Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 22

February 4, 2025: Inspiring Sports Stories: Babe Didrikson Zaharias

[For thisyear’s Super Bowl series, I wanted to highlight inspiring American sports storiesand figures, past and present. Leading up to a special pre-Valentine’s tributeto my two favorite American athletes!]

On two ways to connectand parallel the pioneering athlete to legendary men, and one key way not to.

1)     Multi-Sport Achievements and Fame: I’ve alwaysthought of Jim Thorpe as the20th century’s most talented athlete, what with his stunning andgroundbreaking successes in Olympic track and field, football, and baseball,among other sports. But in researching this post, I realized that Didrikson Zaharias has a seriouscase for the same title: I had long known about her unparalleled successesas a professional golfer, but she also won two track and field gold medals (andone silver medal) at the1932 Summer Olympics and was an All-Americanin basketball, again among many other athletic accomplishments. Althoughsports lend themselves particularly well to lists and rankings and debatesabout who was the best, the truth is that both Thorpe and Didrikson Zahariasshould be remembered as truly exceptional and influential athletes, figureswhose early to mid 20th century, runaway crossover successes in bothamateur and professional sports helped pave the way for the sports world tobecome the national and global phenomenon that it remains to this day.

2)     Larger-than-life Persona: Born Mildred EllaDidrikson, DidriksonZaharias would later claim that she gained the nickname “Babe” when she hitfive home runs in a youth baseball game. That might or might not be true (herNorwegian immigrant mother supposedly called her “Bebe” throughout her life),but even the uncertainty helps illustrate Didrikson Zaharias’ embrace of alarger-than-life persona that echoes that of her potential namesake Babe Ruth. Forexample, she long claimed to have been born in 1914 (rather than her actual1911 birth year), perhaps to exaggerate her youthful accomplishments yetfurther. And she complemented the athletic successes I detailed above with alifelong series of forays into the worlds of celebrity and popular culture: singingand playing harmonica on severalpop songs for Mercury Records; performing on the vaudeville circuit; tryingher hand as a pocketbilliards player, as in a famous multi-day match against billiards championRuthMcGinnis; and marryingprofessional wrestler George Zaharias, the “CryingGreek from Cripple Creek.” Like Babe Ruth, Didrikson Zaharias’ athleticaccomplishments would have been more than enough to cement her fame and legacy;but like Ruth, she clearly wanted all that culture and life had to offer.

3)     Shattering Stereotypes: Jim Thorpe and Babe Ruthare two of the greatest American athletes of all time, and linking any otherathlete to them is (I hope and would argue) a sign of respect. Yet at the sametime, I did so at least somewhat ironically, to help engage with theparticular, unquestionablygendered limits which Didrikson Zaharias continually encountered and yetchallenged and destroyed. (Certainly a Native American athlete like Thorpefaced his own barriers and challenges, of course.) The most overt such limits,many of which called into question Didrikson Zaharias’ gender itself, arenicely encapsulated by this quote, from sportswriterJoe Williams in the New York World-Telegram: “It would be muchbetter if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waitedfor the phone to ring.” In the last few years of her life, Didrikson Zahariasdeveloped a close, quite possibly romanticrelationship with fellow golfer Betty Dodd, a relationship neither woulddescribe as romantic due to the limits of their early 1950s society. Yet at thesame time, in those final years Didrikson Zaharias shattered all limits onefinal time: diagnosed with colon cancer in 1953, she continued to golfprofessionally until her 1956 death, winningmultiple tournaments including the last two she entered. A towering andinspiring sports legend to the last.

Nextinspiring story tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Inspiring sports stories or figures you’d highlight?

February 3, 2025: Inspiring Sports Stories: The Celestials

[For thisyear’s Super Bowl series, I wanted to highlight inspiring American sports storiesand figures, past and present. Leading up to a special pre-Valentine’s tributeto my two favorite American athletes!]

For mymoney, the most inspiring American sports story and figures are those at theheart of my podcast, TheCelestials’ Last Game: Baseball, Bigotry, and the Battle for America. Ifyou haven’t had the chance to check out that podcast yet I’d really appreciateit, so I’m going to end this post here and ask you to take a listen if you havea chance (and if you’re pressed for time, I’d say theSeventh Inning in particular is among the best work I’ve ever done)!

