Camelot and the Miracle of Forgiveness

Last weekend I stumbled across a video circulating on the internet, of actor Jim Caviezel delivering an impassioned message to the members of a San Diego mega-church. Caviezel, a devout Catholic and the intense, handsome star of The Passion of the Christ and TV’s Person of Interest, assured the congregation that God’s grace and forgiveness are greater than their sins. “God forgives you,” he said, “and so now you need to begin again, to accept forgiveness.” As it happens, last weekend I also came upon a powerful, mythic example of that very lesson.

As part of the research for my book on chivalry, I was re-watching the 1967 musical Camelot, featuring Richard Harris as King Arthur, Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Guinevere, Franco Nero as the impossibly perfect Lancelot, and an incredible score by the songwriting team of Lerner and Loewe (the soundtrack from the original Broadway musical was America’s best-selling record for over a year). The movie spun out of the Broadway hit, which was based on T.H. White’s extraordinary 1939 novel The Once and Future King, itself based upon Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, the 15^th century compilation that is largely the basis for our familiarity with the Arthurian legends and with the tragic love triangle of the movie’s main characters.

Lancelot enters the story as the pinnacle of knighthood, a warrior of such unequalled valor and monastic virtue that he takes for granted his ability to surpass mere mortals. In fact, as White puts it, “he wanted, through his purity and excellence, to be able to perform some ordinary miracle – to heal a blind man or something like that, for instance.” As he proclaims in his signature song “C’est Moi” in Camelot,

And here I stand, as pure as a prayer,
Incredibly clean, with virtue to spare,
The godliest man I know!

But Lancelot soon discovers to his secret shame that, like all of us, he is far from perfect. Indeed, he betrays his friend and liege Arthur through his adultery with Guinevere, which leads to his slaying of a fellow knight in combat. Arthur, his Knights of the Round Table, and all his subjects believe him to be the purest knight on earth, but Lancelot lives with the knowledge of his terrible sins in his anguished heart.

Then one day Lancelot is called upon to do just that for which he had once arrogantly hoped –perform a miracle. In the novel (which differs somewhat from the play and movie versions), a knight cursed with wounds that will not heal comes to Arthur’s Round Table seeking the purest in heart to heal him, and everyone naturally looks to Lancelot. The author T.H. White asks the reader to imagine the terror that Lancelot now feels, knowing that his very public failure to perform the miracle will expose him as living a lie:

Miracles, which you wanted to do so long ago, can only be done by the pure in heart. The people outside are waiting for you to do this miracle because you have traded on their belief that your heart was pure – and now, with treachery and adultery and murder wringing the heart like a cloth, you are to go out into the sunlight for the test of honour.

His spirit broken by sin, and with all eyes upon him, Lancelot kneels beside the knight and prays from a place of deep humility for perhaps for the first time in his life, asking God to please save the knight not for his own glory, but for the knight’s sake. Magically, the knight’s wounds close, and the crowd exults in jubilation.

Forgotten amid the celebration is Lancelot himself, who remains kneeling and weeps like a child because he knew “a secret which was hidden from the others. The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle.” The humbled Lancelot had been granted forgiveness and the grace to perform the impossible. His own healing process had begun.

This struck me as a beautiful example of Jim Caviezel’s point: no matter how undeserving we may believe we are, there is a power, whether divine or human, that is greater than our failures. Forgiveness itself is the miracle; we only need be willing to accept it and begin again.

(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 5/20/14)

NBA Star Names the Real MVP – His Mom

The wide world of professional sports is riddled with so many examples of unsportsmanlike braggadocio and trash-talking, that it’s refreshing when an athlete makes headlines by spouting not attitude, but gratitude.

Kevin Durant of the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder has certainly earned the right to be big-headed. At only 25 he has won an NBA Most Valuable Player Award, four NBA scoring titles, the NBA Rookie of the Year Award, and an Olympic gold medal. He has been selected to four All-NBA teams and five All-Star teams in his short career.

But humility keeps him grounded. A couple of years ago, Durant wrote about that and his Christian faith:

In the Bible, (it says) the Lord exalts humility and that’s one thing I try to be all the time. When I’m talking in front of people or when people tell me I’m great, I (remind myself that I) can always be better. Humility comes before honor. I always work on what I have now. I have to be thankful to the Lord for the gifts He’s given me. My gift back to Him is to always be humble and always work as hard as I can.

Durant has a tattoo on his wrist that says live for eternity. “God says that’s where we’re all headed. And I wanna start living with that eternal perspective on everything I do now.” That’s a pretty mature attitude for a rich-and-famous 25-year-old.

Philanthropist Durant is well-respected for giving back to his community. He donated one million dollars to the local Red Cross in the aftermath of a 2013 tornado that tore across Oklahoma. He personally visited survivors and prompted Nike, the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association each to match his contribution. 

