Monthly Archives: June 2005

Who reads the Slime, anyway?

Mr. Crankypants here, sneaking onto the blog while my stupid alter ego, Dan, is away at some inane church event.

Mr. Crankypants would like to know what’s up with the New York Times? While the Chicago Tribune gave front page coverage to the exhumation of Emmet Till on Wednesday, the New York Times (or the New York Slime as Mr. Crankypants likes to call it) buried the story deep in the first section of the paper — and put it below the fold, no less. And their coverage continues to be less than satisfactory.

What — the editors at the New York Slime think only white people read their paper? — and do the editors really think only black people care about the Emmet Till story? Don’t they realize that the Emmet Till case is one of the biggest unresolved moral narratives of our times, impacting all our lives?

Silly Mr. Crankypants. Of course they realize all that. Of course they’re not aiming their newspaper at upper middle class white people! No, no, no. It’s just that the Emmet Till story is taking place in the Midwest, near Chicago, of all godforsaken places — which means it doesn’t matter on the East Coast. Moral, schmoral — it’s the Midw–

— oops, the alter ego must be back, his key is turning in the lock — don’t want to get into an argument at the moment — gotta run —

Celebrity Scientology

Yesterday’s New York Times reported that Tom Cruise has been “raising eyebrows” with his recent behavior — said behavior including his active promotion of Scientology. Supposedly, movie studio executives had to endure a four-hour promotion of Scientology in order to be able to talk contracts with the star. And Cruise was allowed to have a tent promoting Scientology on the set of his most recent movie, “War of the Worlds,” even though no one else was allowed to promote their religions on the set.

But the Times missed the juiciest bit about Cruise’s recent promotion of Scientology, a new religious movement founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. The Times noted that Cruise has publicly criticized actress Brooke Shields for taking anti-depressants to help her with post-partum depression. But we had to turn to yesterday’s Chicago Tribune for the direct quotes, and Ms. Shields’s response.

In a conversation with Access Hollywood, Cruise said Shields was “irresponsible” for taking meds to help with her depression, saying, “When someone says it has helped them, it is to cope. It didn’t cure anything. There is no science. There is nothing that can cure them whatsoever.” No, says Cruise (who must believe he’s some kind of expert on the subject), women should use exercise and vitamins to cure postpartum depression — and presumably, though this was left unsaid, he was hinting that Shields would have been best to join a local Church of Scientology.

The Tribune quotes Shield’s response from a recent issue of People magazine: “Tom should stick to saving the world from aliens and let women who are experiencing postpartum depression decide what treatment options are best for them.”

Ms. Shields was perhaps snarkier than she needed to be. I’d put it this way. Good manners dictates that Cruise may try to convince other people in private to give up modern medical science in favor of his religious alternative, but he may not go around making snide remarks in public about people who choose to follow other paths. Religious tolerance in our society depends on such good manners. I hope Tom Cruise learns some good manners, and learns that religious tolerance requires each of us to maintain good manners in public at all times.

Robert Creeley

I was saddened to learn that poet Robert Creeley died on March 30. Guardian Unlimited carried a nice online appreciation of Creeley’s life and work. Link

How often it seems that we learn more about people after they die than we knew when they were alive. I had read and admired Creeley’s poetry for years, but until I read the obituaries, I didn’t know that he grew up not far from where I grew up — he was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, and spent much of his childhood in West Acton, quite close to Concord where I grew up. And two of his influences were Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams — I spent a lot of time reading Pound in my late teens, and I still love Williams. So I suppose it’s no wonder I have enjoyed Creeley.

Maybe more than enjoyed Creeley. I’m convinced that poetry grows out of the place the poet is from. Creeley was a New Englander from his birth in 1926 until 1951 — New England was bred in his bones. His poetry flowered elsewhere: Black Mountain, New Mexico, Bolinas, New York state. Like so many other New Englanders, he had to get out of New England, travel widely, in order to write. Maybe it was the Pacific ocean, and the Mediterranean, that really allowed him to write what he wrote.

Creeley wrote in his poem Here:

What
has happened
makes
the world.

That’s what Creeley says. I’d say that you don’t have a place until you have a poet writing poems about it.

You can find some of Creeley’s poems online at the Robert Creeley home page. Link