Nextinspiring story tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Inspiring sports stories or figures you’d highlight?

February 1-2, 2025: January 2025 Recap

[A Recapof the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

December30: 2025 Anniversaries: King Philip’s War: My annual historic anniversariesseries kicks off with the 350th anniversary of a tragic earlyAmerican conflict.

December31: 2025 Anniversaries: Lexington and Concord: The series continues with twoimportant ways to add to our Revolutionary memories for the 250th.

January 1:2025 Anniversaries: The Erie Canal: For the 200th anniversaryof its opening, three figures who helped construct the Erie Canal.

January 2:2025 Anniversaries: Two 1875 Laws: The Page Act, the Civil Rights Act,and the worst and best of America, as the series remembers on.

January 3:2025 Anniversaries: 1925 Literature: A link to a Saturday Evening PostConsidering History column where I argued for complementing The Great Gatsbywith other 1925 lit.

January4-5: 2025 Anniversaries: Five 1975 Films: The series concludes with quickthoughts on what five class 1975 films can tell us in 2025.

January 6:Great Society Laws: Civil and Voting Rights: For the Great Society’s 60thanniversary, a series on its groundbreaking laws kicks off with three pivotalcivil rights acts.

January 7:Great Society Laws: Education and the Arts: The series continues with twospecific laws and one broader effect of the Great Society.

January 8:Great Society Laws: Economic Safety Nets: Three distinct and equally importantways that the Great Society created safety nets, as the series acts on.

January 9:Great Society Laws: Medicare and Medicaid: How the Great Society reflected twodistinct ways of thinking about health care, and why the second is stillurgently needed.

January10: Great Society Laws: Immigration and America: Theseries concludes with one definitively inclusive thing the 1965 Immigration Actdid, one more complicated effect, and the bottom line.

January11-12: The Great Society in 2025: A special weekend follow-up on wherewe are in January 2025, and why we need to fight for the Great Society now morethan ever.

January13: Spring Semester Previews: Graduate Research Methods: For my Springsemester previews series, I wanted to focus on skills we’ll be working on in myclasses this semester, starting with the combination of clarity and nuance inmy Grad course.

January14: Spring Semester Previews: First-Year Writing II: The series continueswith a film I’m for the first time hesitant to share with my First-Year Writingstudents, and why that makes it even more important to do so.

January15: Spring Semester Previews: Major American Authors of the 20C: How creativeassignments can complement and strengthen analytical writing, as the seriesteaches on.  

January16: Spring Semester Previews: American Literature II: Why I’m stillcommitted to including longer works in my literature classes despite thechallenges.

January17: Spring Semester Previews: The Short Story Online: The series concludeswith the unmistakable frustrations of generative AI, and how I’m trying to pushback.

January18-19: Spring Semester Previews: My Scholarly Work and You: A special weekendpost on my ideas for a next public scholarly podcast, and how you all can help!

January20: Misread Quotes: MLK’s Dream: To build on my annual MLK Day post on themisunderstood King, a series on misread and -remembered quotes, starting withKing’s most famous one.

January21: Misread Quotes: Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural: The seriescontinues with why one of our most justifiably famous inaugural addresses needsto be remembered more accurately.

January22: Misread Quotes: The Constitution: Three sections of the Constitutionthat conservatives consistently get wrong, as the series reads on.

January23: Misread Quotes: The Bible: And three sections of Scripture about whichI would say the same.

January24: Misread Quotes: Churchill on Politics and Age: The series concludeswith a Churchill quote that never happened, and why it’s even wronger thanthat.

January27: Musical Activism: “We Are the World”: For the recording’s 40thanniversary, a musical activisms series kicks off with three figured who embodythe multiple layers of “World.”

January28: Musical Activism: Live Aid and Farm Aid: The series continues with an overblowncontroversy at one benefit concert that helped produce another enduring one.

January29: Musical Activism: Post-9/11 Songs: How connections to political andhistorical events can change what songs mean and do, as the series plays on.

January30: Musical Activism: Artists United Against Apartheid: Two Americancontexts for an inspiring 1985 musical activism.

January31: Musical Activism: Endorsements: The series concludes with threeexamples and types of political endorsements from musicians.

Super Bowlseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Topicsyou’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

January 31, 2025: Musical Activism: Endorsements

[Fortyyears ago this week, the musical supergroup USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa recordedtheir single “We are theWorld” (it would drop on March 7th). So this week I’llAmericanStudy that effort and other examples of musical activism!]