Durant, who has been called the nicest guy in the NBA, was awarded Most Valuable Player last week, and in an extraordinarily touching and emotional acceptance speech, expressed his heartfelt thanks to the friends and family members who made him what he is. Tearfully, he thanked his two brother also for his support, and told his older brother Tony that “you taught me to feel confident in myself, believe in myself, that I can do it when I didn’t think I could do it.” He thanked him for “texting me Bible verses every single day, telling me you love me every single day. That builds me up and I thank you so much. I love you.”

Finally, he addressed his mother Wanda Pratt, sitting in the front row. Sometimes called Durant’s secret weapon, Pratt and her husband divorced shortly after Durant was born. “We were very young, immature,” she recalled. “Really not understanding what being a family was. So we split up and I did the best I could… I decided early on that my desires and wants and even needs came second to what they needed and wanted. That was my mindset.”

She proceeded to live by that mindset, and Durant didn’t take it for granted. He continued his speech:

I don’t think you know what you did. You had my brother when you were 18 years old. Three years later I came out. The odds were stacked against us. Single parent with two boys by the time you were 21 years old.

Everybody told us we weren’t supposed to be here. We moved from apartment to apartment by ourselves. One of the best memories I have is when we moved into our first apartment. No bed, no furniture, and we just all sat in the living room and hugged each other because we thought we made it…

We weren’t supposed to be here. You made us believe. You kept us off the street, put clothes on our backs, food on the table. When you didn’t eat, you made sure we ate. You went to sleep hungry. You sacrificed for us. You’re the real MVP.

At that, the audience present rose to give Durant’s mom a much-deserved standing ovation, not because she had raised a superstar athlete, but because a mother single-handedly committed herself to raising a tight-knit family of good sons, keeping them out of trouble, and turning out a humble man who is unashamed to publicly discuss his faith and to express his love and gratitude to her and his brothers.

Earlier in that speech, Kevin Durant had told his younger brother that he strove to set a great example for him. It’s clear that, thanks to his mother, Durant in his short life is already serving as an exceptional role model not only for his brother, but for his teammates and fans – and that impact will go well beyond whatever successes he has on the court.

(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 5/12/14)

Are America’s Favorite Books Just Our Favorite Movies?

Last March, 2,234 U.S. adults surveyed online in a Harris Poll were asked to list their ten favorite books. The results give us some insight into our reading habits, but are they also telling us something about our movie-viewing habits?

This year, just as in 2008 when the Harris Poll last asked this question of other respondents, the number one book is – the envelope, please – The Bible, unsurprisingly a deeply imbedded influence on our national nature.

The number two preference once again is Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War-and-Reconstruction drama Gone with the Wind, published in 1936. The book was a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the classic 1939 movie adaptation brought Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler to life in iconic style. An argument could even be made that, for better or worse, it is our Great American Novel. Its mark on our cultural consciousness apparently runs deep.

Or at least it does among women, who seem to be driving that novel’s enduring popularity (the poll also broke down the book list demographically, racially, geographically, and politically). Men, on the other hand, preferred J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series at number two (it is fourth overall, below J.K. Rowling’s astonishingly successful Harry Potter series). The presence of both series suggests a predilection among Americans for good-versus-evil fantasy epics. One has to wonder to what degree the blockbuster movie franchises (both begun in 2001) were responsible for the books’ appearance on the list both times.

One might wonder too if Baz Luhrmann’s glitzy 2013 movie remake of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby helped that novel climb onto the list (in last place) this year. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which moved up from seventh to fifth since 2008, also may owe its presence partly to a beloved classic film version starring Gregory Peck. And as I suggested above, Vivian Leigh and Clark Gable are practically synonymous with Gone with the Wind. Does this mean that our favorite books are actually just our favorite movies?

But popular film adaptations don’t explain the presence of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, which moved up three spots to number seven. That coming-of-age classic has never yet made it to the big screen due to the late, reclusive Salinger’s reluctance to allow the book to be Hollywoodized. They also don’t explain the other titles new to the list this year: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (sixth), Louisa Mae Alcott’s Little Women (eighth), and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (ninth). All three have been adapted to film, but not in recent years, and none had the popular or cultural impact of the movie versions of the other books. The films no doubt drove new readers to the books, but it’s less convincing to argue that they had anything to do with earning the books their place on the list.

If Hollywood adaptations are shaping our reading preferences, one might expect to see, say, The Hunger Games or Twilight trilogies on the list the next time around. Of course, those books were already insanely popular before Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson starred in big-screen versions, but will they prove to be endearing favorites? Time will tell.

Literary snobs (and I once was one) shake their heads over the fact that the list includes a few critically disdained titles (Rowling’s work in particular seems to set their teeth on edge). They point to it as a sign of American Philistinism. But we’re talking about favorite books, not best books. Favorites are not necessarily top-rated critically and artistically, but are personally meaningful to us in some compelling way that may have nothing to do with literary quality. My favorite, for example, is Tarzan of the Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It’s not an exaggeration to say that it changed my life. That doesn’t mean I also don’t also appreciate, say, T.S. Eliot.

