Monday music: Pyatnitskaya at 5 a.m.

Is going to be one of those things that will stay with me for a long time.

Head First – Goldfrapp
Bonfires (Live) – Rickie Lee Jones
All the Boogies in the World – White Rainbow
Southbound Train – Travis Tritt
I’ll Be That Girl – Barenaked Ladies
Salty Dog – Flogging Molly
Gettysburg – Ratatat
Bleed – Animal Collective
Nothing’s Wrong – Architecture in Helsinki
Set My Baby Free – Ian Brown

These are the music videos I stared at in a stupor the other night, while outside Moscow, in a dacha in a still-snowy forest, surrounded by opera soloists:

(I love Timbaland. My love knows no bounds. And the soloists agree.)

(I always associate Gorillaz with Moscow, incidentally. Probably because I first really got to know them in Moscow.)

Last night in Moscow: Dakha Brakha

So THAT was fun. A bit more fun than I intended it to be. Always.

And I liked how the crowd really got into it. It couldn’t have just been the eventual effects of alcohol. Dakha Brakha know how to put on a show. I’m not just saying that because I consider Marko (who’se featured in the first picture) a friend. And what a lot of people don’t realize about them, until they really see them in action, is how they manage to combine this weird Ukrainian mysticism with a great sense of humour.

Cardinal Sean Brady saw no evil. Right.

In an odd way, I feel bad for Cardinal Sean Brady & other members of the Irish Catholic clergy (such as the clueless Bishop Brennan – who hilariously chose to ask parishioners for cash in helping deal with abuse victim payouts by stating that ” ‘I did not cause the problem’ is not the response of the Christian” – gosh, if only these people had applied the same logic when they decided whether or not to close ranks and stand in solidarity with child rapists).

I don’t feel bad for them because they are poor dears, caught up in circumstances beyond their control. I doubt that most of them are especially remorseful about the crimes perpetrated within and by their institution. As Pam Spaulding points out, Brady is in full-on defensive mode. He had done nothing wrong, you see! Nothing that wasn’t in accordance with the times! This entire thing reminds me of how Emmanuelle Seigner went to bat for her husband, Roman Polanski, by pointing out that what he did to that teenage girl was not rape! It was just 70’s sex! The 70’s were a wild and crazy time! Sodomizing children was no more unusual than listening to Foghat!

I think Brady and Seigner should hurry up and have an affair. She’ll ditch Roman, he’ll bail on the Roman Catholic Church (see? this whole “Roman” thing means that it’s practically fate), and together they can raise sheep in a particularly remote corner of New Zealand, sparing global society their apologist nonsense.

But yeah, I do feel bad for people who are so completely invested in their power and privilege that they, on one level, are willing to make a total break with reality. It’s a shitty bargain, in the end. It catches up with you in this world or the next, and deservedly so.

What we’re seeing today, really, is yet another confirmation of how little churches have anything to do with God, or even something as relatively concrete as holy texts. In a way, I believe that any religious institution straddles a great paradox – it plays a certain role, but it’s very status as an institution has a tendency to negate the role even as it is being played. Still, sometimes the mistakes that church officials make are so crude, so blatant, SO despicable, that sadness sets in in spite of logic.

Now, if only these powerful men of the cloth had any sadness reserved for all those children they failed so profoundly. Spare a little sadness for Paul Dwyer, maybe? He killed himself after the police failed to bring his rapist, former priest Bill Carney, to justice. Carney was paid off to leave the Church. He has a nice little life in Scotland. He’s married. And Paul Dwyer is dead. Of course, you’re not supposed to have sympathy for suicides, Cardinal Brady. You just set your mouth in an even thinner line, and take care of business, right?

How many Paul Dwyers is that cardinal’s seat worth, anyway?

Ugh.

P.S. Great  comment on Pandagon, by RickMassimo:

“Dr Brady claimed that wider society handled child abuse cases differently in the 1970s. ’There was a culture of silence about this, a culture of secrecy, that’s the way society dealt with it.’”

Yes, and the Catholic Church has always been proud about how in step it is with society at large.

P.P.S. You know, something that has always struck me is the irony of it all, really. Even violent criminals look down on child rapists. You have to let this sink in. These Roman Catholic officials are worse off than some  prick doing 10 to 15 for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.