On threeexamples and types of political endorsements from musicians.

1)     Elvisand the Polio Vaccine: I said in that hyperlinked post much of what I’dwant to say about the role playedby Elvis Presley (among other celebrities) in helping make the new andfrustratingly (if not necessarily, here in early 2025, surprisingly) controversialpolio vaccine palatable to the American public in the 1950s. A moment thathelpfully reminds us, when we’re quick to complain about the outsized influenceof celebs in our moment or on the public, that it’s been thus for at least halfa century now.

2)     Elvis and Nixon:As that Time article indicates, the most-requested photo from theNational Archives is the one that captures the December1970 Oval Office meeting between the President and the King. It wasn’t anendorsement exactly—Nixon was in between campaigns at the time, and Presleywasn’t there to support any particular policy or the like—but it nonethelessreflects that the intersection between musical celebrities and political figuresis likewise nothing new.

3)     Sinatraand Multiple Campaigns: My man Bruce Springsteen might have eclipsed therecord over the last few presidential campaigns, but for a good while nomusicians had endorsed more such campaigns than did Frank Sinatra. And likely noother has crossed party lines in the way Ol’ Blue Eyes did—campaigning with FDR in1944 and JFKin 1960 but later endorsingRonald Reagan during his 1980 campaign. Much as those shifts might haveangered particular supporters, I think they do reflect, as I believeSpringsteen’s certainly do as well, artists genuinely sharing theirperspectives (which, to be clear, was also the case with Kamala’s endorsers inthis last campaign, who despite false stories to the contrary werenot paid for their support).  

JanuaryRecap this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Activisms you’d highlight?

January 30, 2025: Musical Activism: Artists United Against Apartheid

[Fortyyears ago this week, the musical supergroup USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa recordedtheir single “We are theWorld” (it would drop on March 7th). So this week I’llAmericanStudy that effort and other examples of musical activism!]

On two Americancontexts for another 1985 musical activism.

Firstthings first: South Africa is not the United States, and it’s important to notethat the 1985 musical supergroup Artists UnitedAgainst Apartheid, and their protest song “Sun City,” were explicitlyand entirely focused on that African nation and its policies of racial segregation.There are of course additional, complex layers to that focus, including the SunCity resort and casino, located in the semi-autonomous-but-ultimately-still-part-of-South-African-and-thoroughly-tied-to-Apartheidstate ofBophuthatswana, that the group and song were overtly protesting andboycotting (a concert venue at which, frustratingly enough, a number of contemporaryartists and groups had been and continued to be more than happy toperform). This blog is called AmericanStudies, and so I’m going to focus therest of this post on a couple American contexts for this musical activism; butthere’s plenty more to say about its South African contexts, and if folks wantto add to them in the comments below I’d be very appreciative as always.

Oneparticularly striking American context for the supergroup is just how diverse acollection of artists rockerSteve Van Zandt and hip hop producer Arthur Baker assembled for therecording session and the song that they created. In his bookon the project critic Dave Marsh called it “the most diverse line up ofpopular musicians ever assembled for a single session,” and I can’t disagree: you’dbe hard-pressed to find another group that included DJ Kool Herc and RingoStarr, Grandmaster Melle Mel and Hall & Oates, Bob Dylan and AfrikaBambaataa, Bono and Gil Scott-Heron, and literally countless others. And theresulting song reflects that diversity, as it moves back and forth between hiphop and rap verses, rock ones, and a chorus that brings the multiple voices andstyles together. A great deal has been made of the groundbreaking1986 collaboration between Run-D.M.C. and Aerosmith, and rightly so—but nearlya year earlier, the “Sun City” sessions and song likewise featured thesemultiple musical genres, and could be seen as helping pave the way for futuresuch collaborations and cross-overs.

The other Americancontext I want to highlight here is far, far more complex. By his own admission, SteveVan Zandt’s initial interest in opposing Apartheid came when he learned thatthe policy had been based in part on Native American reservations in the US,and thesong’s lyrics reflect that intersection with the repeated lines “Relocationto phony homelands/Separation of families, I can’t understand.” And then there’sthis: Sun City had been developed by the South Africanhotel tycoon Sol Kerzner and his Sun International group; and just over adecade after Van Zandt’s supergroup, Kerzner opened anotherresort and casino, this time as a joint venture with a Native Americantribe: Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. I’m not suggesting for a second that aNative American casino is the same as an Apartheid one; indeed, the two could beseen as polar opposites. But the same South African tycoon was behind both,which at the very least reminds us that, to quote Trip in Glory, “We’reall covered up in it. Ain’t nobody clean.”