It may be comforting to the snobs to know that last time, Dan Brown of Da Vinci Code fame held two spots on the list, and Stephen King another. This time the list features even more classics, with not a 50 Shades of Grey to be found. Maybe Americans aren’t dumbing down after all.

2008 and 2014 Harris Polls

Favorite Books (all adults)	2008	2014
The Bible	1	1
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell	2	2
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling	4	3
The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien	3	4
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee	7	5
Moby Dick by Herman Melville	*	6
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger	10	7
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott	*	8
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck	*	9
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald	*	10

(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 5/5/14)

Lessons from ‘The Americans’ on Crime and Forgiveness

If you’re not watching the FX series The Americans, you’re missing one of the most gripping, intelligently written dramas on TV. More than just an action-packed Cold War thriller, it is a series that has its surprisingly compelling protagonists wrestling with big questions of ideology and salvation.

Now in its second season, The Americans stars the darkly intense Matthew Rhys and the criminally underappreciated Keri Russell as Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, two Soviet spies living undercover as a normal American couple in 1981 Washington, D.C. In between co-managing their travel agency and raising two children (who are oblivious to their parents’ true identities), Philip and Elizabeth carry out missions for the Communist cause and keep their activities concealed from their FBI agent neighbor, masterfully underplayed by Noah Emmerich.

Elizabeth is an ice-hearted true believer, but after many years undercover, the American way of life is gradually beginning to seduce Philip. In one riveting confrontation in the very first episode, she is aghast when he suggests that they consider betraying the motherland and embracing the good life. “America’s not so bad,” he argues. “What’s so bad about it? The electricity works all the time, food’s pretty great… We could have a good life.” Later in the series, on a self-indulgent capitalist whim, he goes out and buys a new Camaro, then comes home blasting decadent Western rock music out of the windows.

But the cracks in his commitment to Mother Russia run even deeper than just the superficial. As the Cold War heats up, Philip finds himself wrestling emotionally with the more ruthless aspects of his job – namely, murdering anyone who stands in the way of his and Elizabeth’s work. In last week’s episode, after having slit a young man’s throat and caused the death of another innocent whom he had kidnapped for information, Philip struggles with so much bottled-up rage, doubt and self-loathing that he explodes at his moderately rebellious teenage daughter Paige for getting involved with a youth-oriented local church.

Philip and his family are starting to come apart at the seams, thanks to the terrible lie he and Elizabeth have been living for most of their adult lives. Driven by a deepening spiritual void that he can’t acknowledge even to himself, the atheist Philip slips into the small church one night to confront its young preacher Tim. “I want you to stay away from my daughter,” he threatens quietly.

“I can’t turn Paige away from the church, Mr. Jennings,” Tim replies. “This is a sanctuary. I can’t turn anyone away.” Philip steps menacingly closer. Tim is nervous but stands his ground. “Are you really gonna beat me up over this?” He suggests that if Philip really wants to help his daughter, “you should find a way to deal with your anger.”

Philip gets in his face. “I’m not here to be saved. Not by you or your god.”

“I see that you’re in pain,” Tim whispers. “There is grace and forgiveness for you. For everyone.”

Philip challenges the preacher: “Do you believe that?” Tim stands his ground. “I do,” he answers firmly.

His conviction not only defuses Philip’s violence, but seems to surprise and bewilder him as well. The spy exits without a word, steps outside in the cold night air, and turns with one last look at the church, a look that betrays his desperate desire for exactly the grace and forgiveness that he doesn’t believe is possible for his crimes.

It’s a stunning end to the episode, in a compelling series that traces the growing turmoil of two unlikely TV protagonists: KGB killers, at least one of whom is increasingly torn between diametrically opposed world views – communism and capitalism, atheism and faith, sin and forgiveness, ideology and family.

Their FBI counterpart, Emmerich’s Stan Beeman, is struggling with issues of his own. An ordinarily emotionally-reserved patriot who has foolishly fallen for his beautiful KGB informant, Beeman has put himself in a position to compromise his country’s security and destroy his own marriage.

The Americans doesn’t drive office water cooler talk like, say, Game of Thrones or Mad Men. But its fascinating Cold War clash between spies agonizing over very human conflicts deserves to be just as talked-about.

(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 5/1/14)

Donald Sterling: A Tale of Black, White, and Green

If you’ve just emerged from a coma or were binge-watching Game of Thrones episodes, then you may be unaware of the messy and disturbing media firestorm surrounding Donald Sterling, wealthy owner of the Los Angeles Clippers pro basketball team. Allow me to recap.

The controversy began when a tape surfaced of a conversation between the 80-year-old Sterling and his half-black, half-Hispanic “girlfriend” V. Stiviano, a half-century younger than the billionaire. Unaware that he was being recorded, a distressed Sterling complained that she was embarrassing him by publicly associating with black people – posting, for example, an Instagram pic of herself with former NBA star Magic Johnson. The tabloid site TMZ got hold of the conversation, and the rest is hysteria.

