore, beloved imaginary wizard of the Harry Potter-verse, was, to the author's mind, gay:

My truthful answer to you… I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [ovation] … Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. […] If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!

(In a decidedly besides-the-point way, at least in the context of this post, I think this is brilliant. It adds an entirely unexpected layer to the Dumbledore–Grindelwald relationship, and provides at least a provisional and verisimilar answer to why the former waited as long as he did to challenge the latter. Layers make better stories. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that Rowling was less than explicit. Her choice of words— “I always thought of Dumbledore as gay” —is far from dogmatic.)

But my more immediate reason for writing— indeed for resurrecting this formerly moribund weblog altogether —were the following quotes from an article headlined Conservatives Attack Gay Dumbledore; Claim Vindication For Jerry Falwell’s Homophobia:

Psycheout at Blogs 4 Brownback called it “revolting”, saying “Dumbledore is a gay homosexual who doesn’t deserve to live on G-d’s green earth.”
At Redstate, dvdmsr says the revelation means that “Dumbledore was more flawed than I thought.”

The latter article continues thus:

I guess this revelation was all part of, what she called her “prolonged argument for tolerance.”

Tolerance? Really? For who? Muggles? How, by wiping their memories clean, by denying them “magical” solutions to their problems, with the “Statute of Secrecy”?

It's difficult to know where to begin. I can scarcely hold these comments in my brain long enough to consider them objectively without having to take a little sanity break, so let's be transparent about a number of important things. I do not frequently credit the type of conservative mind that would find the need to criticize the homosexuality of a fictional character with the kind of capacity for intellectual thought that bears serious attention. Less so if the criticism is situated in dogmatic religious discourse. In this instance, I cannot help it. The anti-gay religious right has become anti-gay to such an extent as to exclude the mere possibility of rational, logical thought. This is the point where discourse— and with it the very possibility of communication —fails.

Still, these quotes merit consideration, if only because they bear repeating as often as possible, for hilarity’s sake, and still more because they bring to bear on the utter impossibility of cogent public discourse in my country’s present society. Let us proceed in reverse, thereby saving my favorite for last.

Flawed Dumbledore and flawed logic

If the initial quotation from Redstate can be commended for anything, it is merely for being less absurd than the quote that precedes it. While it is most unfortunate that the revelation of one's homosexuality— and, lest we forget, this is that of a dead, fictional wizard— is cause to consider him “flawed”, the post's author doesn't depart from the accepted discourse regarding homosexuality as recently as thirty years ago, insofar as it was considered a pathology or a disease: a flaw. Nevertheless, the author, who admits his reading of Harry Potter reveals “a children's book with a predominantly Christian message”, goes on to consider, tangentially, tolerance. The less-than-rhetorical question “Tolerance? Really? For who? Muggles?” reveals not only a misreading of the fantasy genre, whose terms are nearly always veiled references to more traditional society, but a remarkably invested reading of the Harry Potter series specifically. Let us consider a few other choice quotations:

How free and tolerant is a secret society that punishes children and adults [?] for expressing their natural abilities simply because they don't want others to share the benefit of these abilities? [?]

What if it was a story about the wealthy who sought to isolate themselves from the rest of the world, and what if they justified invading the privacy of their rich members, or wiping the minds clean of the poor who stumbled upon their riches, or prosecuting others for revealing their riches, all because they feared the poor people of the world would pester them for money solutions to their problems. There lies the hypocrisy of Rowling's prolonged argument for tolerance.

I wonder where [Rowling's] tolerance was for those readers who have beliefs different from hers. Where was the respect for them?

There are many problems and inaccuracies to consider in these quotations, but most interesting is the conclusion drawn from them: “[Rowling's] argument for tolerance is selective at best.” In Rowling's world, Muggles are, to the Redstate author's mind, considered second-class citizens (though this a debatable premise), and he, presumably a Muggle himself, will not stand for it. Just as the rich have no right to hide their wealth (?), the argument seems to go, wizards have no right to hide the powers that can be used to help the world. (Of course, money and magic aren't by any means analogical equivalents. The suggestion, left unquoted, that we replace the term “magical abilities” with “homosexual tendencies”, has no analogical value whatsoever) One wonders where precisely the author intends to take this quizzical argument, which seems to avoid altogether the valuable parallel that might reasonably and be drawn between the stratified fictional society (Muggles and wizards) and a the stratified society in which we live (most pertinently, in this case, homo– and heterosexuals). Which, it bears mentioning, reverses the analogical relationship between Muggles and wizards, positing the former as the proponents of intolerance, a view explicitly personified in the Dursley family. The author's line of reasoning is abandoned, though, if not before making unfounded conclusions, in favor of an assault on Rowling herself. The suggestion that Rowling's revelation of Dumbledore's sexuality implies a fascistic, Machiavellian lack of respect for the reader, or was in some way a strategic attack on the morals of impressionable children, is quite absurd and unrelated to what precedes is, as is the suggestion that she is somehow morally forbidden from alienating readers who disagree with her.

