Category: Religion

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Missed by that much

I just finished reading Taliban, Ahmed Rashid’s study of the Taliban’s rise in Afghanistan, this weekend. The book was published early in 2001 (pre-9/11, that is), so its perspective about the civil war is untinged by What Would Come. Rashid does paint a very bleak picture about the region and the regime, and offers a ton of insight into how Afghanistan got so messed up.

The book is also a product of its time, of course. One of the “problems” with Taliban is that oil was priced around $13/barrel in the years leading up to its publication. That fact was a key to his understanding of Russian and Iranian policy, and it’s completely understandable; who would even entertain the notion that oil would someday trade for 5x that price?

I found myself marveling over how the country, long seen as the prize in The Great Game, achieved its present-day notoriety only when it fell under the radar and became an utterly failed state. Once “we” stopped paying attention to it, Afghanistan became the engine of the new world.

Which brings me to the end of the book. Usually, I don’t give away endings, but I don’t think I’m doing Rashid any disservice in this case. Here’s the final paragraph:

But if the war in Afghanistan continues to be ignored we can only expect the worst. Pakistan will face a Taliban-style Islamic revolution which will further destabilize it and the entire region. Iran will remain on the periphery of the world community and its eastern borders will continue to be wracked by instability. The Central Asian states will not be able to deliver their energy and mineral exports by the shortest routes and as their economies crash, they will face an Islamic upsurge and instability. Russia will continue to bristle with hegemonic aims in Central Asia even as its own society and economy crumbles. The stakes are extremely high.

I don’t mean to goof on Rashid by writing this, but isn’t it amazing how much worse it got than his most pessimistic projection?

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Diversify toleration!

Neat editorial by Chris Broussard at ESPN, regarding gay players in the NBA. He believes the league is “ready” for them, while also contending that homoesexuality’s a sin.

I’m a born-again, Bible-believing Christian (no, I’m not a member of the Religious Right). And I’m against homosexuality (I believe it’s a sin) and same-sex marriage.

But before you label me “homophobic,” know that I’m against any type of sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman. That includes heterosexual fornication (premarital sex).

Read the whole thing, because he brings up some interesting points about tolerance being a two-way street (as it were). And as long as you can ball (as it were), there’s room for you in Broussard’s rec-league.

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2006-2007 NFL Playoff Challenge, round 3

I had bigger balls in the first half of this decade. Back then, I found it easy to call literary people with no entree beyond, “I’m a small press publisher and I’d like to talk to you about a project I’m working on.”

That opening got me into phone conversations with Greil Marcus, Harold Bloom, Guy Davenport, Ron Rosenbaum, William Gass, Jason Epstein and Grant Morrison (okay, just with his answering machine). Even before those days, I found it pretty easy to pick up a phone and try to reach William Gaddis and David Gates (the latter of whom I’ve enjoyed occasional conversation with for more than a decade).

But I haven’t called a writer out of the blue in a few years, mainly because I’m not a publisher any longer. The other reason is that there aren’t many contemporary writers I’m interested in talking to. So yesterday morning, when I remembered that I promised you readers that I’d try to get NFL playoff predictions from author and law professor Thane Rosenbaum, I was a little nervous.

It only took me 30 seconds to get Thane’s contact info, so I called him shortly before lunch yesterday and left him an absurd pitch on his voice-mail: “Hi, Professor Rosenbaum! My name’s Gil Roth. I’m a . . . writer? and I’m in the midst of, um, an NFL playoff challenge with an acquaintance of yours, Ron Rosenbaum. Last week, Ron decided to guess what Philip Roth’s football predictions would be, so I wrote that I’d try to get your predictions for this week’s games, in order to up the ante.”

I rambled on for a bit, figured that I sounded like a lunatic, especially when I remarked on how I could understand if he’s not able to call back after sundown, since I wasn’t sure if he’s an observant Jew or an inobservant one like me.

You can imagine my surprise when he actually called back. He thought the idea sounded like a hoot, and thought it’d be funny to tweak his buddy Ron with a set of alternate-Rosenbaum picks. At first, I wasn’t sure if Thane was actually a football fan, which would’ve made this challenge even more challenging. Fortunately, when I mentioned Ron’s comment about how Philip Roth would bet on the Bears because of the Chicago connection and because of QB Rex Grossman’s name, Thane remarked, “But Rex Grossman isn’t Jewish. I think their kicker, Robbie Gould is Jewish. So was that kick returner for the Eagles: Bloom, I think his name was. Or was he on the Broncos this year?”