The internet and news media sizzled with outrage over Sterling’s racist remarks. Everybody had to get into the act, to paraphrase Jimmy Durante. Some argued that Sterling didn’t actually do anything racist, and that his free speech had been infringed upon by the secret recording, while others rebutted that the NBA has every right and obligation to punish him. Republicans and Democrats both tried to link him to the other party – as if the racism of a single man somehow confirms the racism of an entire party. Racial ambulance-chasers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton called for bans and vigils. Celebrities like Oprah weighed in, of course; perhaps with a nod toward last year’s Oscar-winner 12 Years a Slave, director Spike Lee accused Sterling of having a “slave master’s mentality.”

Now a lifetime ban from the NBA has been handed down to Sterling, as well as a $2.5 million fine, the harshest the NBA constitution allows. Sterling may also be forced to sell the Clippers, in which case they may be picked up by – holy poetic justice! – Magic Johnson and his partners (there is even speculation that Johnson himself somehow engineered this whole scenario, which would certainly thicken the plot). 

But former NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote a blistering opinion piece rightly excoriating all those participating in the “Olympic tryouts for Morally Superior Head Shaking.” He reserved particular venom for the manipulative “girlfriend” Stiviano and wondered why it took her tape to spark everyone’s outrage about Sterling.

What he was referring to is the billionaire’s less-than-sterling reputation as one of the largest property owners and landlords in the L.A. area. Back in 2008 the LA Weekly posted a stunning summary of his violations of civil rights and tenants’ rights, in addition to, as Talking Points Memo (TPM) puts it, his “shameful reputation as a man who abuses his employees, acknowledges paying for sex with prostitutes, and has had a string of girlfriends who live in expensive homes and drive luxury cars” that Sterling has paid for.

And yet, with spectacularly awkward timing, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had been set to give Sterling a Lifetime Achievement Award next month, an honor they are now rescinding, of course, while neglecting to mention that Sterling already has a 2009 NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award as well as a 2008 NAACP President’s Award.

Why is, or was, Sterling such an unlikely favorite of the NAACP? The answer is not black or white but green: he has been a significant donor to the organization – perhaps to whitewash his reputation – and the NAACP was happy to oblige despite his record of discrimination. TPM described the organization as “simply another cog in the Sterling PR machine.”

As for Stiviano, she was sued just last month by Sterling’s wife Rochelle for the return of the $1.8-million L.A. duplex, a Ferrari, two Bentleys and a Range Rover that her husband bought for Stiviano last year (Rochelle was apparently upset that her name wasn’t on the deed too).

In fact, as easy as it is to dogpile on Donald Sterling, the real story seems as much about money as racism: for money, the NAACP turned a blind eye to Sterling’s sins; for money, his wife turned a blind eye to his “girlfriends”; for money, the “girlfriends” turned a blind eye to their own prostitution – until the glaring light of public scrutiny forced everyone to distance themselves from the radioactive Sterling.

Rochelle, for example, originally defended her husband against the charge of racism, saying “it’s not true”; but when it became impossible to deny, she threw him under the bus for his “despicable views or prejudices” and “small-mindedness.” The NAACP released a statement about standing up and confronting racism blah blah blah. Stiviano is currently hiding under a giant visor.

Abdul-Jabbar firmly believes that people like Sterling should be paraded in humiliation across “the modern town square of the television screen.” I couldn’t agree more that racists (of all races) should be exposed, but allowing the media and internet mobs to serve as judge, jury and executioner is a dangerous game. Donald Sterling may have made his bed and now must lie in it, but less culpable lives are easily destroyed by the media rush to judgment.

The ugly saga isn’t over yet – for one thing, Stiviano’s very suspect motivation for making and leaking the possibly illegal recording has yet to be revealed – but one thing is clear: the tale will have no heroes or winners, only media exploitation, opportunistic posturing, political smearing, and people covering their greedy tracks.

(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 4/30/14)

Rob Lowe: Playboy or Family Man?

Barely a week goes by without some new Hollywood scandal breaking in the lascivious news media – most recently, rape allegations against X-Men director Bryan Singer and other showbiz power players. Far less often does one hear about a Hollywood name who has left scandal behind and carved out a life of stability and maturity.

By his early 20s, Rob Lowe already had a drinking problem and career-damaging sex tape   under his belt, so to speak (this was before sex tapes were career-building). But rehab and marriage set him on the right track. “When I changed my life, when I sobered up, when I saw that show business couldn’t fill that place that was empty, those buried feelings rose, and having found the love of the right woman, I started a family of my own. The best chapter of my life began,” he writes in his autobiography, the double entendre-titled Love Life.

