While We're At It

By Mitchell Hadley

By the way, you'll indulge me one last bit on Tosca, won't you? There's been a lot of ink (and pixels) spilled on the Met's recent fiasco - er, production - and there is the misocnception that those who hated it are simply tradition-bound trogs who hate any kind of change.

One of our favorite writers, Alex Ross of The New Yorker, has a very nice piece about why this just isn't so - why the ultimate reason for the Met's failure was director Luc Bondy's fundamental misunderstanding (or at least misreading) of the music was a part of it. And do be sure to listen to the soundbites he uses to illustrate his points - this kind of teaching brings back the good old days of Bernstein's Young People's Concerts. (As well as the recent PBS series Keeping Score, and let's hope we see more of that next season!)

Misunderstanding the Church

By Mitchell Hadley

If you're like me (and hopefully you can do better than that), you've run into more than your share of people who just don't get Catholicism. (Unfortunately, many of them happen to be Catholics, but we won't go there just now.) Many times you run into well-meaning, good-intentioned people whose notions of Catholicism have been shaped by years of ignorance about what the Church really teaches.

For those times, as well as for your own education, I suggest Anna Miller's brief 10 Common Misunderstandings of the Catholic Church - EXPLAINED! It's a nice overview of those common mistakes people make, as well as some nice talking points you can use with friends - without, hopefully, things turning into an argument. It's a good piece to keep handy, particularly in these times - for if we aren't prepared to defend our own faith, who will do it for us?

Opera Wednesday

By Mitchell Hadley

One’s reactions to last month’s run of Tosca by the Lyric Opera of Chicago will depend in great part on how you feel about opera in general, and this opera in particular. If you’re of the opinion that opera is stuck in the hidebound past, and that Tosca is little more than a piece of hoary melodrama that needed Luc Bondy’s recent innovations, then you probably wouldn’t much care for this production. If, on the other hand, Franco Zeffirelli's mammoth, opulent setting fits your definition of grand opera, then you were in luck. Count me in the latter camp.

The Lyric purchased Zeffirelli's staging a few years ago from London’s Covent Garden (for whom it had originally been designed) as a 50th anniversary present to itself, and if the sets were starting to show their age a bit, it was still wonderful to see what has become an all-too infrequent occurrence nowadays - the idea of opera as theater. And not minimalist, abstract theater either, but theater as spectacle - grand opera, in other words. While some complain that singers are dwarfed by the mammoth scale of Zeffirelli's sets, I have no sympathy for anyone who fails to be spellbound by the Act 1 finale, the Te Deum sung inside Zeff's massive recreation of the Basilica Sant'Andrea della Valle, jam-packed with altar boys, priests, a bishop vested in mitre and flowing cape, incense billowing about, parishioners kneeling before life-size statues - and yet, in the midst of a stage crammed with people, the lone figure of Scarpia singing of how Tosca makes him forget God, dominates the scene. The set overwhelming the singers? Nonsense.

Many were surprised by the casting of Deborah Voigt and James Morris, better known for heavy Wagnerian opera, as the two leads. However, Voigt portrayed the diva in a concert version of Tosca at the Minnesota Orchestra a couple of years ago, and if it is true that she didn’t bring back the echoes of Callas with her performance, neither was she any less suited for the role than, say, Karita Mattila in the Met’s production.

The Lyric’s rich history with Tosca stretches all the way back to the company’s beginning, with the famed Tito Gobbi, who played Scarpia to Callas’ Tosca in so many great performances. Gobbi was something of a godfather to the newly formed Lyric back in the 50s, appearing as Scarpia in several of those early productions. Perhaps Morris wasn’t quite in that class, but the man who’s become famous as the great Wotan of our time has actually essayed the villainous Baron more times at the Met than he’s played Wagner’s one-eyed anti-hero, making him well aware of the complexities of this deceptive character, who relies on charm in order to wrap his tentacles of corruption through and around his victims. Whereas Bondy was content to portray the police chief as little more than a cheap thug, Zeffirelli (and by extention Morris) understood that, as with the Devil, it is the smooth exterior and unctuous manner that make evil truly chilling. To be able to say that you once saw Morris playing Scarpia is to say a lot.