So we talked Jews-in-sports for a few minutes, and he promised to get me his Conference Championship Weekend predictions this morning. So, without further ado, here are the playoff picks of Thane Rosenbaum, author of The Golems of Gotham, John Whelan Distinguished Lecturer in Law at Fordham Law School, and all-around good sport for helping me out on this week’s playoff challenge:

Yes, I am the Thane Rosenbaum whose football picks have been solicited by my new friend, Gil Roth, in his ongoing friendly-wager, cyber-gridiron contest with my longtime friend, Ron Rosenbaum.

First, a disclaimer: Ron and I are not related, even though we share a surname, a lecture agent, and similar literary interests and worldly obsessions, and many people have confused us over the years as being the same writer. I am desperately in need of a brother and I would very much like it to be him, but he has, over the years, made it clear that friends is the closest we are ever going to get, so I am not choosing sides in this contest between Gil and Ron. The picks are my own and the chips will fall wherever they must regardless of how it alters the odds or tips the scale to one side or the other. Besides, the odds of me being dragged into this weekly, gentlemanly sport were unlikely from the outset.

Second, one must admire Gil Roth for having displayed such a dramatic flair for one-upsmanship, since Ron Rosenbaum merely sought to guess Philp Roth’s picks, whereas Gil took the initiative of actually producing Thane Rosenbaum (a la Marshall Macluhan, in Annie Hall) and having him actually post picks of his own. Such resourcefulness from such an enterprising blogger should change the point spread right there. (Note to Ron, which he already knows, by the way: Philip Roth is notoriously reclusive, and his sport is baseball, not football, as any Swede Lvov fan well knows, and I am a far easier and less remote blog poster than Philip Roth, so you inadvertently raised the stakes on Gil and gave him an opening which he easily filled by getting a low-rent writer such as myself. You would have had an easier time guessing the football picks of Hyman Roth, from The Godfather II.)

Back to the picks!

BEARS by 2.5 points over Saints. The Saints are this year’s destiny team. Home field advantage won’t help the Bears when facing a team that was homeless last year and has all the spiritual and metaphorical benefit behind them. I say take the 2.5 points and the Saints and expect last year’s Heisman winner to earn the pose and explode in the Super Bowl.

COLTS by 3 points over Patriots. Brady is the best money player in the NFL, and my best friend, Danny Goldhagen, and his son, are huge Patriot fans. I can’t, out of filial loyalty (you see, Ron?), not take the Pats and accept the points and expect to see the Patriots play in their fourth Super Bowl in six years. Peyton Manning is a great player, and his head is better than his brother’s, I’m afraid, but the Patriots will these things to happen, and anyone who has read my writings know that I am a big fan of the spiritual universe.

Well, I gotta say that Thane’s picks mirror mine this week. I was worried that Ron would post his picks before I do, since my only chance of tying up this contest is to go 3-0 the rest of the way, while Ron goes 0-3. But I decided not to be unsportsmanlike and just pick against him. Instead, I’m going with my heart (Geaux, Saints!) and my brain (“Never pick against Belichick.”) by picking both road-dogs in the conference championships.

In a perfect world, the Saints will win in a rout, while the Pats will cover but lose, setting the stage for Peyton Manning to get defeated by his hometown team in Superbowl XLI.

And many thanks to Thane for coming through on this week’s picks! I’m hoping we can entice him to offer up his Superbowl predictions in two weeks, so make with the flattery, dear readers!

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300 Pimps

I’ve never been a car aficionado. My brother seemed to inherit Dad’s Corvette-gene. Not that he would go off and spend big cash on a sports-car or anything, but he did go for a Mustang back when he was single. Me? I’ve owned three cars: a Hyundai Excel, a Saturn SL1, and a Honda Element. I’m not exactly stylin’ and profilin’.

That said, I admit that I once had a certain fondness for the Chrysler Crossfire. I think it’s largely because it looks like a coupe that a Micronaut would drive.

In the last year, I’ve become enamored of the Chrysler 300. I think it’s largely because it looks like something Batman would drive.