As celebrity authors often do, he has been making the media rounds promoting that new book. But as celebrity authors usually don’t, Lowe has been taking some traditionalist positions that set him apart from the go-along-to-get-along Hollywood crowd, and that mark him as a man of more character than the ridiculously handsome actor is usually given credit for.

In an interview with Fox411, for example, Lowe, now 50, took pride in his marriage of 23 years, which is “like the equivalent of dog years” in divorce-littered Hollywood. He said that “nobody thought it would last,” not least because of his prior reputation, but he and his wife Sheryl were committed to making it work:

I think when your relationship starts to become imperfect there's a tendency to go, “Oh my relationship is imperfect. I need to start looking for the exits.” It's about how do you live and work through the shortcomings because anyone can be together when it's great.

The interviewer continued, “You sort of have an old-fashioned view of marriage.” Lowe agreed: “I do, I guess. I believe in ceremony. I think ceremony is important, pomp and circumstance, tradition. I’m into those things.” Admitting to holding a traditional view of marriage might not seem controversial, but look at the bombs of contempt lobbed at actress Kirsten Dunst for saying something similarly politically incorrect recently. Lowe has avoided such condemnation only because the PC police are less tolerant of a woman like Dunst “betraying” feminism.

As for the importance of fatherhood (he has two sons, now 18 and 20), “It's been the work of my life, and I think it should be the work of any parent’s life. My favorite times are times spent with them.” Lowe made the decision early on to distance his boys from the entertainment capital and paparazzi. “I moved my kids out of Los Angeles, immediately. I’ve lived in Santa Barbara for 20 years, almost. I’ve had my picture taken there three times.”

While coaching one son’s championship basketball team, he ran into opposition for his competitiveness, which oddly rubbed some the wrong way: “The parents didn’t like my coaching style,” Lowe told the Fox411 interviewer. “[T]he kids and I loved each other. But it was pushups if you messed up, laps if you weren’t paying attention, subbed out of a game immediately if you weren’t living up to your potential. The final straw that broke the camel’s back was my proclivity for keeping score.”

The interviewer asked, “Does it drive you nuts, the whole ‘everyone’s a winner’ mentality?” “Absolutely,” answered Lowe. “Equality” is a buzzword these days, but Lowe is no fan of the equality of results, of downplaying exceptionalism and reducing everyone to the lowest common denominator:

I said, “It'd be nice to have a little awards ceremony for the kids.” The school said “No, then we’d have to do that for everybody.” I bought trophies for the kids myself. The school found out about it and said, “You have to buy trophies for the losing teams as well.” I think it’s all emblematic of the same thing. Winners are bad. People shouldn't keep score. It’s wrong to strive to be exceptional. I don’t get it.”

Lowe goes his own independent way even when he votes. Once a Democrat activist, now “I’m about the individual, not the party.”

He did spark a little controversy in a New York Times interview when he was asked, “Do you feel as if you had to wait out your good looks to get good roles?” Lowe responded,

There’s this unbelievable bias and prejudice against quote-unquote good-looking people, that they can’t be in pain or they can’t have rough lives or be deep or interesting. They can’t be any of the things that you long to play as an actor. I’m getting to play those parts now and loving it.

This provoked commenters to come down hard on Lowe for his supposed lack of perspective. But he didn’t say that his looks made life difficult, or that prejudice against the gorgeous is a serious problem; only that, as an actor or actress, being strikingly attractive can limit you to playing less interesting characters:

[A]ll I was getting offered was good-looking guys who take their shirts off on page 27 of every script. I’ve been told, as I’m sure others have been countless times, that the way I look precludes me from playing a cop or a doctor or a regular guy. “A PTA father would never look like that!” Meanwhile I am a PTA father…

And that family man is the role that Lowe, once Hollywood’s poster boy for scandal, seems to have settled into most happily and successfully.

(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 4/23/14)

The Dark Side of the Manosphere

If you’re unfamiliar with “the manosphere,” it is a burgeoning internet subculture dedicated to men hashing out all things masculine. It’s a fascinating, diverse virtual world born of the damaging excesses of feminism, which have left many men sorting through the wreckage of gender relations and questioning what it means to be a man in this grave new world. Much of it – the Dalrock and Art of Manliness websites come to mind – is valuable in terms of shared advice, self-examination, healthy debate, and supportive fellowship in a culture that is often openly hostile to traditional notions of masculinity. But there is an ugly subset of the manosphere that gives the rest of it a bad name.

A prime example is the website Return of Kings, created and run by a controversial American PUA (that’s “pick-up artist” in manosphere acronyms) who goes by “Roosh V.” Considering that Roosh has more than a dozen books under his belt about “banging” women abroad, the site is popular for its advice on “game,” or getting laid.

I debated giving RoK any attention, but when its bluntly-titled article “How to Convince a Girl to Get an Abortion” from last year was brought to my attention, I decided to address it as an example of the depths to which RoK and its ilk in the manosphere can sink. Written not by Roosh but by the pseudonymous contributor “bacon,” it offers up three techniques that have gotten bacon off the hook in his personal experience impregnating sex partners.