Lastmusical activism tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Activisms you’d highlight?

January 29, 2025: Musical Activism: Post-9/11 Songs

[Fortyyears ago this week, the musical supergroup USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa recordedtheir single “We are theWorld” (it would drop on March 7th). So this week I’llAmericanStudy that effort and other examples of musical activism!]

On how artcan radically change in meaning alongside history.

The song,and one of the cultural works in any media, that became most overtly associatedwith September 11th and its aftermaths was released almost exactly ayear before the attacks. America Town,the second studio album from Five forFighting (the stage name of singer-songwriter Vladimir John Ondrasik), wasreleased on September 26th, 2000 and included the song “Superman (It’s Not Easy).” Thatsong, an interesting psychological examination of Superman’s inner perspectiveand emotions, was the album’s second single and had already become a minor hitby September 2001; but in the aftermath of the attacks it became an anthem forthe first responders, an expression of their collective service and sacrificeon and after that horrific day. Five for Fighting’s live piano performance ofit at the October 20thConcert for New York City was one of the most moving moments in aperiod of American and world history full ofthem, and cemented this song’s enduring status as a definitive artisticexpression of the best of post-9/11 America.

Obviouslyall of Bruce Springsteen’s 2002 album TheRising comprised another, and much more intentional, such artisticexpression. But interestingly enough, perhaps the single song from that albumwhich became most overtly connected to 9/11 and its aftermaths—including a similarlive performance at another benefit concert, September 12th,2001’s televised special “America: A Tribute to Heroes”—waslikewise written a year before that event. Springsteen first wrote the song “My City of Ruins” inNovember 2000 for a Christmas benefit concert for Asbury Park, New Jersey, theseaside community that had been such a vital element of Springsteen’s childhoodand earlymusical career alike. By 2000 Asbury Park was in pretty rough shape (hence theneed for a benefit concert), and so was the titular city of ruins to whichSpringsteen’s speaker repeatedly implores that it “come on, rise up!” Byperforming the song at the Tribute to Heroes benefit Springsteen already beganto shift its association to post-September 11th New York City,however, and then his inclusion of it on TheRising—indeed, it is the album’s concluding track—cemented that new andenduring association.

Thespecific circumstances and ways in which these two songs became so closelyassociated with September 11th are thus quite different, but thefundamental facts are nonetheless similar: songs written in the fall of 2000becoming repurposed a year later after the attacks and in the process coming tofeel like collective artistic anthems of that moment and its emotions. Andthat’s what I would especially emphasize about this interesting and tellingpair of 9/11 songs: a particular and potent form of what literary critics wouldcall reader-responsetheory. That criticalperspective argues that the meaning of texts is made not by the authors (norby intrinsic elements within those texts), but by audiences through theirengagement with and responses to the texts. In my understanding reader-responsegenerally focuses on individual reader/audience member, but there’s no reasonwhy we can’t think about collective such responses, and indeed when it comes tohistorical events that affect an entire community or nation, it makes sensethat there would likewise be collective experiences of cultural and artisticworks. Moreover, Springsteen sought to produce such a collective experiencewith his post-9/11 album The Rising,and it’s clear that he succeeded very fully indeed.

Nextmusical activism tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Activisms you’d highlight?

January 28, 2025: Musical Activism: Live Aid and Farm Aid

[Fortyyears ago this week, the musical supergroup USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa recordedtheir single “We are theWorld” (it would drop on March 7th). So this week I’llAmericanStudy that effort and other examples of musical activism!]

On how anoverblown controversy at one activist concert led to a second that endures tothis day.

