Ryerson University is a place of fear, intimidation and hostility. A certain minority group are being shamelessly exploited, marginalized and demonized by professors, students and campus organizations alike, with blatant disregard for their rights and well-being, its voice ridiculed and its very existence loathed.. I am, of course, talking about the white male, a group that is collectively disrespected daily at our “great” institution of higher learning.
As a white person, I am blamed regularly (mostly by sociology professors) for nearly all racial injustices. As a Jew and a supporter of Israel, I am blamed for the suffering of the Palestinian people, who apparently desire to live side by side with my co-religionists, while they lob rockets at civilians from their operating bases inside the hospitals and schools of the “occupied territories”. As a person of West Indian heritage, I am blamed for colonialism, even though my grandparents came to Barbados because of the Nazis and entrusted a black lady to raise my dad and his siblings. As a (heterosexual) man, it is my fault that women’s choices are limited with regards to abortion, that single mothers are poor, that “heterosexism” exists.
I consider myself a Libertarian. I try as hard as I can to rid myself of prejudice and judge people strictly on their character, and nothing else. At the same time, I realize that not everyone shares my outlook on life, and sometimes the playing field isn’t always level. But the constant atmosphere of identity politics, entrenchment in the “radical” end of the political spectrum does not serve to empower the “oppressed” groups that Ryerson's hegemonic discourse seeks to engage. Rather than help heal the gruesome wounds that colonialism, slavery, institutionalised racism and sexism really did inflict, it rips them open with a switchblade and pours a dump truck’s worth of salt into them. Furthermore, as a fellow (white, male, heterosexual) student in my program says “we are accountable for the actions of our ancestors.”
I used to be filled with rage when I saw posters advertising a student funded, university sanctioned event featuring Black Panthers who have uttered outright racist comments on the record. I used to be shocked that, as another student told me, “anti-racist scholars don’t consider anti-Semitism to be racism because Jews are white and privileged” (she didn’t know that there Jews of African and South Asian descent). Now when the Jacobin-controlled RSU moves to boycott Israel, or sponsors a conference (with student fees) teaching students how to “de-colonize Ryerson” I’m ambivalent and just don’t care. I keep my head down, ignore it and live my life, and that probably means they have succeeded. At least I am safe in the knowledge that my entire life’s work is not based on a series of lies known as “Marxist theory”.
Campus is a lonely place for white males these days. Who will stand with us?
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
Learning From Pornography
"You're telling me they want videotape, not film? Amateur's not professionals?
-Jack Horner
I just watched the incredible Boogie Nights, a movie about the porn industry. There's one scene where Burt Reynolds, who plays the porn king Jack Horner, is talking with one of the industry honchos. Horner fancies himself as a porn artiste, someone who wants to make a quality film that happens to have scenes of hardcore sex in them. As the movie shifts into 1980, the idustry head is telling Horner about the shift to videotape and other technologies. Reynolds is outraged that consumers want to sacrifice the quality of film for videotape and can't grasp their desire for amateur porn.
See any paralells to the current state of the entertainment/media industry? Replace "film and "videotape" and "amateur porn" with "HD cameras" and "internet distrbution" and "user generated content" and you're looking at what's coming. Porn, what ever you may think of it, has always been ahead of the technological curve. I don't think it's entirely absurd to imagine that we'll be able to download, not to mention produce our own movies and other content in a way that mirrors the porn industry. Who wouldn't want to be the next Seymore Butts?
-Jack Horner
I just watched the incredible Boogie Nights, a movie about the porn industry. There's one scene where Burt Reynolds, who plays the porn king Jack Horner, is talking with one of the industry honchos. Horner fancies himself as a porn artiste, someone who wants to make a quality film that happens to have scenes of hardcore sex in them. As the movie shifts into 1980, the idustry head is telling Horner about the shift to videotape and other technologies. Reynolds is outraged that consumers want to sacrifice the quality of film for videotape and can't grasp their desire for amateur porn.