At first, I thought the 300 was a car for oldies, but then I noticed younger drivers in them, and started seeing tricked-out (sorry: pimped) models. Personally, the “black rims” thing always struck me as silly-looking, but it was a good indicator that the big-barrel sedan had crossed over. I found that I really liked the car’s lines, and wondered if it might be time to retire the Element of Style.
I was able to talk myself out of buying one because of Chrysler’s corporate ownership. Mercedes-Benz, which acquired (“merged as equals with”) Chrysler in 1998, employed Jewish slave labor during WWII. Around the time of the merger, economist Steve Landsburg wrote a neat article about the implications of “punishing the child for the sins of the father” when it comes to corporations:

Corporations can be punished for misdeeds in at least two ways. One is a consumer boycott and another is a (voluntary or involuntary) fine. Both kinds of punishment have been visited on Daimler-Benz (though arguably at levels that are small compared with the underlying offenses). In the 1980s, the corporation paid about $11 million to the descendants of its slave laborers.

Who exactly suffers from those punishments? You might think the $11 million came from the pockets of those who owned Daimler-Benz stock in the 1980s, but that’s not necessarily the case. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that in 1950 it becomes foreseeable that Daimler-Benz will eventually make reparations. Then every share of Daimler-Benz stock sold between 1950 and 1980 sells at a discount reflecting that expectation. Without the discount, nobody would buy the stock. So given sufficient foresight, the prospect of a 1980 punishment hurts the 1950 owners, even if they sell in the interim. And those who buy stocks after 1950 are not punished at all, because the discount compensates them for the fine.

He makes some interesting arguments in that piece. Lately, I’ve been rethinking my aversion to buying a sorta German car, and not because I wanna zoom around in that 300. It’s more a question of globalization, and the moral lines we draw in the sand. I mean, because I drive a car, I can’t help but prop up Arab dictatorships. That said, I can elect not to do publicity for a country that has a strict anti-Israel policy. But I don’t know how viable it is to protest so selectively.

For instance, my wife drives a Mini Cooper. The parent company is BMW, which makes it problematic for me. My knee-jerk reaction is not to support a German car company.

That said, the car is assembled entirely in the UK, and it seems to me that the British could hold an awful lot of resentment toward Germany. So, does the fact that commerce helps both nations serve to ameliorate some of the ill-feelings from from those nations’ past behavior?

I don’t think I’d ever buy a German-brand car (M-B, BMW, VW), but I can imagine that people whose family served in the Pacific theater consider me a traitor for buying a Honda. Any of you guys have issues about this sorta stuff? Are there nations/nationalities you wouldn’t buy from?

Anyway, all of that is a very roundabout way of posting links to a couple of BusinessWeek articles. The first is about how DaimlerChrysler’s CEO is under siege because of the company’s poor performance (and its avoidance of reality). The other is about Freeman Thomas, the guy who designed the 300. Both stories come with neat slideshows, including shots of two of Thomas’ new vehicles for Ford.

Thomas’ description of the philosophy behind The Interceptor (no comment) probably skewers my exact reason for liking the 300: “This is a car that is at once for the mature car buyer, but for someone who likes to stroke his bad boy side. He wants a grown-up car, but wants to feel fun.”

For the record, I would not ‘stroke my bad boy side’ with a German car.

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The information

I, for one, find it refreshing when a scandal in the Catholic church doesn’t involve the rape of an underaged boy.

This story — about the newly appointed archbishop of Warsaw having to step down because he was informing for the secret police back in the ’60s — reminds me of Timothy Garton Ash’s book The File, in which he checked out the Stasi’s records on him after East Germany’s truth commission made that stuff available. I recall Ash marveling over the sheer volume of reports, and their utter minutiae.

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Cat, cradle, spoon, etc.

Yesterday at lunch, I read some more of Kaddish. The book doesn’t focus too heavily on the writer’s father — I mean, it’s not a Mitch Albom schmalzfest or anything — but it does get me thinking a lot about Dad and what went through during his heart surgery in spring 2005.

I gave my dad a call after lunch, and we shot the breeze for a little while. He filled me in on the Premiership soccer package he gets on satellite, his cardiologist’s advice that he get a defibrillator installed, and how he’s getting his gutters cleaned for $70.

I let him know about some of the goings-on at home. One piece of news that he didn’t know about was that Amy bought a new car. Dad lent us his 1993 Cherokee last spring; Amy drives it down to the bus stop and back each day, a 2-mile round trip and, while it’s not quite on its last legs, it is getting pretty old.

“Now that she’s saved up,” I told Dad, “she’s getting a Mini Cooper S.”

“That’s great!” he said. “How much did you get for the Cherokee?”

“What? The Cherokee? . . . Pop, we didn’t sell your car.”

And that’s when it struck me: my brother & I are going to have a tough time keeping a straight face reading that mourner’s kaddish someday.