The author's fundamental problem in this particular section of his argument lies in a common misreading of fantasy literature, which attempts to discover an analogical equivalent for every textual gesture. But in Harry Potter, I think it is arguable that, except on certain specific occasions (e.g. the Dursley's), Muggles are little more than context. The Wizarding World's treatment of Muggles is more probably a literary conceit— made in order to be able to set the novelistic stage in a specific way —than a revelatory gesture belying Rowling's underlying “selective tolerance”, or her supposed fascist ideology. So if Rowling is not talking about tolerance for Muggles by wizards, what is she talking about? Perhaps the message is more general: tolerance for, you know, everyone. For differences. For weaknesses and strengths. Mutual recognition that there are no second-class citizens. And, evidently, of homosexuality, which clearly doesn't fit into the author's agenda of tolerance. Not to mention the question of tolerance with respect to birthright, thinly metaphorized in the prolonged pureblood, halfblood, mudblood argument (thanks, Collin). With the exception of the latter, whose case is easily argued, these are the time-honored themes of nearly all great fantasy literature.

The article at RedState is, on the whole, an exercise in non sequitur. The question of homosexuality is, indeed, all but abandoned after the extraordinarily ignorant and intolerant first paragraph, which would have it that homosexuals act primarily to fulfill sexual desires, even to the detriment of the whole world:

Turns out [Dumbledore] was ready, willing, and planning to persecute and enslave Muggles NOT for the "Greater Good" after all, but rather because he simply wanted to win over the boy he fancied (Grindelwald), and wanted to snog like mad (or possibly shag). Oh the power of unrequited Love.

The possibility that Dumbledore's love— not sexual attraction, even in Rowling's words, but love— for Grindelwald may have colored the attractiveness to the latter's plans for non-wizards is explicitly negated. Homosexuality here is represented as an enslavement to sensual desire, irrational and overwhelming. It is unclear why Dumbledore's homosexuality, given this, should not exculpate his blind obedience to Grindelwald's designs entirely. I believe the author of the article would disagree that is should, but on what grounds? Certainly none presented in the article itself. Nevertheless, the irony of this intolerance is, apparently, lost on its author. The remainder of the essay is, equally ironically, a concerted attack on Rowling's own interpretation of her work as an “argument for tolerance.” Imperfect tolerance, perhaps, but far more successful that this would-be detractor's.

Gay homosexuals and fictional homosexuals

It's almost too good to be true when the fundamentalist Christians of any stature reveal their absolute intolerance by questioning someone else's (much broader) notion of tolerance (and I still believe tolerance is practiced by the quiet majority of fundamentalists). It's like candy. It is difficult to contain one's glee. The quote by Blogs 4 Brownback (which, in the comments, states it has a “zero tolerance policy for sin”¹), then, is like a party for one’s sense of moral satire. So much so that I think it bears copying again:

Dumbledore is a gay homosexual who doesn’t deserve to live on G-d’s green earth.

Again, it is difficult to choose between nearly as many starting points as there are clauses in the sentence. “Dumbledore is a gay homosexual…” Unlike all those gay heterosexuals? Or perhaps you were referring to the straight homosexual population. “…who doesn't deserve to live on God's green earth.”

And here we have arrived at the crux of our problem. You see, Dumbledore, being, as previously stated, a fictionally dead, fictionally fictional wizard, does not love and has never lived at all, much less on “God's green earth.” HE IS NOT REAL. The problem of “Christian intolerance,” powerfully exemplified here, and the question of why God would create homosexuals if he meant not to permit them on his green earth, aside, rational discourse depends on something approximating a verisimilitude that this population has evidently done away with entirely. And once you have done away with verisimilitude, anything can be proposed, and anything defended. The concept of truth and lie is obliterated (even more radically than someone like Derrida might suggest) and supplanted with vague notions of belief, defensible only by the selfsame belief that constitutes them. Logic cannot contend with such blatant question begging. And even should it find a way, would it matter? These beliefs are not to be questioned at all. When one's peers find it necessary to satisfy their moral outrage railing against the purported sexual orientation of a fictional wizard, is rational discourse even possible anymore?

Footnotes

1. Just like Jesus! ↩