See any paralells to the current state of the entertainment/media industry? Replace "film and "videotape" and "amateur porn" with "HD cameras" and "internet distrbution" and "user generated content" and you're looking at what's coming. Porn, what ever you may think of it, has always been ahead of the technological curve. I don't think it's entirely absurd to imagine that we'll be able to download, not to mention produce our own movies and other content in a way that mirrors the porn industry. Who wouldn't want to be the next Seymore Butts?
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Does Religion Poison Everything? Derek Kreindler Speaks With Christopher Hitchens
(I interviewed Christopher Hitchens back in October. Here is the final copy)
Christopher Hitchens enters the room to thundering applause that sounds like the voice of God, shuffles to the podium, his face red, the clapping sustained, and clenches the sides of a lectern, calmly looking outwards. Such a reception is not uncommon for Hitchens, who has enjoyed a long career as a polemicist on all points of the political spectrum, while contributing to publications such as The Atlantic, Vanity Fair and The Nation. What makes tonight’s talk different from the myriad of other anti-religious diatribes he’s delivered at college campuses, private functions and television appearances is the venue. He’s going to speak for nearly an hour on how, as he says at the beginning of his speech, “religion poisons everything.” In a synagogue. And the audience, nearly all of them Jewish, are acknowledging him with applause. Everyone in attendance knows what they’re in for, an all out assault on the beliefs they hold dearest. “I think his aggressiveness is very effective. It's one of the reasons that he has such a huge following,” says audience member Harrison Jordan. He’s not too concerned about Hitchens making a mockery of his faith. “Besides the abundance of people claiming to be the Jewish Messiah, there’s not much that’s ludicrous about Judaism.”
Hitchens was invited to speak at Holy Blossom Temple, in a lecture series dealing with the importance of religion in contemporary society. On the political spectrum, the Reform movement (which Holy Blossom is affiliated with) can be equated to the NDP. Placards calling for an end to the genocide in Darfur regularly dot the front lawn facing a busy Toronto street, homosexuality is cast in a more favourable light, and the synagogue itself is modeled after a church, all in keeping with the Reform movement’s principle of bringing modernity to Judaism. Inviting one of the most prominent atheists to deliver a lecture on why all religions are a scourge seems equal parts peculiar and appropriate. As the title of his book would suggest, Hitchens is out to eradicate whatever credibility religion may retain within society. Hitchens’ main theme is that God did not create man, but rather man created God. Using examples ranging from the root of Judaism and Islam’s taboo against pork, Mohammed’s taking of a nine-year-old wife and Hitchens’ well known invective against Mother Theresa, Hitchens executes religion in a book that is as literary and articulate as any of the works that make up the English literature canon.
Despite his acerbic prose, Hitchens is not a physically imposing man. He is of average height and slightly stocky. His ideas may be cutting edge, but his wardrobe is distinctly Miami Vice. A neutral double breasted suit, no tie, brown loafers, rose-tinted aviators – ironic for someone whose writings are anything but optimistic. His appearance may not be intimidating, but the second he opens his mouth, you begin to feel intellectually inferior. Hitchens speaks with a voice more suited to a villain in a James Bond movie than a former Trotskyite Journalist. His British accent combined with the bass amplifier seemingly attached to his larynx gives his words an almost divine authority. Watch a clip on YouTube of him debating ideological foes like Muslim, Catholic and Christian fundamentalist spokespeople on one of the many U.S. cable news talk shows and you’ll see. Mere days after legendary televangelist Jerry Falwell died, Hitchens was on CNN, dragging the dead man’s name through the mud in an interview with Anderson Cooper.
Anderson Cooper: Whether or not you agree in his reading of The Bible, you don’t think he was sincere in what he spoke?
Christopher Hitchens: No, I think he was a conscious charlatan, and bully, and fraud and I think if he actually read the Bible at all…and I doubt he could actually read any long book at all, that he did so only in the most huckster-ish, as we say, Bible-pounding way.
