The Creation According to Haydn

The Archangels praise the beauty of the newly created earth.





GABRIEL
Most beautiful appear, with verdure young adorn’d, the gently sloping hills. Their narrow sinuous veins distill in crystal drops the fountain fresh and bright.

URIEL
In lofty circles play and hover thro’ the sky the cheerful host of birds. And in the flying whirl, the glitt’ring plumes are died, as rainbows, by the sun.

RAPHAEL
See flashing thro’ the wet in thronged swarms the fry on thousand ways around.
Upheaved from the deep, th’ immense Leviathan sports on the foaming wave.

GABRIEL, URIEL, RAPHAEL
How many are thy works, O God?
Who may their numbers tell? Who, O God?
Trio (Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael and Chorus)

GABRIEL, URIEL, RAPHAEL
The Lord is great and great his might.
His glory lasts for ever and evermore.

CHORUS
The Lord is great and great his might.
His glory lasts for ever and evermore.



The Creation was made good as are we who are part of it.

"Life remains a blessing even when you cannot bless" -- WH Auden

The Right Wing Freak Show

In terms of sheer ugly spectacle, how can anyone compete with this? The "better angels of our nature" just get lost in the din.









And keep in mind that some people are writing 6 and 7 figure checks to and for these folks.

Class Warfare andThe Battle of Love According to Mozart

Antoine Watteau, Fete Venetiennes, c.1718 - 1719

Class Conflict Part 1: The Proletariat, Revenge!





Class Conflict Part 2: The Bourgeoisie, Revenge!

Revenge, yes revenge
Is a pleasure meant for the intelligent;
To forget insults and outrages
Is always low and base.
With acuteness and inisight,
With judgement and discernment,
I can do it. The case is serious;
But, believe me, I’ll bring it off.
If I have to search through the whole legal code
If I have to read through the whole statute-bool
With some quibble or paraphrase
I’ll find out an obstacle.
All Seville knows Dr Bartolo :
That rascal Figaro will lose the day!

Class Conflict Part 3: The Nobility, Revenge!





Gushing uncontrollable teenage hormones

I no longer know what I am or what I do,
One minute I'm on fire, the next I'm frozen,
Every woman changes my color [makes me blush]
Every woman makes my heart beat faster.
At the mere mention of love, of delight,
I become disturbed, my heartbeat changes,
I try to speak of love
[I feel] A desire which I cannot explain.
I no longer know what I am or what I do,
One minute I'm on fire, the next I'm frozen,
Every woman changes my color [makes me blush]
Every woman makes my heart beat faster.
I speak of love awake
I speak of love in my dreams,
To the water, the shadows, the mountains,
To the flowers, the grass, the fountains,
To the echoes, the air, the winds,
That the sound of vain accents [speech] is
carried away with itself.
And if nobody listens,
I speak of love to myself!

Text by Lorenzo da Ponte
Translation by Naomi Gurt Lind

The most beautiful musical cat fight ever written:







Scheming and plotting to get one's own sweet way (actually, I'm posting these two for the amazing ensemble singing).









And yet, love can remain true despite time and infidelity





And in the end, after all the malicious scheming for revenge and advantage, when it all blows up in everyone's face and they all look like jackasses, there is only one thing possible to do...




Sposi, Amici! Viva L'Amore!


Beaumarchais' original play was a provocative scandal and a huge hit with the public, appearing right on the eve of the French Revolution when it seemed everyone "forgot their station." Mozart turned the play into a comedy about love and human nature, two things that he thought were full of music and very funny.

Pious Fig Leaves

Who'da thought America's highest paid low rent potty mouth would become my new hero?



And I think he's right. And I think Joe Jervis is right. These folks are monsters.

The Santorum, Michelle Bachman, Scott Lively, Bryan Fischer, just about the whole Catholic hierarchy these days (my last tiny bit of respect for them died with Cardinal Bernardin), Maggie Gallagher, Ruben Diaz Sr., the Anoka-Hennepin school district, any number of super-orthodox rabbis, all the "ex-gay" establishment, the quislings over at gaydom's own little Vichy, GOPproud, just about everyone at the CPAC convention now, etc., etc., etc., they're all monsters.

They all want me and my kind to die, in one form or another, whether it's through "therapy" to "kill the gay and save the man" (to paraphrase an infamous mission statement about another group of people from more than a century ago), or through raw violence and murder.

Paul Krugman this morning takes on the "values voters" from a different angle, discussing Charles Murray's latest scandal of a book. He argues that "values" is all smoke and mirrors to distract our attention from large systemic injustices created by decades of legislation that favored the advantaged over the disadvantaged.

Pardon my inner Marxist, but I think the whole "values" and "morals" issue is nothing more than a fig leaf barely concealing plain old supremacism. It's a very effective way to keep people down by persuading them that they are bad and lazy. It's a great way to enforce the class system by introducing a kind of caste thinking. The poor are unholy and "unclean" (that's how racism worked for a long time). Meanwhile, our Overlords persuade themselves that they are not just lucky, but virtuous, that they earned God's special favor above all other sinners. It's a way of pouring a fine sauce over winning the lottery or triumphing at the rat race. Milords and ladies can persuade themselves that they are noble and saintly, and not just top dog in a canine riot, a war of all against all.


I think this guy was a monster.



