Great news for us Berry admirers:

The farmer-writer Wendell Berry will deliver the 41st annual Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts announced on Monday. The lecture, to be given on April 23 at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, is considered the federal government’s most prestigious honor for intellectual achievement in the humanities.

The hardest thing to convey is how lovely it all is and how that loveliness seems all you need. The ghosts that haunted you in New York or Pittsburgh will haunt you anywhere you go, because they’re your ghosts and the house they haunt is you. But they become disconcerted, shaken confused for half a minute, and in that moment on a December at four o’clock when you’re walking from the bus stop to the rue Saint-Dominique and the lights are twinkling across the river — only twinkling in the bateaux mouches, luring the tourists, but stil … — you feel as if you’ve escaped your ghosts if only because, being you, they’re transfixed looking at the lights in the trees on the other bank, too, which they haven’t seen before, either.

It’s true that you can’t run away from yourself. But we were right: you can run away.

— Adam Gopnik, from his book Paris to the Moon, a memoir of living  a few years with his family in the most beautiful city on earth

Or, as Noah Millman better puts it, “Running Towards, Not Away.”  That blog post is his comment on my earlier entry about the gay tastemaker Tim Gunn and his confession that he’s spent nearly 30 years as a celibate. Gunn explained that it’s the result of a traumatic break-up, and a desire to avoid contracting HIV. Noah writes:

But third, all of the above having been said, I should like Dreher to reconsider his parting shot. I’m not a Christian, so it’s not really my place to opine on this, so I’ll let Leo Tolstoy make the argument that if you run away from your worldly fears into religious seclusion, you will find yourself alone with precisely what you are running from. The sacrifice of a sexual life might be an easy or a difficult one for a novice to make – and I can see the value of the choice in either case – but I’m pretty sure that, easy or difficult, it should be a sacrifice for something, and that that something is what matters. And that one source of the sexual scandals in the Catholic Church that Dreher is very familiar with was a refusal to recognize the problem with someone choosing a religious life precisely because that life seems to be a refuge from an unintegrated and disturbing aspect of the self.

The “parting shot” to which he refers was my bringing up monasteries as places where celibates live in community, and do good. My remark was meant to draw attention to the fact that there are many people — men and women — who embrace celibacy, and who even form communities for mutual support in living out their vows in a healthy way. Noah is, of course, correct in his observations. People who join the priesthood or the monastery (not all monks are priests) to run away from their sexuality are escaping nothing. This would also be true of a compulsive womanizer who married thinking that the strictures of matrimony would give him the framework he needed to deal with his lust. When I married, I voluntarily surrendered my sexual freedom for the sake of fidelity to my wife. It was a yoke accepted out of love — a gift given, and a gift received. It seems to me that if celibacy is to be a spiritually and emotionally fruitful state, it should ideally be entered into in that way.

Now, from what he’s said about his own choice, Tim Gunn appears to have embraced celibacy out of fear — fear of emotional pain, and fear of disease. While this is not ideal, obviously, I don’t think we’re in a position to condemn Gunn. (Noah agrees, saying, “Personally, I think a model of mental health that says “you can’t be afraid of anything” – as opposed to a model that says, “know yourself, including knowing your fears” – strikes me as significantly over-stringent… .”) Perhaps Gunn knows his own emotional limits. My wife was talking to me the other night about a friend who is struggling with a lot right now, and said that we should be careful not to expect too much of our friend, who ideally ought to be doing this, that, and the other, but who may not be able to do those things because our friend is overwhelmed. It’s a point worth considering. Plus, the fear of contracting HIV is far from unrealistic.

In my rather different case, I chose to live chastely after my conversion not because it was fun, but because it was expected of me — and by that time, I had gotten pretty sick of where following my own will, instead of God’s, had taken me in my life. I didn’t enjoy it one bit. But I did enjoy the effect learning how to discipline my desires was having on me, over time. I really do believe that if not for that ascesis, I would not have had the emotional and spiritual maturity to recognize the treasure standing before me when I met the woman who would become my wife. My point is simply that even though I didn’t choose chastity because it promised a life of butterflies and fluffy bunnies — indeed, I chose it for reasons that are probably a lot closer to Tim Gunn’s than any ideal (because I knew in my heart, and from my experience, that one way or another, the other way meant death) — I saw over time the good reason this ascesis is required. But I started out with only faith that this was for the Good, a good that I could not experience at that point, but that I hoped to one day understand. And one day, I did.