Despite praising him as a “profoundly moral thinker”, Margaret Wente, a columnist for The Globe and Mail newspaper has no illusions about the methods he utilizes to get his point across. “Hitchens is an unabashed polemicist,” she says. “He goes straight for the jugular. I think that’s a style that’s more familiar in Britain than America…it makes North Americans terribly uncomfortable, and also secretly thrilled.” One need only look at his articles and testimony in front of the Vatican denouncing Mother Theresa to see that he takes his role as agent provocateur seriously.
Two hours before Hitchens’ speaking engagement, Hitchens and I met privately in the office of Rabbi John Moscowitz, the senior Rabbi at Holy Blossom. The interview began earnestly enough, with several mundane questions regarding his book and its reception internationally, including within the Muslim world. As someone who hails from a strong Rabbinical lineage, I could not resist asking about Hitchens’ Jewish heritage. His maternal grandmother was born as a Jew, and although he was raised as a Christian (he did not discover his Jewish roots until 1987), he considers himself as a Jew, based on the fact that Jewish descent is matrilineal. Furthermore, Hitchens’ ex-wife is Jewish, and every year they hold a Passover Seder, the traditional Passover dinner for their daughter. A Seder is by no means a cultural event. It is a long, ornate ceremony full of ritual and liturgy, thanking God for emancipating the Jews from slavery in Ancient Egypt. Why would such a firm non-believer participate in such a ritual?
“Well,” he says “it’s important to me that my children know what their grandparents and parents went through and why they’re here. In this case, what they might have believed, or what they might not have believed, and so that they [his youngest daughter] have a choice. And I feel very strongly about the survival and the continuity of the Jewish people.”
Rabbi Moscowitz asks the inevitable “why?” before I get the chance. “I’ve never had to justify it to myself. I just do,” says Hitchens. “I noticed from reading, travelling and studying history, countries where that survival was called into question, the human species was in bad shape. Judeophobia is an incredibly bad sign among the culture and among humans of something gravely larger. That has to impress one, even if one doesn’t feel tribal. The Jewish people have been the vectors of respectful learning for history, for memory, other things without which I think human existence is virtually pointless.”
“I’ve never had to justify it to myself. I just do.” That sounds like the self-justification of someone who possesses, blind faith, a raw, visceral conviction as opposed to well thought out rational argument. Yes, he did justify his sentiments by mentioning the tradition of scholarly learning and the amusing tendency of societies to falter after they have persecuted Jews (see: Spain after the Inquisition, Germany after 1945,) but surely there must be something else at work. How can he say this with a straight face when he devotes an entire chapter in his book to what he calls “The Nightmare of the Old Testament.”
Even if it is Jewish culture Hitchens admires, there is still an inescapable fact which could expose a chink in his anti-theist armour. The root of all Jewish culture, from matzah ball soup to Fiddler on the Roof is all invariably intertwined with Judaism in its religious form. Even the “respectful learning” Hitchens speaks of has its roots in religion. “Jews were obligated by the Oral Laws to teach their children certain things, and literacy was among them,” says Yvette Lerner, who attended Hitchens’ lecture and is a Hebrew language instructor at Beth Tzedec synagogue, which belongs to the more religious Conservative movement. Many young Jews may profess to be “culturally Jewish” (in other words, secular) but they will still light Hanukkah candles or celebrate Bar Mitzvahs or dress up for Purim, the Jewish version of Halloween. All of these are rooted in religious, not cultural practices. Despite the seeming contradiction, Lerner feels that she understands the rationale behind this behaviour. “I think that there’s something, especially within us [Jews] that gnaws at us,” says Lerner. “There’s something innate that makes us want to believe in something. My brother didn’t make an effort to be Jewish through his entire life, yet he still studied Talmud throughout his life.”
