Got a card in the mail today from the Archdiocese:
“Dear Mr. Chonak,
Please accept my appreciation to that already extended to you by Bishop Lennon for your generous contribution to The Annual Catholic Appeal….”
Huh? Did the Development Office lay off its highly-paid proofreaders? Or is this some new technique in fund-raising mail: to keep a few solecisms and typos so that we will know the note was written by a bishop? (Exercise for the perfectionistic reader: identify them.)
[Oh, this is too cynical; I should post something more constructive than this.]
Month: November 2003
“Leave no stone unturned”
The vision of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report was prescient: the Washington Metrorail system is going to turn into an ad-saturated, visually overwhelming mess. Remember the scene where Tom Cruise goes on the Metro while he’s being pursued by government agents? And the ads in the station are calling people by name? That’s only a little short of what they’ve got planned for our beloved Metro.
If you’ve never been to D.C., the Metro is the only thing in the city that works, as everyone agrees. It’s clean: drinks and food are banned. It’s also fairly safe, although there is the occasional pickpocket. The cars’ interiors are quieter than churches — everyone is reading, napping, or perhaps talking quietly (except for some obnoxious mobile phone users). A fun fact: the producers of the movie “No Way Out” filmed Kevin Costner in the Baltimore subway, even though he was supposedly traveling on the Metro. They thought viewers would never believe that a subway train could be that clean.
Compared to driving the nasty streets of this area, the Metro is a refuge for sanity, a place where other riders and I can get 90 minutes of reading done instead of navigating through the dismal, traffic-clogged streets twice a day.
The Metro management has nurtured this genteel culture since its creation three decades ago, but now they are going to throw it out the window with great force. They aren’t just going to have some advertising. Oh, no. We must have huge banner ads in the stations…and televisions blaring ads on the cars! Not only that,
…Transit officials also plan to drape advertising from the sides of parking garages, hang commercial banners from banisters inside the busiest stations, hoist advertising signs on light poles in station parking lots and sell ad space on bus shelters. “We want to leave no stone unturned,” said Leona Agouridis, Metro’s assistant general manager for communications.
Why is all this happening? Money! God forbid any public space not be turned over to Mammon, just because the Metro system is losing some money! Distilled to its essence, Metro wants to
Drive everybody crazy. No longer will we be able to relax on our way home. We have to be little captive rats for the ad agencies.
Raise the prices. They just hiked fares this year, and now they’re going to do it again.
Screw their best customers. Aside from the increase in fares, they stopped giving 10% bonuses when riders put $20 or more on their farecards — in other words, the very people who ride Metro frequently. Also, they used to have reserved parking for a monthly fee, with the parking fee included. Now you have to pay the reservation fee, and the regular $3 a day fee on top of it.
When music companies saw that CD sales slumped, they announced price cuts increase sales. Metro saw ridership decline, so they jacked up the price of their service. Does that make even a little bit of sense?
Economics aside, destroying what little peace there is in our public areas is unconscionable. No wonder Americans find self-reflection so difficult: no matter where they go, somebody is trying to sell them something.
THE VERE PROTOCOL: Here Blogger spammer, spammer, spammer….
A number of people have begun complaining about spam that is showing up in the comments’ section of various blogs — including this one. In fact, all the various StBlogs.org bloggers have been in communication by email behind the scenes and have agreed to simply delete any blog spam that shows up.
Just so that everyone has fair warning, in dealing with this problem I have opted out of the aforementioned agreement. Instead, I intend to abide by the Vere Protocol (which is a variation of the Welborn Protocol). The Vere Protocol states that all unsolicited blog spam that shows up in comments to my entries will be fair game for my-writing. Those who spam have been forwarned.
An ugly pursuit of power
When people say that critics of our Iraqi policy are “aiding the enemy,” it usually doesn’t sit well with me. Disagreeing with a political action isn’t treason. If you see a policy you think is unjust or unwise, you not only have the right to disagree, you have an obligation to speak against it and work against it.
But there is a right and wrong way to disagree, and today elected Democrats choose the latter route. Usually, they’re histrionic, but sometimes they really do cross the line and aid the enemy, e.g.:
On Capitol Hill, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota called on the CIA to brief Congress on “just what, if anything, can be done to change the deteriorating set of circumstances.”
When I say they are aiding the enemy, I don’t mean that they are giving Iraqi insurgents bullets. I think they get a little thrill of satisfaction when a soldier dies in Iraq, because they think it will hurt President Bush politically. They don’t want these thugs and murderers to win so much as they want the commander-in-chief to lose.
Daschle, and most of his Democrat colleagues, don’t give a damn about American soldiers or innocent Iraqis. Iraqis can’t vote for Democrats, and soldiers generally don’t. Therefore, neither group has anything to do with the acquisition and use of political power, so to hell with them.
“Come on, Eric,” you might be thinking. “You’re saying that because you’re a Republican and in the military.” Maybe that’s why I’m saying it, but it’s still completely true. Here’s what a loyal opposition, in the British sense, would look like: Democrats would criticize the president. They would also present their own plan of action in Iraq, one that is something a little more substantive than “U.N. in, U.S. out.” They would issue press statements supporting Operation Iron Hammer, the current campaign against the insurgents. They would speak out against our French and German “allies” when they make obvious efforts to curtail U.S. power in the world. They would make it clear that when they speak against the president’s policies, they do not think he is a malevolent moron, thus emboldening our enemies.
In short, men like Tom Daschle would remember that they were elected by Americans and are supposed to work on behalf of the American people.
Lost in translation? Shorn of context? Or just off-base?
CWN reports (subscription required) that the Pontifical Council for Health Care is conducting a conference on clinical depression today through November 15, and quotes the Council’s president:
Cardinal [Javier] Lozano Barragan said that depression may result from an intense fear of death, which finds no relief in a culture that has lost spiritual moorings. The Mexican prelate said that the Vatican seminar would focus particularly on the spiritual dimensions of the problem.
That seems a strange comment to me; I hope the cardinal didn’t mean it as a speculation about fear of death as a general cause of depression. I’m not a physician, but my impression is that there is ample evidence that genetic factors play a major role in this disease. Besides, I’d expect intense fear of death to be considered an effect of depression.
Any shrinks out there want to sort this out?
Update: ZENIT reports on the first day of talks.
I suppose it would fair to say that the spiritual truths the Church presents to man — in particular, the message of hope and God’s love in the Gospel — could be considered as helping a patient’s “cognitive therapy” — correcting the overly negative and self-critical thinking habits often experienced by depressed persons.