Apology Melodramatics

If you are at a Justin Bieber concert and you spy a young lad and lassie making out furiously in the aisle, let me be the first to acknowledge something. It is possible that these two sincerely love each other and in ten years will be happily married with three kids and a nice house in the suburbs. But let me also be the first to point out that no one would fault you if you thought these two were at least to some degree just using each other and were dispensing with any self-respect they might have, trading it for stimulation in the passion and heat of the moment.

Likewise no one would fault you if you doubted the sincerity of a quadruple apology made publicly on a blog by someone who was virtually unknown to four better-known people for unspecified offenses. Even if the apologizer uses the strongest terms for himself in order to appear self-flagellatory — demonic and satanic, for instance — the fact that one of them didn't even know he had attacked him might detract from the perception of seriousness on the part of third party passers-by. I hope that no one who really feels the need to apologize to me ever decides to just throw me into a category of people-I-may-have-offended-if-they-knew-who-I-was-and-what-I-said and then thinks they've done something unburdening and praiseworthy by making an impassioned public apology, chewing the scenery like a starved chihuahua. Just say it to me directly and privately; email is fine.

I should point out that this is by no means the first public apology which sounds somewhat phony. The whole public apology industry is problematic even if you can afford speech-writers.

I imagine you might hear a security guard at that Bieber concert whisper to another, "See her over there, making out with that dude? She's that hate-mail chick who's trying to get back-stage." Then you hear the other one nod and say "Got it. I'll keep an eye."

Exposing Goofiness

Someone posted a meme-like pic to Facebook with the purported quote by Albert Einstein "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots." There is a picture of a sagely Einstein with his hands folded above another picture of cute teenage girls using Smartphones. The implication is that all these young women would be interacting with one another but for something called technology which the sagely Einstein feared would surpass said interaction. Whatever that means.

My immediate reaction was to suspect the quote. It doesn't sound like Einstein to me at all. Plus it's just too perfect for the picture, right? And sure enough, it's most likely that the real Albert Einstein never said anything of the kind. Quote Investigator has the skinny, here's an excerpt:

I was suspicious of this attribution and when I searched the internet I found another similar saying credited to Einstein in a web forum. This statement was also illustrated with an image of people staring at cell phone screens.

I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots.

I have a different fear. I fear the day that individuals will believe that Einstein actually made one of these inane statements. Could you examine these sayings?

Quote Investigator: There is no substantive evidence that Einstein made either of these statements. Neither appears in the comprehensive collection of quotations “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” from Princeton University Press. ¹

Both versions given by the questioner were in circulation in 2012. For example, a website called answerbag.com presented a version of the saying in a message with an attached date of October 21, 2012: ²

So it looks like I wasn't the first person to suspect/debunk this. This kind of goofiness disguised as wisdom just hits a nerve with me. If it sound like something Wendell Berry would say, the chances are very slim that a thoughtful person would say it.

But there's another aspect of this attempt to be clever that bothers me even more. If, about 15 years ago, you saw a bunch of businessmen standing around in Grand Central with their heads down reading magazines and newspapers before the morning commute, is your first thought really "These people are idiots who are eschewing human interaction!"? No. But what is the difference between them and the young ladies with cellphones? The newspaper and magazines are products of technology, just older technology. They put the town criers out of business just like the internet is putting them out of business now. Plus ça change.

The business man reading the newspaper instead of talking to his temporary neighbor at the terminal might be a callous manipulator who doesn't care whom he tramples, but no one can tell that by seeing him reading the paper or doing the crossword for that matter. He might be reading the paper before work so he has more time to interact with other humans throughout the day. Likewise the girls in the photo may be checking emails from their parents before an outing together, who knows?

Sure, it's irritating to see people using cell phones at inappropriate times, but blaming this on "technology" is to miss the real problems of intemperance, absentmindedness and all varieties of rudeness which have always existed. I have a friend who said that his father would spread out the Sunday paper on a kitchen table and you weren't allowed to talk to him until he'd read the entire thing. Only then could you even ask him for the comic section. Sorry, but that's anti-social behavior, no batteries required.

AND there is another aspect of this which many are not going to notice. It's sort of ironic and funny to me that this meme picture couldn't even be generated without the widespread proliferation of technology, let alone broadcasted all over social media and blogs. Photography is technology, people. And the fact that it captures a moment in time should be taken into account. Otherwise the following photo would represent the complete lapse of human interaction as much as a photo of girls using smartphones.

There has been a lot of good writing about curbing cell-phone use, like this one about not using phones in business meetings. I hope more people take that kind of good advice, but I also hope people don't lose their common sense in their over-zealousness to fight real abuses. If I whip out my iPhone while we're talking without saying "excuse me" then you have a legitimate beef about my behavior. But if you come upon me while I'm looking at my phone it doesn't mean I don't want to interact with you. Or talk to you.

