When You Look Into the Abyss . . .

1. Paul Newman was great. Loved his work as an actor (he knew how to be quiet, and how to just LOOK at something or someone, and conveyed "thinking" better than most actors), and his work as an entrepreneur/philanthropist was pretty damned wonderful, too (and most of the foods are excellent). Smart man, from all accounts. And a funny man. Kind man. Pity he's gone, but he seemed to be suffering badly from the cancer, so at least that's over - he had a long, grand, fulfilled life before that, it sure seems.

Gore Vidal - a close friend of Newman and Joanne Woodward - tells a story in his memoir that Newman recalled about his time in the Navy that sometimes comes to mind and always makes me smile, which goes something like this:

NEWMAN: So anyway, I was up on deck during some downtime, reading. I was reading Nietzsche, in fact, trying to "improve my mind." And this priest who was on the ship walks by and sees what I'm reading and asks me about it, and we start talking and he sits down next to me. And we're having a nice chat. And then he makes a pass at me! Really put me off!
VIDAL: What, homosexuals or Catholicism?
NEWMAN: Neither! Nietzsche!

2. Mark Evanier makes points in two separate post-debate posts that I'd like to repeat.

First, he transcribed something Chris Matthews said - and I go WAY up and down on Mr. Matthews, who can be a real ass (especially regarding women), but sometimes - especially when it comes to matters of history, which he KNOWS, or nailing someone for their weasel language - he can be right on the money. As Evanier notes, Matthews was speaking off-the-cuff, and rambled slightly, but his point was strong:

I thought John McCain made a terrible point tonight. He said if someone dies in battle, someone serving their country because they were ordered to do something in battle, because they were out on a mission . . . you don't pick your missions. You don't pick your wars. When someone dies for their country, they have done that. It's over. They have served their country. They are patriotic. They deserve forever to be remembered and honored. It's not a question of what happens later in that war, or whether that battle was a good one or not, or whether you should continue to fight. By the definition John McCain gave us tonight — and it was a heinous definition — we must continue every war we ever start. Every time we suffer a casualty, we must fight that war indefinitely to achieve the initial objectives set by generals who may well be wrong.

I think that's a very hard argument to make morally 'cause it suggests that war must never end. It suggests that every war that's begun must continue indefinitely until it achieves the political or the military objectives set in the initial context. Contexts change and sometimes wars have to end. The Korean War ended. It was not dishonorable for General Eisenhower to come to Korea and end the war in 1953 that had begun in 1950, ending a war without final victory. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing dishonorable about it. You don't have to complete the mission. You simply have to serve your country honorably when called to do so. So I think John McCain is wrong, demonstrably wrong. I wish sometimes someone would call him on that. Unfortunately, Barack Obama did not tonight.

And one more point Evanier makes himself that has been REALLY bugging me with the repeated recent resurgence of an ancient vampiric war criminal:

The problem with all this arguing about what Henry Kissinger thinks is that it's Henry Kissinger. McCain should be ashamed to have Kissinger as an advisor and Obama should be ashamed to have Kissinger approving one of his positions.

{sigh} Keep the faith, friends.

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid. - FN