C.R.E.A.M. y'all: Slick Jeffie releases cookout menu for Saturday, September 7 love fest.

I get the whole Wu Tang thing, but Eric Cantona?

Maybe he's taking a parks department job.

Amid the vapid intellectual carnage inflicted by pay-to-play Gahanism, it's worth thinking about George Orwell's fundamental truthfulness.

(adapted from a 2016 post)

The embedded video above, complete with photo of George Orwell wearing a bizarrely uncharacteristic Hitler mustache, features Christopher Hitchens and George Packer (circa 2009).

George Packer and Christopher Hitchens talked about George Orwell and his work. Mr. Packer selected the pieces that appear in two recently published volumes of George Orwell’s work: Facing Unpleasant Facts and All Art Is Propaganda. Mr. Hitchens, essayist for The Atlantic Monthly, is the author of Why Orwell Matters.

Hitchens and Packer manage to stay on task for most of the program, though things start coming off the rails near the end, when Hitchens indulges in Iraq War apologetics. Overall, it's a thought-provoking hour with two erudite men.

At YouTube, there is a five-part BBC Arena series on Orwell's life. The segments are just shy of an hour, each. It's a bit dated, but invaluable for the testimony of interviewees now long dead.

Part 1 - Such, Such Were the Joys

Part 2 - Road to Wigan Pier

Part 3 Homage to Catalonia

Part 4 The Lion and the Unicorn

Part 5 Nineteen Eighty Four

Finally, here's something I wrote back in February, 2010: New York Times: "Why Orwell Endures." 

It strikes me as the stuff of wretched cosmic injustice that Orwell and Hitchens died far too young, while Franklin Graham will remain to torment us with drivel for so many years to come.

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A collection of George Orwell’s essays proved to be the surprise reading hit of my Christmas vacation. I picked it up at the library book sale, and tossed in the carry-on bag as an afterthought. It's a good thing I did, seeing as the remainder of my magazines and books were stowed in delayed luggage.

Essay topics in the ancient paperback, which became shredded into unbound pages soon after opening, ranged from memories of shooting a rampaging elephant while posted as a policeman in Burma to researching the origins of bawdy English postcards. Orwell wrote not only of lofty topics such as his service for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War, but also described in excruciating detail his recollections of boyhood boarding school days, experiences so quintessentially English that they might be lampooned by the likes of Monty Python without we Americans never really imagining the real-life sources.

As a piece in today’s New York Times by Geoffrey Wheatcroft makes clear, Orwell may not have been right 100% of the time, but his pursuit of truth and unwavering intellectual honesty remains noteworthy by comparison to many of his ideologically compromised peers. They are qualities worth cherishing.

As a postscript, this insightful passage from Wheatcroft's 2010 NYT article. Orwell glimpsed impossibly early that a culture of consumerism falls short of supplying certain basic human needs.

Whenever perplexed Americans fret over Osama bin Laden or suicide killings, and delude themselves that material progress will cure these ills, I think of what Orwell wrote in 1940 about another charismatic monster. “Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice. . . . However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.”

Banned at 312 Bank Street? Or, "Courage: The Greatest of Virtues."

While I'm an unapologetic creature of the left, whenever my friend Ken thinks a column by Jonah Goldberg might interest me, he forwards the link.

Obviously I tend not to agree with every point made by the National Review's senior editor, and sometimes with none of them, but usually there are ample thought-provoking nuggets.

So it is with this installment, which includes ruminations about empathy and cowardice, and words and dictionaries ...

The truth is that I don’t object to new words or even new meanings being breathed into them. I know that will happen. What bothers me is that no one seems to appreciate that the new meanings destroy the old ones for all time, and sometimes those meanings are worth keeping.

... as well as a central observation about honesty.

The only real litmus test for me is whether you take a position because you think it will advance conservative ends and that you are making your argument for it in good faith — i.e., that you’re not lying. Telling the truth is a form of courage, arguably the first form, and courage is the greatest of virtues.