“Let’s face it,” he begins, “sexually active people have accidents. Shit happens.” And when it does, “if you are not ready to be a father, the following arguments may help you convince a girl to get an abortion.” Actually, if you’re not ready to be a father, don’t put yourself in a position to have “an accident.” Take responsibility for the fact that even protected sex is no guarantee against pregnancy.

But if you’re not willing to do that, and “shit happens,” bacon can help. The first method is best, he says, “for a girl who believes there is an emotional element to your sexual relationship” – in other words, a young woman who has been misled into thinking that her boyfriend sees her as more than a sexual receptacle. When she discovers that she has conceived a child with this lying user, and hopes to take the relationship to the next level, here is bacon’s solution:

You should sound as sincere as possible and tell her that you want her to be the mother of your children one day, but that now is not the right time to start a family. Explain you want to wait until you are further along in your career/life goals and you can afford to give your future family all the comforts of life you cannot deliver today. Finally, explain if she has the abortion now, you will be able to plan your lives together so that everything is perfect. Then, after she agrees and has the abortion, dump her.

Problem solved! And in its wake are a dead child and a devastated young woman burdened with guilt over her complicity. Bravo, bacon.

“The second method,” he continues, “is best used on girls where minimal emotions were involved in the sexual relationship… I call it the asshole method.” Actually, that seems more like an apt description of the first method, but here is number two:

Make it clear that if she keeps the baby you will be opting out of fatherhood. Explain that while she may end up collecting the minimum in child support that the state can take from you, in no way will you participate in raising this kid or being a father to it...

Once you have laid out your position, get your car keys and tell her you will drive her to the abortion clinic, pay for it, and have her take care of it today so you both can move on with your lives.

Again, problem solved. Again, dead child and devastated young woman.

I can’t decide whether the third method is sick or just ridiculous. The gist of it is, tell the girl that you would love to have children but a rare genetic disease runs in your family: “Ideally use one which causes an early death and/or horrible lifestyle conditions while alive… Bring up a nonexistent sibling and tell her that you are still recovering from their painful passing a few years ago.”

To help convince her, “spend an afternoon volunteering at a hospital or center for developmentally disabled people. Take a picture of someone who could pass as a relative… Do whatever you think is necessary to sell the seriousness of this genetic disease to her.”

Is this manliness? Is it manly to lie to, manipulate, and emotionally brutalize women? This is not to say that many women aren’t also guilty of such behavior, but two wrongs don’t make a right, as the old saw goes, and the question here is, is this manly behavior? Is it manly to force the death of a baby born of your shared irresponsibility?

Some commenters, to their credit, expressed revulsion at the article. Others around the internet wondered whether it, and RoK itself, might be satire – no such luck, although the site does enjoy generating outrage. The sad fact is that Return of Kings and a few like it are disturbingly popular with angry, bitter guys who lament that all women today are whores and yet obsess over how to score with them – and trick them into abortions, if necessary.

Guys like Roosh and his acolytes have been around since the beginning of time, of course, but the internet enables such like-minded predators worldwide to find each other, create a community to share information like “8 Essential Rules for Banging a Single Mom” (it’s even worse than it sounds), and bond over their palpable hatred of women. But for all their posturing as “alphas” – and there is a lot of it – such creeps don’t qualify as real men, who understand that manhood is about character and values, not notches on a bedpost.

(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 4/17/14)

Before Lorde, There Was Kate Bush

Ask anyone to name a teenage pop music sensation with a wild mane of dark hair and an offbeat artistic vision, and these days the answer you most likely will hear is “Lorde,” the 17-year-old New Zealander of “Royals” fame. But decades before Lorde, there was English singer-songwriter Kate Bush, whose rather reclusive nature and infrequent recording output eventually took her largely out of the public eye – until recently, when she announced her first series of live performances in 35 years.

The quiet, contemplative Lorde, whom Acculturated has discussed before, seems wise beyond her years and more serious about lyrically elevating pop music than are some of her well-known, corporately-packaged peers. With only one album under her belt – Pure Heroine – she’s already made her transformative mark with her whole career ahead of her.

She hasn’t publicly counted Kate Bush among her influences, which interestingly seem as literary (American short story writer Raymond Carver, for example) as they are musical (Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours). But pretty much every artsy female recording artist since Bush has been influenced by or compared to her: Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Bjork, Sinead O’Connor, Alanis Morissette, all the way up to Florence and the Machine, Lady Gaga, and even Shakira. Kate Bush is the spiritual and artistic mother of them all and countless more.

By the time she was in her early teens in the 1970s, the musically self-trained Kate Bush had written a boatload of songs and caught the attention of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, who helped her fashion a professional demo to take to record company EMI. With an eye toward cultivating a long-term career, and fearing she was too young to handle either success or failure, EMI kept her under wraps for two years while she honed her songwriting and performing skills – much like Lorde’s record company Universal, which signed the promising songwriter at 13, and gave her time to develop her material and try out different producers.