My dad thought Reagan was the greatest thing since Jesus on sliced Wonder bread with Miracle Whip. I agree with Charles Pierce from Esquire. He laid the groundwork for the colossal dysfunction that we have now, with the USA starting to look more and more like Europe of a century ago where privileged classes controlled everything for their own interests. I'll never forget or forgive his policy of malign neglect when AIDS hit. Thanks for nuthin' Uncle Ron.

We are not only alienated from our institutions these days, but we are alienated from each other. The latest crop of social darwinists among us think that's fine, that Herbert Spencer was right to describe life in capitalist society as "survival of the fittest." The rich and powerful are only the fittest and the rest of us survive at their sufferance. The extreme libertarianism that dominates so much political debate these days is the ideology of alienation.

But the Wheel of Fortune turns, and never more sharply and unpredictably as now. Today's winners frequently become tomorrow's losers as the fickle winds of economic psychology and consumer desire blow. The Lone Wolf becomes that much easier for some new predator to hunt down and kill. And no one chooses the circumstances that they are born into. The field of the Great Game is never level and never fair. Those who already won, always rig the game to their advantage. It was always thus and still is.
Leaving Fortune to determine who deserves to be human and who's a pack animal is a fool's errand that will always turn back on the fool.

The Wheel of Fortune on the floor of Siena Cathedral, 14th century

And Then There Were 7

Gays and Lesbians can now marry in Washington State.






Perhaps California will soon make it 8.

Illinois might make it 9. Yesterday, Illinois legislators introduced a marriage equality bill. Since the division between Chicago and Illinois is perhaps even more drastic than the one between New York City and New York State, who knows what will happen there. (Hat tip to JoeMyGod)


For the record, yes I think H8 will go to the Supreme Court. I don't think Justices Thomas and Scalia will have too much difficulty persuading Roberts and Alito to hear it. Yes, the 9th Circuit very carefully worded their decision to make it particular to California and its very peculiar situation, all very reasonable. But when did reason ever have anything to do with this whole argument? As to what the decision will be, who knows.

If the Court decides for H8, this would set an extremely bad precedent, not just for lgbts, but for civil rights. Such a decision would effectively mean that everyone's rights are subject to popular referendum. Just as the Citizens United decision seriously blurred the distinction between democracy and oligarchy, so finding the line between democracy and mob rule would become that much harder if H8 prevails.

Who knows, maybe bills of attainder will make a comeback. I can just hear the talking points on Fox News now ...


EXTRA:

Gay activists in Texas (yes that's right, TEXAS) are doing actions across the state on Valentine's Day for marriage rights. Well I'll be dipped in shit!

Up On Top of a Rainbow Sweeping the Clouds Away!

….all parties agree that Proposition 8 had one effect only. It stripped same sex couples of the ability they previously possessed to obtain from the State, or any other authorized party, an important right--the right to obtain and use the designation of 'marriage to describe their relationships. Nothing more, nothing less. Proposition 8 therefor could not have been enacted to advance California's interests in childbearing or responsible procreation, for it had no effect on the rights of same sex couples to raise children or on the procreative practices of other couples. Nor did Proposition 8 have any effect on religious freedom or on parents' rights to control their education: it could not have been enacted to safeguard these liberties.
All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation of 'marriage' which symbolizes state legitimization and societal recognition of their committted relationships. Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite sex couples The Constitution simply does not allow for "laws of this sort" (Romer v. Evans.)

— Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt,

(Tip of the fedora to IT)

The H8ters are wailing and gnashing their teeth, but I agree with Old Sissy Pants out in California:



Tip of the fedora to Benjamin Von Schwulemann

Happy Birthday Chuck!

Charles Dickens is 200 years old today.

The bane of social darwinists then and now. Here's an encore of a pan of Dickens' A Christmas Carol from a Tea Party affiliated pundit:

Dickens's ignorance of basic economics would, if acted upon by Scrooge, have produced adverse consequences for Cratchit himself. Had Ebeneezer paid Cratchit a higher salary for his work, he [Scrooge] would very likely have been able to attract a larger number of job applicants from which he could have selected employees whose enhanced marginal productivity might have earned Scrooge even greater profits. At such a point, terminating Cratchit's employment would have been an economically rational act by Scrooge. As matters now stand, Scrooge's employment policies have left him with the kind of groveling, ergophobic, humanoid sponge we have come to know as Bob Cratchit; a man we are expected to take into our hearts as an expression of some warped sense of the "Christmas spirit." Being an astute businessmen, Ebeneezer Scrooge was well aware of the marketplace maxim that "you get what you pay for."
Unaccustomed as Commissar Dickens is to the informal processes of the marketplace, we would not expect him to tell us anything about competitive alternatives for Cratchit's services. Perhaps there are employers out there prepared to pay him a higher wage than he is receiving from my client. If this is so, then we must ask ourselves: did Bob Cratchit simply lack the ambition to seek higher-paying employment? It would appear so. At no time do we see this man exhibiting any interest in trying to better his and his family's lot.

High praise indeed!

Happy 200 years to the bane of social darwinists then and now, from Thomas Carlyle to Rush Limbaugh. He's the darling of people of good will and still has a wide and devoted readership.

Thanks for everything, and here's to another 2 centuries of enthusiastic readers!