As I mentionedin yesterday’s post, “We Are the World” was directly inspired by the Britishsupergroup Band Aid’s late 1984 single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”Band Aid was the brainchild of producers BobGeldof and James “Midge” Ure, and in the summer of 1985 the pair decided tobuild on that starting point with a “global jukebox” known as Live Aid,comprising a number of concerts held around the world (but headlined by a pairof star-studded shows in London and Philadelphia) on July 13th. Watchedby nearly 2 billion people around the world, the concerts raised hundreds ofmillions for African famine relief (ostensibly, although the destination ofthose funds remained controversial for many years to come). But at least one famousperformer at the Philadelphia show expressed a different perspective: before helaunched into a performance of his song “When the Ship Comes In”(alongside Keith Richardsand Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones), Bob Dylanargued, “I hope that some of the money that’s raised for the people inAfrica, maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe one or two million,and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms that the farmershere owe to the banks.”

Even in thatpre-internet era, Dylan’s quote went viral, and was quickly and consistentlymisquoted (as hyperlinked above, there’s a full video of the Live Aidmoment, so the exact quote is perfectly clear) as “Wouldn’t it be great if wedid something for our own farmers right here in America?” The us vs. themframing of that misquoted version is hugely frustrating, not only because itplays into so many problematic broader narratives, but also because it goes directlyagainst the global solidarity exemplified by Live Aid. But if we set that falseframing aside, Dylan’s quote can be seen as offering a far more complementarythan contrasting perspective, and indeed as having set in motion conversationsthat led to a complementary activist concert: Farm Aid.Inspired by Dylan’s idea, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Neil Youngorganized that September1985 benefit concert, held at Champaign, Illinois’s Memorial Stadium, toraise funds for family farmers in the U.S. Along with those three artists, FarmAid also featured performances from Dylan (natch), Billy Joel, B.B. King,Loretta Lynn, and Tom Petty among many others. Attended by a crowd of 80,000the concert raised nearly $10 million for its worthy cause.

That causedidn’t evaporate when the final notes sounded, though, and neither did Farm Aid,which has held concerts almost every Fall since 1985. The most recent, 38thFarm Aid concert, held on September21st, 2024 in Saratoga Springs, New York, still featured performancesby Nelson, Mellencamp, and Young, this time joined by Dave Matthews & TimReynolds from the Dave Matthews Band, Mavis Staples, Nathaniel Rateliff &the Night Sweats, and many others. It’s easy to see benefit concerts and othermusical activisms as a kind of parachuted-in moment without the staying powerthat is required to make a lasting difference; I don’t think that’s entirely fairin any case (raising millions of dollars as well as collective awareness are meaningfuleffects no matter what), but Farm Aid certainly reminds us that many of theseefforts endure long after the initial concert, and can become an ongoing elementof vital collective activism.

Nextmusical activism tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Activisms you’d highlight?

January 27, 2025: Musical Activism: “We Are the World”

[Fortyyears ago this week, the musical supergroup USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa recordedtheir single “We are theWorld” (it would drop on March 7th). So this week I’llAmericanStudy that effort and other examples of musical activism!]

Three individualswho together embody the serious and silly sides of musical activism.

1)     HarryBelafonte: By the mid-1980s, HarryBelafonte had been an iconic presence on both the cultural and politicallandscape for decades; indeed, as I discovered in researching thiscolumn on Vietnam Veterans Against the War, it’s hard to find a socialmovement and cause from the second half of the 20th century that didn’tfeature Belafonte’s activism in a significant way. So it shouldn’t be asurprise (even though I didn’t realize it until researching this post) that theoriginal idea for USA for Africa came from Belafonte—inspired by the Britishsupergroup Band Aid and their single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” (1984),in early 1985Belafonte reached out to a number of prominent American musical artists tocreate a fundraising single for African famine relief. With its superstarlineup it’s easy to see “We Are the World” as more musical than activist, butBelafonte’s role certainly reminds us that it was fundamentally the latter.

2)     Michael Jackson:One of the first musicians that Belafonte enlisted to create the single wasalso the biggest superstar in the world at that moment. Michael Jackson wasn’tBelafonte’s first call, partly due to industry connections—Belafonte’s manager KenKragen reached out to a pair of his clients, Lionel Ritchie and KennyRogers; and Ritchie then contacted Stevie Wonder, whom he knew well. But when thelegendaryQuincy Jones was brought in to produce the song, he suggested Jackson, andas you might expect once the King of Pop was involved it more or less becamehis show. He offered to co-write the song with Ritchie, and the songwriting andinitial recordings ended up happening inJackson’s bedroom at the family home in Encino. Obviously the song’sactivist goals remained throughout these stages, but I would say the involvementand then the prominence of Jackson did reflect a definite shift toward themusical side of the equation.