It’s all about the spirit in which ascesis is entered into. Many of us will know a reformed alcoholic who will not allow himself a single drink, for fear that he won’t be able to handle it, and that it will destroy his life. I think we would greatly respect a man like that, even as we might feel sorry for him to a certain degree. At least he knows his personal limits, and is willing to do what is necessary to preserve his own spiritual, mental, and physical health. Perhaps it’s like that with Tim Gunn.

Finally, I would like to say that monasteries can be places where one can escape from oneself, and confront one’s own demons within the context of a loving and supportive community. But that can only work, it seems to me, if one is determined to confront those demons, instead of merely escaping them (as if that were possible), and if one’s community is also actively working with one to confront those demons.

Horrific story developing at a Los Angeles elementary school:

An elementary school in South Los Angeles was left reeling Friday after authorities arrested a second teacher accused of lewd acts with students.

The arrest of Miramonte Elementary School teacher Martin Bernard Springer, 49, came three days after L.A. prosecutors accused former teacher Mark Berndt of bizarre acts in his classroom that have generated national attention.

Berndt, 61, allegedly spoon-fed his semen to blindfolded children as part of what he called a “tasting game.” Police have collected hundreds of disturbing photos; in some, children are shown with a milky substance around their mouths.

The allegations against Springer, a second-grade teacher from Alhambra, come from two students he allegedly touched improperly within the last three years.

More:

Also on Friday, more people came forward to say that they had complained to school officials about Berndt but that their concerns were ignored.

You know it’s a crazy world when Jezebel, of all places, makes sense:

That majority of “good” teachers,” though, may ultimately suffer the collateral damage caused by a growing public outrage with a system that seems powerless to protect children from sexual predators and assures that even a teacher who exploited his position of authority, like Berndt is accused of doing, will retain his lifetime health benefits from L.A. Unified and a pension of $4,000 a month.

This is what most outraged people about the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church: not so much that it happened, but that people in authority who could have stopped it either pretended it wasn’t happening or denied it. That, plus the system seemed so powerless to protect kids.

That this is going on in the public school system in LA should  tell us that it’s not just a Catholic thing, but it’s a facet of all human cultures and institutions: to close ranks, to look the other way, to protect their own. It’s part of the human stain — but it is worse when those institutions to which people entrust their children — schools, churches — fail in this way. Similarly, it is always worse to find that a cop — the person entrusted with upholding the law — has in truth been breaking it.

Anyway, given the headline I’ve put on this thing, take it away, Mark Shea. 

UPDATE: The LA school district has sacked the entire staff at the Miramonte Elementary School over this. The. Entire. Staff. So at least the Superintendent of Schools takes this stuff more seriously than the retired Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles. Or, if you read down into the story, it may be just a cosmetic gesture.

There are rumors.  Matthew Cantarino at First Things observes:

But an event like this, if it does indeed occur, would represent such a poetic, almost-unbelievable Medieval occurrence that it is bound to seem, to many of us in the first world, like some sort of political ploy or cynical biographical touch. Yet even if political motives figure in Castro’s decision (which they no doubt do to some extent), that should not necessarily not take away from the enormity of the event. A political leader’s conversion, especially one whose entire governmental philosophy has at its core atheistic materialism, has to be scrutinized for the public effect it will have. In Castro’s case, it is difficult to conceive how the effect would be anything but an enormous positive for Cuba’s repressed Christian community.

I hope it is true. If so, we’ll know it’s for real not when Castro goes through the sacramental motions, but when he opens the gulag doors and sets his political prisoners free.