Nuns in the tank

I get emails from Progress Ohio, a far left PAC who somehow has my email address. It's good to read these emails both for the inadvertent humor content and also to see what the enemies of truth, justice and sensibility are up to.

The other day they sent me an email promoting a very silly group called Nuns on the Bus which is currently touring Ohio. They put up a blog post about it too. They are condemning "immoral budgets" and promoting a "faithful budget" which, when translated, means more government spending of taxpayer money on everything.

I think that Luke 11:46 might apply here. "...you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers."

Here's the picture and text from the email.

Join Catholic Sisters in calling on our leaders to protect people who are struggling and calling on all Ohioans to vote our values.

Sisters from across Ohio are traveling 1,000 miles to lift up people who would be harmed by immoral budget cuts and the need for a faithful budget that affirms the life of all God's children.

As they hold up the core values of solidarity, justice and the common good, they will remind us "We are in this together - in Ohio."

Here is a short summary of why this is so pathetic. A non-smiling elderly nun dressed in a habit can cut an imposing figure if she speaks calmly and with authority. But senior citizen nuns wearing street clothes and angrily spitting out liberal, big government talking points has engaged in the kind of self-diminishment that has got to but a smile on the devil's face.

If you mention the fact that abortion is legal in our country to these sisters they will immediately show signs of anger. Not anger that abortion entails the ripping apart of an innocent baby, but anger that you brought the subject up and reminded them that they are in the tank for the political party which has a vested interest in keeping abortion legal. They are far more offended by the "Ryan budget"—a proposal to cut wasteful government spending—than they are by abortion, and I can only conclude from this that they care more about money than human beings.

More laughs from OWS

Here's a treat for your Easter Basket. Excerpt from beginning:

As the nascent Occupy movement attempts to revive interest in its radical left-wing agenda, it is burdened with a host of organizational and financial problems left over from some of the bitter infighting that took place during the winter.

Last night, the two main organizational bodies of Occupy Wall Street were dissolved, and a new group running OWS’s finances is admitting to a lack of transparency, financial discrepancies and poor financial decisions by the previous custodians of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

There are a lot of laugh lines in here like "Who’s accountable if this is a ‘leaderless’ movement?" But the main takeaway for me is that no one among the general populace really cares that much for their ideas, let alone their methods. Sure, they may get propped up by Soros or Obama if they are needed for the election, and for that reason I don't think OWS is dead as a political force. Who knows, maybe the ranks will be combed for drones to staff the next incarnation of ACORN.

However, the Occupy movement is not vibrantly alive as a grassroots organization like one of the Tea Party groups. I believe that one reason is that the Tea Party groups aren't tied to bizarre manifestos touting obscure ideals like horizontalism, General Assemblies or Facilitation Working Groups. My theory is that most of the people who really believe these kinds of structures can work on a large scale are dyed-in-the-wool academics who have seen it work in some pointless non-profit agency or a group home they worked in while working on their degrees. In other words, only on a small scale in a controlled environment. These theoretical models haven't been tested for real until now, and they are failing.



This is a bit rambling, but I'll offer a line to sum this development up as follows: "Seeking to be peaceful anarchists, they became contentious bureaucrats." Maybe someone can improve on this summation. Or just enjoy a laugh at their expense.

Just for the record

Today will mark the third time which I have unsubscribed from one of Rick Santorum's email blast lists. It doesn't really bother me too much, and I understand what is going on. He is buying my name and email address from different organizations (Weekly Standard, Ohio Republican Party, NRCC, etc.) and he doesn't have enough funds to hire someone to perform simply de-duplication services. No doubt this is the mark of a truly true true conservative who is so conservative that he is running an underfunded campaign.

In other election news....

Andrew Brown asks a good question

The question he asks is "Do we really need so many 'Eucharistic Ministers'?" Excerpt:

What’s the point of all these assistants? The Catholic Church does allow for what it calls an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion, in cases when the priest is not available. But there is absolutely no need to have five extra ministers, giving Holy Communion under both kinds, as I saw this morning in an ordinary parish church, two thirds full, with a perfectly capable parish priest.

I can’t help thinking all these ministers are there just to give the more assertive parishioners something to do – so that they feel as though they’re joining in. I should think the priest is often bullied into allowing it, and daren’t refuse. As for ordinary Catholics, most of them probably find the extra helpers irritating, but are too polite to say.

All good points in his article. One priest I knew told me he runs into EMs who seem to feel they have some sort of "right" to distribute communion and they get hurt feelings when they aren't needed.

In my experience a lot of EMs seem distracted by ephemera. One time I was asked a question by a very young man distributing communion immediately after I had received communion. What was he thinking? I just shrugged.

I don't know if I'm "too polite to say" anything as Brown suggests. I just consider that there are too many moral crises in the church and the world to obsess about some of these matters. But liturgical abuses certainly don't help the situation.