3)     DanAckroyd: When it came time to record the song that musical side ended upincluding a veritable who’s who of mid-1980s musical royalty, from Ray Charlesto Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper to Bruce Springsteen, Waylon Jennings to five ofMichael Jackson’s siblings. But eagle-eyed observers of the resulting musicvideo noticed a very different kind of mid-80s star in the background, the comedianand actor (and, yes, musicalperformer) Dan Ackroyd (fresh off the blockbusting success of 1984’s Ghostbusters).As the first hyperlinked story above notes, Ackroyd’s participation in “We Arethe World” was entirely random, the result of the actor and his father walkinginto a management office for utterly different reasons but at precisely the righttime. Again Ackroyd did have a musical career which I’m not trying to downplay,but I would nonetheless argue that his presence in the recording sessionreflects how an earnest activist effort can gradually morph into something abit more celebrity-driven and, as a result, something somewhat sillier.

Nextmusical activism tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Activisms you’d highlight?

January 24, 2025: Misread Quotes: Churchill on Politics and Age

[I hadoriginally planned a series on historical inaugurations this week, but I don’timagine too many of us want to be thinking about the inauguration any more thanwe have to. So instead, I’m gonna go with a suggestion from my wife, using theoccasion of MLK Day to highlight a handful of historical quotes, from him andothers, that our conservative commentators and politicians tend to get verywrong!]

This oneis pretty straightforward. Conservatives love to attribute to Winston Churchillthe quote, “If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’renot a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.” But as ProfessorPaul Addison argued inthis piece, that’s not only not a Churchill quote, but it also goes againstboth his own political journey and the lifelong liberalism of his belovedwife Clementine. I’m a big believer in the importance of both a heart and abrain, but we can’t let our heart dictate the way our brain works, and relyingon false quotes to support our pre-existing perspectives seems like doingprecisely that.     

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? 

January 23, 2025: Misread Quotes: The Bible

[I hadoriginally planned a series on historical inaugurations this week, but I don’timagine too many of us want to be thinking about the inauguration any more thanwe have to. So instead, I’m gonna go with a suggestion from my wife, using theoccasion of MLK Day to highlight a handful of historical quotes, from him andothers, that our conservative commentators and politicians tend to get verywrong!]

I’m no religiousscholar, but I have read every word in the Bible (for a college class), and hereare three quotes therein I think conservatives get wrong:

1)     Leviticus: I don’t thinkI can say it any better than Jed Bartlett did in that hyperlinked scene. But he’squoting a ton of different Old Testament Books, and I would argue that simplyreading all of Leviticusmakes it far more difficult to single out the single verse (18:22) about menlying with men as some sort of particularly significant prohibition. After all,Leviticus dedicates something like twenty straight verses to which animals thepeople of Israel canand can’t eat, and I would be willing to bet that just about everyone whoreferences Leviticus to excuse homophobia regularly eats many of the prohibitedmeats. A little consistency please, bigots.

2)     “An eye for an eye”: Hammurabi’s Code,to my understanding the origin point for the “eye for an eye” argument for thedeath penalty and similarly retributive punishments, is already far lengthierand more complicated than that simplified phrase. But for conservative Christianswho seek to support the death penalty, it’s the Book ofExodus to which they turn. It’s true that Exodus 21:24-25 does delineatesuch punishments with that “eye for an eye” phrase, but that’s in response to avery specific situation: “If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so thather fruit depart from her, and mischief follow” (meaning I believe death orother grievous injury to the woman). Even if we want to use the Bible toinfluence our justice system (and I do not want that), this section ain’t anoverarching frame for that effort.

3)     Jesus: Mostly Iwant to ask you all to read that blog post, written by what seems to be anardent believer, making the case for Jesus as at least anti-capitalist and ultimately(and this is where I would land as well) quite overtly socialist. I know thoseframes didn’t exist a couple thousand years ago, but the ideas behind them havealways been part of human societies, as has for example the debate between amore individualist and a more collectivist way of thinking. If Jesus wasanything, he seems to have been thoroughly collectivist, and I believe ifconservative Christians were truly to follow his model, they and we would be ina very different place today.

Last misreadquote tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?