Did any of you see the movie “The Help”? I didn’t. The black essayist Toure’ saw it, and despised it, for interesting reasons. Excerpt:

I don’t see any of The Help‘s journey as pleasurable for anyone: black women are oppressed and fight back in a passive-aggressive way. (Black men are all but invisible in this world.) Whites are mostly evil, or else sheep: soulless and brainless. It’s a Lifetime-y simplistic movie, a Disneyfication of segregation, with a gross and unintentionally comical stereotype parade marching through it. There’s the ditzy blonde who can’t manage to do anything but get dressed. There’s the callous ice queen who thinks blacks have special diseases that can be transmitted by sharing a toilet. There’s the undeterrable do-gooder. And then there are the blacks who are the latest iteration of that Hollywood staple: the magical negro. They are blacks who arrive in the lives of whites with more knowledge and soul and go on to teach whites about life, thus making white lives better.

Magical negroes exist so that the knowledge and spirit that comes from blackness can enlighten or redeem whites who are lost or broken. Think of Will Smith in The Legend of Bagger Vance, Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile, Anthony Mackie in The Adjustment Bureau and Sir Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus in The Matrix. In The Help, Octavia Spencer’s Minnie actually says to a white woman, “Frying chicken just makes you feel better about life.” I must be doing it wrong. Once the ditzy blonde learns to use Crisco properly, she does indeed feel better about life. Even though she has just learned that she’s probably infertile. Minnie helps turn her boss lady into a regular Martha Stewart, and what does she get out of it? The promise of lifetime employment as the family maid. Thank yuh, ma’am. Davis’ Aibileen tells the white kids she’s raising, “You is important,” while being constantly reminded that she is not.

The magical negro role is offensive because despite his or her wisdom and, often, supernatural power, the black character is subordinate to weakened whites. They are there only to help whites.

Read the whole thing.

Again, let me say that I didn’t see “The Help,” so I have no idea how fair this criticism is. But his general point about the Magical Negro strikes me as exactly right — and it reminded me of a comment a reader posted on an earlier thread today, in which he noticed that to a certain kind of person, the Oppressed are meaningful not as actual human beings (for better and for worse), but as symbols that confirm that person’s worldview, and make them feel good about themselves. In other words, they aren’t people, only therapeutic totems. A while back, when Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” was just out, the black critic Stanley Crouch tore him to bits by accusing him of sacrificing art to ideology. Lee had remarked in an interview that blacks needed to “control” their images in film. That set Crouch off. He said rather than seek to “control” the ways blacks are portrayed on film, they should be trying instead to expand that range of images. Because that’s what real life is like. I can well imagine why a critic like Toure’ would find a movie like “The Help” to be patronizing and dehumanizing with its good intentions.

But it’s fair to ask: what is the alternative? Can you imagine a film that explored the more morally complex, even problematic, side of race in America, in which blacks are victimizers as well as victims? Would it not make a lot of people very squeamish, and find itself condemned for racism? What studio, which artist, needs that? Between the rigid racialism of someone like Spike Lee, and the do-gooder patronism of something like “The Help,” where is the middle ground for filmmakers who want to explore race as it is actually lived in America, as opposed to how bien-pensants wish it were lived, to set down their cameras and start filming?

I thought Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino” was perhaps the best cinematic study of race, bigotry, and racial identity in America that I’d seen in ages. It didn’t deny that Eastwood’s character was a bigot, but it also showed his complex humanity — and that of the Asian kid he took under his wing. The film showed how racism can be overcome, but also how racism from within a minority community — the appeal to racial solidarity among the Asians that enabled the gang to prey upon weaker Asians — can cause oppression.

Eastwood could do this, I think, in part because he used a racial group (the Hmong people of Southeast Asia) that few people had heard of, therefore had not hardened their opinions about. Could you make something like that about American whites and American blacks? Could you make something like that about American Anglos and American Latinos? I don’t know. It would be an extremely risky proposition, artistically and financially. Eastwood also could afford to take that chance because he’s Clint Eastwood, and has nothing to prove, or to lose.

Hollywood, and American popular culture, went for so long demonizing blacks that it’s unsurprising to find it sanctifying them. When we all arrive collectively at the point where people are treated simply as people, not as therapeutic totems, then we will have gotten to a better place.

