OK, back in the saddle after family ski vacation. Before tackling the

e-mail mountain I thought I’d catch up on The Corner. Couple of points.

Jonah—”Elizabethan collar”? Boris just calls it a ruff. Ruff, ruff.

Conservative movie—Tally one vote for “Lonely are the Brave.” I’m not

sure why this is conservative, and given the tnedencies of the Douglas

family, it has no right to be. All I can tell you is, I am as conservative

as you can be without falling off the right-hand end of the bench, and I

love that movie.

Mark Steyn on Cole Porter—Shoulda known the Steynmeister would spot that.

Well, I SAID I was working from memory. Readers familiar only with Mark’s

political stuff may not be aware that he also knows absolutely everything

about 20th-century showbiz. This side of Mark is seen to best advantage in

his theater criticism in The New Criterion . A

recent piece, for example, revealed that not only has Mark read everything

Frank L. Baum ever wrote, he is also familiar with every single stage

adaptation of the Oz stories there has ever been–including eight (I

think–I am going on memory again) musicals. He probably knows who did Judy

Garland’s nails. If “genius of opinion journalism” is a thing it is

possible to be, Mark is one. I H-A-T-E him.

Left Behind—The movie version of the Book of Revelation. Saw it (the

first movie, that is–there is a whole series) at my host’s house. Now, I

don’t read the Bible–certainly not Revelation–as a fundamentalist, but I

am open-minded about the general notion of divine intervention in human

affairs, including intervention on the Armageddon scale. Yet I must say.

“Left Behind” left me behind, and unimpressed. It–and, I think, all

similar scenarios about God stepping in & winding things up–suffer from

what the philosopher A.N. Whitehead called “misplaced concreteness.” That

kind of thing is good (well, average) sci-fi, but it seems to me, in some

profound way, unimaginative–like the comic-book vision of Heaven as a sort

of sunlit park with folk wandering around in togas smiling at each other.

The Divinity, it seems to me, ought to be above sci-fi stunts; and like Dr.

Johnson, I think it is pointless to speculate about what things are like in

the next world, as it is very unlikely we can imagine that world, even to an

approximation.

Dr. Johnson—The wisest man that ever lived. No, that’s not quite right;

he sometimes contradicted himself and said silly things. (See Macaulay’s

essay on him for the details.) But his insights into the everyday human

condition, on the nature of hope (especially) and desire and motivation,

have no parallel that I know of. You know how sometimes someone says

something penetrating about life, and you nod and say (or think): “Yep, you

nailed it.” Johnson was a superb nailer. Nice to see Peter Robinson bring

up that “Rambler” quote. But you could open Johnson’s works at pretty much

any page and come up with something as good. I am a Johnson fanatic from

way back, but I have to restrain myself from quoting him–he’s TOO quotable,

has a word for evey occasion.

OK, enough procrastination. To the Inbox! Happy New Year everybody!