Tuesday music: be my samurai

Guess what, guys? Die Antwoord got a record deal recently. I know you were on the edge of your seats, wondering if it would actually happen. It did.

Enter the Ninja – Die Antwoord
Bratislava – Beirut
Across the Sea – Weezer
A Letter to Elise – the Cure
Japan Bonus Track – Baby Elephant
Videotape – Radiohead
Mrs. Robinson – Simon & Garfunkel
Things That Scare Me – Neko Case
Blood and Fire – Manu Chao
The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver – Elbow

Rielle Hunter in GQ; wow, someone actually said that they “don’t know if [they] would fully consider her human”?

A friend of mine sent me a link to Rielle Hunter’s GQ interview, and I wound up being more fascinated by the comments than I was by the interview itself. I mean,

“Hunter is definitely a bad person and I don’t know if I would fully consider her human.”

I always knew that American society is pretty batshit when it comes to philandering politicians, but not fully human? What could be more human than adultery? Read your Bible, fool. Or better yet, beat yourself to death with it, and spare us your stupidity.

Do I think it’s awful to cheat on your cancer-stricken wife? Why yes, actually, I do. Do I think it’s shocking or surprising? Not exactly. Face it: people cheat. They’ll cheat in spite of cancer, or because of it. They’ll cheat for no reason at all.

Not  a second goes by without someone’s heart being crudely shattered. It doesn’t matter if you practice monogamy or not. You will still get hurt. You will get mauled. We all do, at one point or another. The entire political landscape of the United States of America would be a less terrifying place if people could just learn to expect this this sort of thing comes with the territory.

The one time I was seriously lied to, so far, I ended up dragging myself to an HIV-testing clinic. It wasn’t a day for grand philosophizing. I was terrified. Did I hold a grudge though? Not exactly. Not then, and not now. Probably because I believed that what happened did not happen due to malice.

Do I believe that Rielle Hunter and John Edwards have some sort of cosmic drippy love thing going? I don’t know. Maybe. None of my business, really. I do find it odd that people feel as though Hunter had no right to speak to the media. Are you kidding me? With all of those books out there? All of the interviews? All the talking heads? She was damn right to tell her side of the story, especially considering the fact that she is now a parent. Because, and I really wish I didn’t have to point this out to any thinking adult – there are always multiple sides to any such debacle.

People who say things like, “and her and John’s daughter will have to live with the humiliation of it” are the same people who perpetuate the humiliation. I honestly wish I could smack them. You want to talk about how sick people are? Look in the mirror.

I think that Hunter is being perceptive when she points out that Edwards was not a real politician. He wasn’t smooth enough. I think that for people like him, going out and having this type of affair, or even falling in love with another woman, it’s an expression of a need to be elsewhere. Of course, a bunch of people got hurt in the process, and by that, I do not mean the voters (anyone who keeps going on about how “hurt” they were by the Edwards revelation without having any direct relationship with the family or the campaign just needs to shut up – you are not hurt, this is not your pain, stop trying to appropriate it). Because that’s what happens. People get hurt. Children get hurt. Cancer patients and loyal wives like Elizabeth Edwards get hurt. And there is no end in sight.

But the American public always has to go and make things worse. Because people are never hurt enough. There’s a curious emotional sadism in our public discourse, and it comes out very sharply when the famous get caught in affairs. It’s like, everyone scrambles to illustrate how much better they are at a time like that. Even though, according to your Jesus Himself, you are not.

What did Jesus say? Even if you so much as look at another woman, it’s as if you’ve already had her. So all of those American Christians who worship at churches that look like big concrete shoeboxes, who pray to keep making those mortgage payments, who have fish stickers on the back of their cars – they’re no better and no worse than Edwards or Hunter, not really. At least according to their own paradoxical religion.

I think the best PR move for Rielle Hunter would have been rending her clothes and pouring ashes on her head. It’s curious that she did no such thing. She says she was in love. She says she is in love. She’s unrepentant, and by doing that, she invites more scorn, because Americans want the big weepy apology, and they get furious when they are denied their political emo-porn. Rielle Hunter has serious balls, I’ll give her that.

This may not be a groovy story about free and amazing love that GQ is trying to sell, but it’s a real story, with consequences. We want everything to be wrapped up in a pretty bow, but it never is.