Bush’s first single, “Wuthering Heights,” went to number one in England in early 1978, and the wildly and uniquely talented Bush shot to fame. She subsequently had top 10 singles in her homeland with “Man with the Child in His Eyes,” “Running Up That Hill,” and others including a moving 1986 collaboration with Peter Gabriel, “Don’t Give Up.” She had less success in the States, partly due to the lack of touring (more on that below), but largely because, as a record exec put it, her music wasn’t easily categorized for American radio.

Her fey beauty, eclectic and experimental music, ballet-and-mime-trained dance performances, video spectacles like the Grammy-nominated The Sensual World, and historical and literary lyrical content made her a uniquely fascinating and creative figure. Whereas Lorde’s music (so far) is focused on capturing the essence of teenage experience, Bush’s surreal and melodramatic songs ran a bizarre gamut of topics that often stemmed from outside herself and her personal experience. As one critic put it, “As a songwriter, she has the ability to take intriguing subject-matter – yes, Wuthering Heights, Houdini, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, aspects of war, anything from aborigines getting mowed down by trucks to soft-porn – and condensing it into song.”

Kate Bush’s last round of shows was 1979’s Tour of Life, a stunning fusion of music, dance and theater which finished up when she was only 20. Though she continued to release albums (10 in total, but only 2 of new material in the last 20 years), she never toured again, reportedly due to a combination of the fear of flying, her perfectionism about the live performances of her carefully crafted studio recordings, and the traumatizing accidental death of her lighting director at one of her concerts.

But now she’s back. Bush will present a concert series at London’s Hammersmith Apollo called “Before the Dawn” that will run from the end of August to the beginning of October. Tickets to all 22 dates – some of which went for upwards of $1,600 – sold out in less than 15 minutes. Kate Bush may have disappeared from the public eye, but apparently not from the public’s hearts and minds.

(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 4/11/14)

‘Surviving Jack’: A New Kind of Sitcom Dad

The typical family sitcom dad for decades now has been a subversion of the Father Knows Best, The Andy Griffith Show, or My Three Sons standard of the 1950s and ‘60s. Instead of a stable, mature, moral role model, he became a lovable but doughy, bumbling doofus who is barely adequate at life and parenting, who needs more patient mothering from his exasperated and usually more attractive wife than even his kids do. See The King of Queens, The Simpsons, and Everybody Loves Raymond, for example.

Enter man’s man Christopher Meloni, from Law & Order: SVU, in the new Fox series Surviving Jack.

Set in the 1990s, Surviving Jack is aptly described as “a family comedy about a man becoming a dad, as his son is becoming a man.” Based on the book I Suck at Girls by Justin Halpern, author of the hugely successful, semi-autobiographical Sh*t My Dad Says, it stars Meloni as Old School doctor Jack Dunlevy. His wife Joanne has decided to make a late-life go at law school, leaving Jack to guide their teenage children Franky and Rachel precisely at the time when both kids are stumbling their way into adulthood.

Jack’s blunt, heavy-handed parenting style is reflected in his response to Joanne’s suggestion that they try reasoning with their children: “Kids don’t listen,” he says, “unless you rub their noses in their own feces – which unfortunately we can’t legally do.” In that respect, he’s even tougher than Modern Family’s gruff patriarch Jay and vaguely reminiscent of another dad named Jack in a similar sitcom from an earlier generation, The Wonder Years. In the process of steering his shy, awkward son toward manhood, Jack Dunlevy doesn’t bother sugar-coating life’s hard lessons.

In the second episode, for example, Franky and his two closest friends George and Mikey all want to make the high school varsity baseball team. They’ve been together since the second grade, and they envision carrying that inseparable bond forward forever. Franky tells his dad that his great friends would take a bullet for him. “People say that until it’s bullet time,” Jack counters.

Drill sergeant Jack puts them through the paces to prep them for the tryouts. Franky has pitching talent. Mikey becomes a home-run slugger when Jack urges him to tap into his anger toward his deadbeat dad. But diminutive George simply doesn’t have what it takes. Jack tells Franky to give up on the dream of all three amigos making the team: “This is survival of the fittest, not survival of the fittest and his little friend.” But Franky is determined to prove him wrong and keep the trio intact.

During the tryouts, Franky finds himself pitching to George at bat. He holds back in order not to make George look bad – which accomplishes nothing except to make them both seem like weak players. Jack pulls his son aside and advises him, “How do you think George is going to feel when he finds out you both didn’t make the team because you were going easy on him? Use your gift,” he adds. “Don’t waste it.”

Life’s not fair, in other words. Not everyone has the goods to make the team, and those that do shouldn’t squander their talent out of a misguided sense of equality that can only drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator. Franky takes the lesson to heart and hurls some impressive fastballs past his outclassed friend.

