Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Monday 22 October 2007

A few tones short of an octave

Sometimes this columnist is so dim he's funny.
http://giamusic.com/sacred_music/tabletalk/current.cfm
"We actually sang a little, some received Communion, and we all heard readings from the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures.
It was just like church."
Huh? But somehow, not quite, somehow insufficient to receive his imprimatur?
"Personally, I suspended my usual ire that happens when I consider the high capitalistic background of the patronal family who caused the Gothic structure to rise.
It also boggles my mind to think how many pickles were shoved into jars and how many tomatoes were pureed and poured into millions of bottles to amass a fortune capable of such noblesse oblige."
I don't know much about the Heinz family -- not from the area, I'm assuming this oblique reference is to them? or is it someone named Del Monte? or Hunt?But in any case, what is the point of that?To somehow, despite his shilling for that exercise in unbridled capitalism that is the modern-day Liturgical-Industrial complex in the US, establish his bona fides as an anti-capitalist prole?Ordinarily does he reflect on the corporate and personal sins of those who built every edifice used for good and noble purposes?Does he have trouble keeping his mind on reading when in Carnegie libraries?
And:
"One half of the groom’s pedigree is Mediterranean, which set into motion certain requirements for public rituals like gluttonous intake."
Does he go out of his way to be offensive or is he really that dim? How do ethnic slurs impact on his liberal creds?
Imagine if he were writing about Hindi wedding rituals, or Latin American wedding rituals or Arabic weddings rituals, many of which revolve around -- oh, horror, food consumption in as generous, dare I say? sumptuous amounts as the founders of the feast can muster. Would he talk about the gluttonous intake of Indians, or Guatemalans, or Palestinians?
But finally, how delighted his friends or family must be to have invited him to their weddings or their children's weddings, and to have thereby provided him with fodder for his smug reflections. And how proud in the case of the first, that they meant enough to him to put aside his principles and join them without sitting in judgement on the people who paid for the building in which they were married (Let's hope he changed the time frame, or smudged the details so that they can't be certain it was they whom he chose to insult.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Fred Moleck's Hymn du Jour: Blest are They by David Haas... Yeah, this guy needs to get a clue. I like your description of him at the title. He occasionally has good things to say, but when he's wrong, MAN is he wrong!

-Gavin