Goldberg quotes Kevin Williamson, who also is speaking about conservatism.

And we should be ashamed of ourselves if we come to accept this kind of dishonesty in the service of political expediency. If conservative ideas cannot prevail in the marketplace of ideas without lies, they do not deserve to prevail at all.

This applies on my side, too.

Here in New Albany, local Democrats fancy themselves as somehow "left," though seldom willing to explore the actual perimeter. As I await their decision to display some/any merchandise at the party's vending stall in the marketplace of ideas, it strikes me as ironic that Jeff Gillenwater made mention of all this just the other day.

I’ve lived in New Albany, Floyd County, Indiana for more than a decade now. Throughout that entire tenure, the local Democratic Party has staunchly refused to take any position on any local issue. Save the occasional jab at a local or state Republican, they have focused almost entirely on federal issues. To the extent that any locals have raised concerns about that, they’ve been derided as unreasonable malcontents and radicals. Now that the party has a federal candidate who’s been asked about local issues, though, a lot of the very same people insist that strict jurisdictional guidelines must be followed; locals should only respond to local issues, federal responds only to federal, etc.. If these people get any more hyper-hypocritical about all this, we’re going to have to find a new way to measure such things just to try to keep up.

Fewer lies, more courage. Not exactly earthshaking, and not to mention probably impossible for so long as Adam "The Muzzler" Dickey's calling the party's neutered shots, but it would be pleasant for a change to read about ideas from Gahanites.

Do they have any?

The link: Courage: The Greatest of Virtues, by Jonah Goldberg (National Review)

Amid the local intellectual carnage, it's worth thinking about George Orwell's fundamental truthfulness.

The embedded video, complete with photo of George Orwell wearing a bizarre Hitler mustache, features Christopher Hitchens and George Packer, circa 2009.

George Packer and Christopher Hitchens talked about George Orwell and his work. Mr. Packer selected the pieces that appear in two recently published volumes of George Orwell’s work: Facing Unpleasant Facts and All Art Is Propaganda. Mr. Hitchens, essayist for The Atlantic Monthly, is the author of Why Orwell Matters.

Hitchens and Packer manage to stay on task for most of the program, though things start coming off the rails near the end, when Hitchens indulges in Iraq War apologetics. Overall, it's a thought-provoking hour with two erudite men.

At YouTube, there is a five-part BBC Arena series on Orwell's life. The segments are just shy of an hour, each. It's a bit dated, but invaluable for the testimony of interviewees now long dead.

Part 1 - Such, Such Were the Joys

Part 2 - Road to Wigan Pier

Part 3 Homage to Catalonia

Part 4 The Lion and the Unicorn

Part 5 Nineteen Eighty Four

Finally, here's something I wrote back in February, 2010: New York Times: "Why Orwell Endures." 

It strikes me as the stuff of wretched cosmic injustice that while Orwell and Hitchens died far too young, Sarah Palin remains a recurring part of our lives.

Thanks, Donald.

---

A collection of George Orwell’s essays proved to be the surprise reading hit of my Christmas vacation. I picked it up at the library book sale, and tossed in the carry-on bag as an afterthought. It's a good thing I did, seeing as the remainder of my magazines and books were stowed in delayed luggage.

Essay topics in the ancient paperback, which became shredded into unbound pages soon after opening, ranged from memories of shooting a rampaging elephant while posted as a policeman in Burma to researching the origins of bawdy English postcards. Orwell wrote not only of lofty topics such as his service for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War, but also described in excruciating detail his recollections of boyhood boarding school days, experiences so quintessentially English that they might be lampooned by the likes of Monty Python without we Americans never really imagining the real-life sources.

As a piece in today’s New York Times makes clear, Orwell may not have been right 100% of the time, but his pursuit of truth and unwavering intellectual honesty remains noteworthy by comparison to many of his ideologically compromised peers. As fairy tale life in Sarah Palin’s Amerika reminds us, they are qualities worth cherishing.