He and Mikey make the team, but Franky is “bummed that George won’t be there.” Jack tells him “Life has a way of dragging people apart. But if they’re worth it to you, you’ll make the effort to keep ‘em in your life.” The episode ends with Franky heading over to George’s to hang out and keep their friendship strong.

Jack is by no means perfect – he seems like the kind of father who loves his children but didn’t know how to relate to them until they started to become adults, and I imagine he has a terrible bedside manner as a doctor – but it’s refreshing to see a sitcom dad who is dispensing wisdom instead of being schooled, a good-looking athlete instead of a balding couch potato, and more mature than his children. He’s no Andy Griffith, but he’s a step in the right direction of the kind of sitcom dad audiences need to see more of.

And perhaps they will. The New York Times noted a few months ago that “most new network sitcoms are created and written by men, about men, and in particular, about the bond between fathers and sons.” Hopefully Jack Dunlevy is part of a long-overdue sea change in the way men and fathers are depicted on television.

(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 4/9/14)

‘Vikings’: Christians and Crucifixion

A year ago on Acculturated I wrote about the excellent new History channel series Vikings and its potentially interesting conflict between pagan and Christian values, as embodied by protagonist Ragnar and his captive monk Athelstan, respectively. That clash of civilizations quickly moved to the storyline’s backburner, but now that we are well into Season Two (with a third having just been green-lit), it seems to be rearing its head again – in a disappointing way, unfortunately.

Initially repulsed by the bloodlust of the Northmen, Athelstan developed a sort of Stockholm Syndrome in the course of his captivity, apparently backsliding from his Christian faith and gradually assimilating into pagan culture. In the recent episode “An Eye for an Eye,” he is taken prisoner yet again, this time by the Christian, Anglo-Saxon enemy of Ragnar and his seafaring raiders. A bishop condemns Athelstan for his apostasy, and he is tortured and nailed to a cross.

At this point, I did a mental double-take. Crucifixion? Certainly other cultures – most notably, of course, the ancient Romans – have carried out this monstrous punishment on Christians (and others). But, student of the Middle Ages that I once was, I never heard of Christians perpetrating it themselves, even in the heart of the aptly-named Dark Ages, a particularly savage time in European history (not that human savagery has abated that much). Considering that Christ’s torturous death on the cross is at the very heart of the religion, it doesn’t even make theological sense that believers would turn around and inflict it themselves. That’s not to say that the Church throughout history hasn’t been guilty of other cruelties. But crucifixion?

Researching this online, I stumbled across A.J. Delgado’s take on this same Vikings episode. She had exactly the same response as mine, and even reached out to a world-renowned medieval history professor about it. His response? “I know of no instance in the history of Christianity in which any Christians crucified others, even apostates.”

Of course, we’re talking about television drama and not a history lecture. Hollywood always plays fast and loose with historical fact, sometimes out of storytelling necessity and sometimes for political reasons. But this was a fairly eyebrow-raising deviation from historical truth, partly because it was so unnecessary. The bishop and his soldiers could have punished Athelstan in any number of bloody ways that would have been more historically correct, and the storyline wouldn’t have suffered for it.

So why choose crucifixion? And why hammer home the point (if you’ll pardon the pun) by depicting Athelstan as a Christ figure himself – flayed, crowned with thorns, and clad only in the familiar white cloth around his loins? Throw in a stereotypically fat, corrupt bishop, and it seems that Athelstan’s crucifixion was simply designed to paint Christians as cruel hypocrites, merciless crucifiers themselves.

This is disappointing but predictable treatment of Christians onscreen. In a recent article (written prior to the crucifixion episode) entitled “Vikings: A TV Series – and World? – Without Real Christians,” my friend Steve Pauwels urged the filmmakers to move beyond anti-Christian clichés. If they “really wanted to take the innovative route,” Pauwels wrote, “they’d feature an occasional Christian character who modeled strength of spirit and integrity.”

It doesn’t look like Athelstan, who was ultimately rescued from the cross, will be that character. In an interview, George Blagden, the actor who portrays the monk, suggests that Athelstan will continue to struggle with his faith: “As Season 2 progresses, there's a fantastic scene where Athelstan explains his conflicted mind… how Athelstan survived in this purgatory-type world between two religions.”

Fair enough, but the show is missing an opportunity to do more with this, to add some depth to its lead Ragnar, a compelling antihero driven by greed and a lust for power, unable to commit to one wife. How much more interesting his character might be if Ragnar occasionally wrestled with his own pagan faith as Athelstan wrestles with his; if something of the monk’s Christian theology sowed a seed of doubt in Ragnar’s own; if it caused him to change the way he looked at his wives, his slaughter of innocents, the direction of his leadership.

Vikings is one of my very favorite current shows. But as long as the only character who wrestles with his belief system is the Christian, the series will lack a dimension that could elevate it above the mere carnal entertainment of swordplay and sex.

(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 4/1/14)