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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 6 of 6. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Sigismund on June 29, 2007, at 19:44:15
In yesterday's paper, the cartoon had a black background, the entire bottom and left hand side was filled with colour, like fireworks, tracers and explosions, and the sky completely black.
Two grey shapes, unclear at first, are moving away in the upper right-hand corner.
Out of one comes a voice...
'Paris has pulled through OK...and has found God'
and out of the other one
'Cool..!'
Posted by zeugma on July 2, 2007, at 21:33:40
In reply to Paris Hilton Cartoon (giving decadence a bad name), posted by Sigismund on June 29, 2007, at 19:44:15
At least Paris Hilton did jail time.
That proves that in our society, wealth and fame are no substitutes for power.
Incidentally, having just read "A Russian Diary", with its graphic and dismaying portrait pf a backsliding, murderous society, I am surprised that President Bush has emerged from his Kennebunkport parley speaking giddily about the "amazing transformation" Putin has presided over.
"Do I trust him? Yes, I trust him," said Bush of Putin. Bush is in a trustful, merciful mode- I only wish Putin had arrived in Kennebunkport a month earlier, so he could have commuted Paris' jail sentence as well.
Is it possible to give decadence a good name? That very well might have done it.
-z
Posted by Sigismund on July 3, 2007, at 1:33:33
In reply to Re: Paris Hilton Cartoon (giving decadence a bad name) » Sigismund, posted by zeugma on July 2, 2007, at 21:33:40
Posted by zeugma on July 3, 2007, at 11:17:15
In reply to Did Oscar Wilde give decadence a good name? (nm) » zeugma, posted by Sigismund on July 3, 2007, at 1:33:33
The word 'decadence' is pejorative, so the concept of 'good decadence' is somewhat oxymoronic.
I was driven to this oxymoron by the thought of a Presidential commutation applied to the (presumably- I personally wouldn't use the word) "decadent" Paris (really we should be talking about the city here, not the person).
When Wilde was apprehended on charges of gross decadence, the only people who would sign petitions for clemency were themselves notorious decadents:"In The Importance of Being Oscar (1981), Mark Nicholls says that, when Wilde was imprisoned, George Bernard Shaw drafted a petition for his release. Soon afterwards Shaw told Willie Wilde, Oscar’s brother, “that nobody would sign it except himself and Stewart Headlam, and that as they were both notorious frondeurs their signatures would do more harm than good.”
("The Rev. Stewart Headlam and Friends," by Nigel Sinnott.)
Shaw's name speaks for itself, but Headlam's name is now a footnote in an Ezra Pound poem:
Dowson found harlots cheaper than hotels;
Headlam for uplift; Image impartially imbued
With raptures for Bacchus, Terpsichore and the Church.
So spoke the author of "The Dorian Mood,"
M. Verog, out of step with the decade,
Detached from his contemporaries,
Neglected by the young,
Because of these reveries.
While "M.Verog" is one of the few characters that Pound sympathizes with, and Dowson, a great poet who died young, finds Headlam "uplifting," it is a safe bet that no one else did.
No one of unimpeachable character was willing to petition for clemency in Wilde's case.
I hope that answers your question.
.-z
Posted by Sigismund on July 7, 2007, at 21:12:28
In reply to Re: Did Oscar Wilde give decadence a good name? » Sigismund, posted by zeugma on July 3, 2007, at 11:17:15
When we were kids we had a grampophone/phonogram thingo. It was quite big and just had a radio and a record player for 33s, 45s and 78s (if I remember correctly) and lots of levers and dials, so it seemed like the controls for something quite important .
We had a boxed set of Bing Crosby reading "The Happy Prince" which was my favourite record as a kid, and it came with lovely pictures.
Much later I tried to read it to my kids, but it was hopeless as I was in tears well before the end of page 1, and the kids were looking nervous and surprised.
I suppose it is really just straight Christian (not restricted to that) ethics about others before self and the importance of love and sacrifice. He's an interesting moralist with quite scathing things to say about other moralists. (I forget where the quote I'm looking for is, possibly somewhere in De Profundis.)
Certainly in that there is his account of Robert Ross's raising his hat to him at a public station while he was being transferred as a prisoner and after Ross had bought as many of Wilde's books as he could at the bankruptcy auction.
That was Wilde's idea of virtue ('men have gone to heaven for less than that'), and mine too.
Posted by Sigismund on July 7, 2007, at 21:36:20
In reply to Re: Did Oscar Wilde give decadence a good name? » zeugma, posted by Sigismund on July 7, 2007, at 21:12:28
So it has something to do with standing out against the crowd when there is nothing in it for you.
Clearly nothing like the pardon to Libby, if I've got that right, nor GWBs reluctance to exercise clemency when it would have been appreciatated.
It's that sense of rightness that is the problem for me. That's what I liked in the Steve Earl song, these lines.....
Said "I'm the next big thing and the gift that I bring
Comes directly from God, so there ain't no holdin' me down"
So he crowned himself king
Now no one remembers his name
But the seed that he sowed took the show on the road
There was blood on their hands and a plague on the land
They drew a line in the sand and made their last stand
They said "God made us in his image
And it's in God that we trust"
When asked about the men that had died by their hands
They said "ashes to ashes and dust to dust"
This is the end of the thread.
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