The Atlantic Monthly has embarked upon an ambitious and wonderfully conceived project to send celebrated French intellectual Bernard Henri Levy around the United States to emulate, sort of, the journey taken by my all time favorite Frenchman, Alexis de Toqueville. As I hope you already know, Toqueville was the young French nobleman who traveled across our fair land and penned the incomparable classic, Democracy in America. This book, to me, is the most important book ever written about America. I cannot praise it enough or overstate its importance. If you've never read it, well, go get a copy and check it out.

So, anyway, here's the Atlantic Monthly with this fabulous idea. The first report has just come out in the most recent issue and I rush to the news stand to buy it. I read the entire installment. Its very long. It, how shall I put this, really, really sucks.

Let me count the ways in which I was so cruelly disappointed. First, M. Levy doesn't seem to have the first clue about America. Second, his travels, like his writing (more on this in a moment) are disjointed and disorganized. He flits from place to place, never seeming to linger very long, with no apparent reason for going to a place or leaving a place. Third, some of the political biases he brings with him about America seem stuck in decades long since past. The war in Vietnam is over, Sir. I hope I am not the first one to clue you into that fact. Fourth, no one likes being condescended to. Just saying. Fifth, the writing style is suggestive of his entire approach. He writes in a staccato fashion, full of sentence fragments, as if to suggest great energy or urgency, that his observations are coming so fast and furious that it is impossible to get them down on the page fast enough before they are gone. Also, the style suggests a lack of calm reflection, a want of consideration and mulling over of the observations he purports to make. But I do think that the style of writing correctly reflects M. Levy's skimming over the surface approach.

The best part of the essay so far? The most impressive interchange? A policeman in rural West who, after stopping to tell M. Levy he needs to move along and discovers that Levy is following in Toqueville's footsteps, asks Levy if so far he feels that Toqueville's observations about America are still valid. Levy, I regret to report, writes of this encounter with wide eyed astonishment, as if to say that he is astounded to discover a cop with an education, but never gets around to furnishing an answer. I think that the police officer got the better of this exchange and I am proud to say so.

I hold out little hope for the next installment, even if I am going to read it anyway.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 10:17 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Check your closet when you get home tonight, gentlemen. The life you save may be your own.

This from the AP Wire today:

TENNESSEE: MAN SLAIN AFTER FINDING WIFE'S LOVER A Nashville man was beaten to death after catching his wife's lover living in a closet in their home, the police said. Rafael DeJesus Rocha-Perez, 35, left, was charged with homicide in the weekend slaying of Jeffrey A. Freeman, 44. Mr. Freeman's wife, Martha, had allowed Mr. Rocha-Perez to live in a closet of the Freemans' four-bedroom home for about a month without her husband's knowledge, the police said. On Sunday, Mr. Freeman discovered Mr. Rocha-Perez after hearing snoring and ordered his wife to get the man out of the house, the authorities said. Ms. Freeman told the authorities that Mr. Rocha-Perez bludgeoned her husband with a shotgun. (AP)

I don't really know what to add to this, if anything. But, come on, stashing your lover in the closet of the guest bedroom? Are you kidding me? I don't know about your guest bedroom closet, but I have cleverly ruled this possiblity out for my wife by already filling that closet with assorted crap and detritus. So, I'm feeling pretty safe at home right now I'd have to say.

Just the same, I'm going to take a quick tour of the closet and attic. Just saying.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 09:47 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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The juxtaposition was a useful tool in studying architectural history, many moons ago. We would put two buildings up on the wall at the same time and compare and contrast and see what we could learn from the process. Like I said, a useful tool for art history but it has its limitations when applied to other things. I keep telling myself that, you see, and I'm almost convinced.

I was working out this morning, as I do most every morning, and the television was broadcasting coverage of the funeral of the Pope. While at first I was very skeptical about the benefit to my work out this broadcast could have, I ended up engrossed. It was beautiful and moving and wonderful and terribly sad all at the same time. One priest said it best when he said that maybe there was a life lesson here for all of us -- that here was a man who was rich beyond compare in love, his funeral attended by millions but who owned almost nothing, had no money, no family and no sexual intimacy but who was nonetheless rich. Something there for sure, even if I am not willing to pay the kind of price this man paid, putting to one side the fact that I am Jewish. Still, a much loved and, by all accounts, a tremendous man, a tremendous human being, a tremendous loss to the Catholic Church and to the world as a whole. New Yorkers have a special bond with the Church, whether you are Jewish or Catholic or something else. When John Cardinal OÂ’Connor died, I felt it as my loss, because as a New Yorker I felt he was my Cardinal, too. I hope my Catholic readers understand and don't mind my claiming him, too. And I think it was like that for a lot of New Yorkers.

Anyway, back to Rome and this morning. I was mortifying the flesh on the elliptical trainer and watching the funeral and it was very special.

And then, a commercial. The commercial, the first one in over 20 minutes, was for a drug, a medicine. Ok so far, right? The drug had something to do with vaginal infections. It had a long list of warnings and side effects -- like be careful because your vagina could fall out if you take this or you could bleed or your uterus might float away.

Boom. Your juxtaposition. Funeral of the Pope right up next to vaginal bleeding. The best and worst of America in terms of picking a time and place to run that advert. Advertisements pay for the television coverage. They make it possible to send the reporters to Rome and broadcast this beautiful rite. I get it, really. But couldn't Fox News have shown a different commercial at that time? Something a little less graphic, perhaps. Something a little more solemn. Maybe I'm the only one that this bothered, and that's ok, since its my blog and I get to write about whatever I want. But it was the juxtaposition that got to me. The Sacred/Profane or at least mundane. I would have felt the same if the ad was for foot fungus, by the way. What did this juxtaposition say about America, this mixture of Rite/Commerce?

And here is where I run into the limitations of the juxtaposition, for while the juxtaposition may always teach you something, maybe the lesson isn't worth having or the comparisons don't hold water.

I don't know if that happened here because I find myself curiously reluctant to follow the path that this juxtaposition is leading me -- to condemn Fox and American television for their timing. What do you think? Is this a juxtaposition worth talking about? Or should I have gotten off the machine before I cooked my brain this morning?

Posted by: Random Penseur at 03:25 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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