Hitchens’ lecture was essentially a condensed version of the message in God Is Not Great. He is a dynamic, fluid speaker who combines equal parts good diction, lucid arguments and humorous examples of the absurdities of religion that appear in his book as well as in the numerous print and broadcast interviews given by Hitchens. The most widely known example involves a hypothetical situation where a group of strange men approach Hitchens. Would he feel more or less safe if he knew that the group of men had just come from a prayer meeting. The disarming, humorous response from Hitchens is that he’s had that, among locales that start with the letter “B” alone, he’s has that experience in Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem and in every instance he would have felt safer with atheists. These cute yet hollow anecdotes are a Hitchens trademark. A disarming bit of dark humour mixed in with sharp rhetoric to disarm and convince his audience. “He doesn’t always take the slash and burn route,” says Wente. “I think his talk at Holy Blossom was an attempt to persuade his audience.”
Judging by the immense line-ups to meet Hitchens and have him autograph copies of God Is Not Great, he seemed to have attracted a following. Others, like the Hebrew teacher Lerner, were already fans despite their differing views on religion. “I read him in Vanity Fair every month” she said as she clutched her copy of God Is Not Great. Hitchens’ private remarks seem to betray more goodwill towards religions in private than he ever would in public. If religion really does “poison everything”, then how does he reconcile his views on the irreconcilably linked faith and culture of Judaism, not to mention the awe-inspiring works of Shakespeare and other artists for which Hitchens believes “Biblical literacy is necessary.”
Rabbi Moscowitz recognizes the inherent discord between Hitchens public stance and his private remarks. “I think it’s contradictory,” he says, “but I think its part of who he is.” Rabbi Moscowitz, who was introduced to Hitchens through their “mutual friend David Frum (the former Bush administration speechwriter and National Post columnist)”, feels that there is more to Hitchens than his well publicized vitriol. “I think he’s more curious about religion than it might appear. He’s certainly not a believer, but he’s very open to the positive aspects of religion – some religions anyways.”
Great polemicists get their message across by making offensive and unpopular statements designed to shock and offend. Clearly, Christopher Hitchens is at the top of his game. But Hitchens, as an author, journalist and an atheist, should adhere to the highest standards of rational thinking and intellectual rigor. In light of his private remarks, however, it appears that there are inconsistencies within his arguments that should be reconciled by someone of his stature. Until he can resolve these contradictions, I am unconvinced that religion really does poison everything.
-Derek Kreindler
Christopher Hitchens enters the room to thundering applause that sounds like the voice of God, shuffles to the podium, his face red, the clapping sustained, and clenches the sides of a lectern, calmly looking outwards. Such a reception is not uncommon for Hitchens, who has enjoyed a long career as a polemicist on all points of the political spectrum, while contributing to publications such as The Atlantic, Vanity Fair and The Nation. What makes tonight’s talk different from the myriad of other anti-religious diatribes he’s delivered at college campuses, private functions and television appearances is the venue. He’s going to speak for nearly an hour on how, as he says at the beginning of his speech, “religion poisons everything.” In a synagogue. And the audience, nearly all of them Jewish, are acknowledging him with applause. Everyone in attendance knows what they’re in for, an all out assault on the beliefs they hold dearest. “I think his aggressiveness is very effective. It's one of the reasons that he has such a huge following,” says audience member Harrison Jordan. He’s not too concerned about Hitchens making a mockery of his faith. “Besides the abundance of people claiming to be the Jewish Messiah, there’s not much that’s ludicrous about Judaism.”
Hitchens was invited to speak at Holy Blossom Temple, in a lecture series dealing with the importance of religion in contemporary society. On the political spectrum, the Reform movement (which Holy Blossom is affiliated with) can be equated to the NDP. Placards calling for an end to the genocide in Darfur regularly dot the front lawn facing a busy Toronto street, homosexuality is cast in a more favourable light, and the synagogue itself is modeled after a church, all in keeping with the Reform movement’s principle of bringing modernity to Judaism. Inviting one of the most prominent atheists to deliver a lecture on why all religions are a scourge seems equal parts peculiar and appropriate. As the title of his book would suggest, Hitchens is out to eradicate whatever credibility religion may retain within society. Hitchens’ main theme is that God did not create man, but rather man created God. Using examples ranging from the root of Judaism and Islam’s taboo against pork, Mohammed’s taking of a nine-year-old wife and Hitchens’ well known invective against Mother Theresa, Hitchens executes religion in a book that is as literary and articulate as any of the works that make up the English literature canon.
