I haven't seen very much of Stephen Colbert's tv show, because when I have seen him I didn't think he was really that funny. The opening is quite funny, but to my taste that's the best part. My first impression was that he was just another smirker, like Jon Stewart, but I think he's really better than that. This appreciation of him by Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review makes him sound much better than that. It's not enough to make me watch his show; there are too many other more interesting or important things to do. But having read this, I respect him in a way I didn't before.
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Speaking of Jon Stewart, there's some amusement in the fact that a Rally to Restore Sanity, a rally "for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat" is being organized by the guy responsible for this. I've only seen Stewart a few times, but on the basis of those I think you probably have to be a member of the church of the left to enjoy him very much; unbelievers are likely to wonder what all the enthusiasm is about. (I was pleased, some months ago, to find that Christopher Hitchens doesn't think much of him, either.) No doubt it's always the nature of political humor that it appeals more to those of the same persuasion–one man's wit is another's hate speech in this context. But I wonder if that isn't even more the case now, with the political climate so polarized.
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It's always partly funny and partly disturbing when left-wing academics talk about the right. For people who pride themselves on being smart and rational, and who habitually criticize others for failing to understand those who are different, they have an awfully hard time dealing with the possibility that people can disagree with them without being evil. It was comforting to read that most of the participants in this meeting were unreceptive to the idea exploring legal mechanisms to "crush" the Tea Party. "Prospects for an American Neofascism," indeed. I think that in some obscure way they get off on play-scaring themselves this way, and that they're a little disappointed when fascism fails to appear (as it has persisted in doing since the '60s). Likewise for some of their counterparts on the right–I think Obamacare is a really terrible plan, but, come on, it's not Kristallnacht.
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I laughed out loud at the self-contradiction in the title of this album.
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I was pretty depressed a few days ago (I'm better now) and I often found myself thinking about how much of life consists of disappointment, and fighting off the idea that it's not really worth it (which is probably what I would think if I didn't believe in God). Monday night, out for a walk, I saw clouds passing swiftly across the still-nearly-full moon–billowy cumulus clouds, but thinned by the strong south wind that was pushing them along. Most of the time the moon was visible, at least faintly, now and then coming into clear view through a space in the clouds or being completely obscured by an unusually thick one. And I thought what a privilege to see this.
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This touched me.
Light On Dark Water 
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