Three cheers for Newsweek (!) for having the inspiration to invite Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the ex-Muslim turned atheist, to write about the widespread oppression and persecution of Christians throughout the Islamic world — and to make it a cover story. Excerpt from Hirsi Ali’s essay:

You’ve heard of the ‘Hell House’ experience, this theatrical undertaking some Evangelical churches do around Halloween? The idea is to mimic the Halloween ‘haunted house’ carnival experience, with a Christian spin. Hell Houses are an immersive experience designed to expose those who go through it to the horrors of various sins, with the goal of scaring them straight — that is, frightening them into behaving in a morally correct way.

Well, there is apparently a PC version of Hell House, called the Tunnel of Oppression. It’s been around since 1993. According to a website for UNC-Chapel Hill’s 2011 Tunnel of Oppression, here’s what it’s about:

The Tunnel of Oppression is a tour that will engage students in an immersive experience of scenes where participants will experience first hand different forms of oppression through interactive acting, viewing monologues, and multimedia. Participants directly experience the following scenes of oppression: ability, class, body image, immigration, homophobia, genocide, religious oppression, relationship violence, and race.  All of the scenes have been written with the Chapel Hill students in mind.  Some scenes are direct monologues from student experiences on campus, others deal with local hot topics, including a local immigration issue that has been a major story in the news and the student newspaper.  At the completion of the Tunnel experience participants will go through an active 30 minute processing session  where they will discuss the experience and learn how they can “rethink their role” in creating positive social change.

Ah. So students will have counselors on hand to present the p.c. gospel to them at the end of the tunnel, and lead them towards conversion. Fun! It turns out that my alma mater, LSU, is opening the Tunnel of Oppression on campus this week. Check it out:

The Department of Residential Life is hosting the Tunnel of Oppression at Kirby Smith Hall on Tuesday, February 7, 2012, from 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. All students, faculty and staff are invited and encouraged to attend this exciting and provocative social awareness/social justice event!

…The Department of Residential Life believes that this program will be exceptional experience for the LSU community. The Tunnel is meant to be impactful and our hope that is that will initiate an ongoing campus wide discussion on oppression and social justice issues.

Well, if there’s one thing Your Working Boy endorses, it’s impactfulness, though my guess is that the campus-wide discussion on topics confined to the concerns of the cultural left  oppression and social justice issues will only take place among those who already agree with the point of view the TOO will express. Nevertheless, this PC Hell House bears a visit. If there was ever an opportunity for campus satirists, it’s this one. I am only sad that my pal John Zmirak is no longer on campus to serve as an unofficial Tunnel Of Oppression docent.

The LSU sponsors report that at other campuses, the TOO “has been found by students as a valuable format on educating the campus population on oppression and issues of social justice.” Really? How do they know that? One thing I’ve never quite gotten about the Hell House thing: does anyone who is not already converted, or highly sympathetic to the message, actually go to these things? Is the person most need of conversion (from the point of view of the program sponsors) — the irreligious immoralist in the case of Hell Houses, and heteroculturalist insensitivos in the case of the TOO — really likely to submit to the ministrations of the Righteous, except in a mocking, ironic way?

UPDATE:  Thank you, reader MEH, for the link to the South Park clip tracking the boys’ visit to the Museum of Tolerance. Perfect. This is slightly NSFW, by the way:

Did you hear that the finance minister of India told Great Britain that India didn’t need the $440 million in foreign aid the UK earmarked for his increasingly prosperous nation last year? And that the British government  — which serves a people who pay lots of taxes and are very hard-pressed economically at the moment — pathetically begged the Indians to take the cash to avoid politically embarrassing it? Walter Russell Mead makes a great point:

But when countries don’t want the money, we shouldn’t force it down their throats.  The American ambassador to India should ask Mr. Mukherjee if US aid is as useless as Britain’s.  If the answer is yes, let’s grit our teeth, live with the humiliation, and use the money for something else.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, annual US aid to India is around $70 million. I suspect we could put it to good use in this country.