Despite his acerbic prose, Hitchens is not a physically imposing man. He is of average height and slightly stocky. His ideas may be cutting edge, but his wardrobe is distinctly Miami Vice. A neutral double breasted suit, no tie, brown loafers, rose-tinted aviators – ironic for someone whose writings are anything but optimistic. His appearance may not be intimidating, but the second he opens his mouth, you begin to feel intellectually inferior. Hitchens speaks with a voice more suited to a villain in a James Bond movie than a former Trotskyite Journalist. His British accent combined with the bass amplifier seemingly attached to his larynx gives his words an almost divine authority. Watch a clip on YouTube of him debating ideological foes like Muslim, Catholic and Christian fundamentalist spokespeople on one of the many U.S. cable news talk shows and you’ll see. Mere days after legendary televangelist Jerry Falwell died, Hitchens was on CNN, dragging the dead man’s name through the mud in an interview with Anderson Cooper.
Anderson Cooper: Whether or not you agree in his reading of The Bible, you don’t think he was sincere in what he spoke?
Christopher Hitchens: No, I think he was a conscious charlatan, and bully, and fraud and I think if he actually read the Bible at all…and I doubt he could actually read any long book at all, that he did so only in the most huckster-ish, as we say, Bible-pounding way.
Despite praising him as a “profoundly moral thinker”, Margaret Wente, a columnist for The Globe and Mail newspaper has no illusions about the methods he utilizes to get his point across. “Hitchens is an unabashed polemicist,” she says. “He goes straight for the jugular. I think that’s a style that’s more familiar in Britain than America…it makes North Americans terribly uncomfortable, and also secretly thrilled.” One need only look at his articles and testimony in front of the Vatican denouncing Mother Theresa to see that he takes his role as agent provocateur seriously.
Two hours before Hitchens’ speaking engagement, Hitchens and I met privately in the office of Rabbi John Moscowitz, the senior Rabbi at Holy Blossom. The interview began earnestly enough, with several mundane questions regarding his book and its reception internationally, including within the Muslim world. As someone who hails from a strong Rabbinical lineage, I could not resist asking about Hitchens’ Jewish heritage. His maternal grandmother was born as a Jew, and although he was raised as a Christian (he did not discover his Jewish roots until 1987), he considers himself as a Jew, based on the fact that Jewish descent is matrilineal. Furthermore, Hitchens’ ex-wife is Jewish, and every year they hold a Passover Seder, the traditional Passover dinner for their daughter. A Seder is by no means a cultural event. It is a long, ornate ceremony full of ritual and liturgy, thanking God for emancipating the Jews from slavery in Ancient Egypt. Why would such a firm non-believer participate in such a ritual?
“Well,” he says “it’s important to me that my children know what their grandparents and parents went through and why they’re here. In this case, what they might have believed, or what they might not have believed, and so that they [his youngest daughter] have a choice. And I feel very strongly about the survival and the continuity of the Jewish people.”
Rabbi Moscowitz asks the inevitable “why?” before I get the chance. “I’ve never had to justify it to myself. I just do,” says Hitchens. “I noticed from reading, travelling and studying history, countries where that survival was called into question, the human species was in bad shape. Judeophobia is an incredibly bad sign among the culture and among humans of something gravely larger. That has to impress one, even if one doesn’t feel tribal. The Jewish people have been the vectors of respectful learning for history, for memory, other things without which I think human existence is virtually pointless.”
“I’ve never had to justify it to myself. I just do.” That sounds like the self-justification of someone who possesses, blind faith, a raw, visceral conviction as opposed to well thought out rational argument. Yes, he did justify his sentiments by mentioning the tradition of scholarly learning and the amusing tendency of societies to falter after they have persecuted Jews (see: Spain after the Inquisition, Germany after 1945,) but surely there must be something else at work. How can he say this with a straight face when he devotes an entire chapter in his book to what he calls “The Nightmare of the Old Testament.”
Even if it is Jewish culture Hitchens admires, there is still an inescapable fact which could expose a chink in his anti-theist armour. The root of all Jewish culture, from matzah ball soup to Fiddler on the Roof is all invariably intertwined with Judaism in its religious form. Even the “respectful learning” Hitchens speaks of has its roots in religion. “Jews were obligated by the Oral Laws to teach their children certain things, and literacy was among them,” says Yvette Lerner, who attended Hitchens’ lecture and is a Hebrew language instructor at Beth Tzedec synagogue, which belongs to the more religious Conservative movement. Many young Jews may profess to be “culturally Jewish” (in other words, secular) but they will still light Hanukkah candles or celebrate Bar Mitzvahs or dress up for Purim, the Jewish version of Halloween. All of these are rooted in religious, not cultural practices. Despite the seeming contradiction, Lerner feels that she understands the rationale behind this behaviour. “I think that there’s something, especially within us [Jews] that gnaws at us,” says Lerner. “There’s something innate that makes us want to believe in something. My brother didn’t make an effort to be Jewish through his entire life, yet he still studied Talmud throughout his life.”
Hitchens’ lecture was essentially a condensed version of the message in God Is Not Great. He is a dynamic, fluid speaker who combines equal parts good diction, lucid arguments and humorous examples of the absurdities of religion that appear in his book as well as in the numerous print and broadcast interviews given by Hitchens. The most widely known example involves a hypothetical situation where a group of strange men approach Hitchens. Would he feel more or less safe if he knew that the group of men had just come from a prayer meeting. The disarming, humorous response from Hitchens is that he’s had that, among locales that start with the letter “B” alone, he’s has that experience in Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem and in every instance he would have felt safer with atheists. These cute yet hollow anecdotes are a Hitchens trademark. A disarming bit of dark humour mixed in with sharp rhetoric to disarm and convince his audience. “He doesn’t always take the slash and burn route,” says Wente. “I think his talk at Holy Blossom was an attempt to persuade his audience.”
Judging by the immense line-ups to meet Hitchens and have him autograph copies of God Is Not Great, he seemed to have attracted a following. Others, like the Hebrew teacher Lerner, were already fans despite their differing views on religion. “I read him in Vanity Fair every month” she said as she clutched her copy of God Is Not Great. Hitchens’ private remarks seem to betray more goodwill towards religions in private than he ever would in public. If religion really does “poison everything”, then how does he reconcile his views on the irreconcilably linked faith and culture of Judaism, not to mention the awe-inspiring works of Shakespeare and other artists for which Hitchens believes “Biblical literacy is necessary.”
Rabbi Moscowitz recognizes the inherent discord between Hitchens public stance and his private remarks. “I think it’s contradictory,” he says, “but I think its part of who he is.” Rabbi Moscowitz, who was introduced to Hitchens through their “mutual friend David Frum (the former Bush administration speechwriter and National Post columnist)”, feels that there is more to Hitchens than his well publicized vitriol. “I think he’s more curious about religion than it might appear. He’s certainly not a believer, but he’s very open to the positive aspects of religion – some religions anyways.”
Great polemicists get their message across by making offensive and unpopular statements designed to shock and offend. Clearly, Christopher Hitchens is at the top of his game. But Hitchens, as an author, journalist and an atheist, should adhere to the highest standards of rational thinking and intellectual rigor. In light of his private remarks, however, it appears that there are inconsistencies within his arguments that should be reconciled by someone of his stature. Until he can resolve these contradictions, I am unconvinced that religion really does poison everything.
-Derek Kreindler
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