The real show-stopper is, of course, the showdown between Tosca and Scarpia which closes Act Two (as well as bringing down the curtain on Scarpia himself). It's a scene of immense drama, with Scarpia at his most sinister and Tosca at her most vulnerable. With Puccini's magnificent score as backdrop, it really is possible to imagine this as true drama, the only difference being that the actors are singing rather than speaking their lines. From Tosca's celebrated aria
“Vissi d’arte,” to her sense of utter despair as Scarpia writes her safe-conduct pass, to her sudden and startling discovery of the knife on the table, to Scarpia's smug sense of victory turning stunningly into tragedy, and Tosca's final, frantic escape from the death room - this scene has it all. Were Voigt and Morris up to the task? Absolutely. And for you Bondy fans out there, the candles do make a difference.

As for the third member of this little triangle, Vladimir Galouzine, who plays Tosca's doomed lover Cavaradossi, more than held his own. It's a role for big tenors, from Pavarotti (literally) to Domingo to Corelli and more, but when you've got such famed names at the top of the bill there may be a temptation to make Cavaradossi an afterthought. However, Galouzine wouldn't allow that, particularly in his big first and third act arias, and his performance completes the character's transformation from a doomed man facing execution to a man suddenly filled with hope - only to have it dashed at the end.

But the real star, as is always the case, was Puccini’s magnificent music, and the Lyric's music director, Sir Andrew Davis, brought his orchestra home in style under what could only be described as unique circumstances - the musicians, playing without a contract, actually held an informational picket outside the theater prior to opening night, and the threat of a walkout was present throughout the initial performances.

No fear on this score or any other, for that matter. This was Tosca as it was meant to be, with all the drama, power and lyricism that involves. The Lyric was a winner, Franco Zeffirelli's staging was a winner, and perhaps Puccini himself was the biggest winner of all - after all, if the master could survive a debacle such as that in New York, think how glorious it is when he's given the respect he truly deserves.

A Declaration-Sized Take on this Presidency

By Bobby Chang

Liberal activists have once again used the Defence Authorisation Bill to stuff policies that are detrimental to the country. Two years ago, a defence funding bill was loaded with an unrelated 40% minimum wage hike to appease liberal activists such as ACORN and union bosses that has led to the current economic malaise, as corporations find this country to be uncompetitive against Asia because of the severe minimum wage hike, and have decided jobs will not be placed in the United States, but in lower-wage countries such as India, the PRC, Mexico, and other rising giants, while real unemployment is over 15% nationally, with much of this area into the 20% range. Our legislators were never informed, and the policy was quietly stuffed by liberal activists such as the dictatorial Nancy Pelosi, who has ensured the elected legislator Mr. Wilson was never heard (which led to his comments on the floor in front of the President).

That reminded me of what happened recently with Mexican pop star Ariadna Thalía Sodi Mottola Miranda , who danced with the President at Fiesta Latina at The White House in September. Mrs. Mottola's 1997 song “Echa Pa'lante,” used by an adult dance class that I participated as part of cross-training, was actually a political protest against the ruling PRI for the ensuing parliamentary elections in Mexico. The real version (not the illegally-altered version used in the movie “Dance with Me”) stated (translated), "Politician, now you're asking for mercy now / After you've plundered the nation's riches / The currency is devalued and corruption prevails / Unemployment is worse and (liberal) pollution grows".

Now, another defence authorisation bill was used by liberal activists to stuff another absurd law into the country that would have never passed except for other states running over us again. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Act, which would never have passed, was loaded into the current bill as a “memorial” to the late Sen. Kennedy to force special protection under law.

The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence starts, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Unfortunately, the new law, signed by President Obama in a special event with homosexual special-rights activists, destroys that sentence. Homosexuals now receive special protections and are not created equal, but are given special rights, while others are punished to reward these special deviants.

This has been proven in Sweden, where pastor Ake Green was indicted for a sermon that called homosexuality a sin and in Canada, where two notable Stateside radio shows – Focus on the Family and Dr. Laura Schlessinger – must be edited (and cleared by censors) to purge all references to sinful behaviour as dictated by a federal commission, and also where sharing truth about the dangerous and deviant lifestyle that was listed on the American Psychiatric Association as a psychiatric disorder until activists ran roughshod in 1973 is declared a hate crime. Also in Canada, a Catholic bishop was charged for a hate crime for defending teaching stating marriage is between one male and one female.

The Attorney General has blatantly admitted that the new law can be used to punish speech – a violation of the First Amendment – that is not compliant with homosexual activists' requests.

Our Declaration of Independence is now under attack, since now, the President and Congress have declared that certain groups are created special with special rights not available to other people. When God's Word is declared illegal and the “gospel” of homosexual activists is now federal law, the doors have opened to more hazards

That is another facet of the homosexual agenda being pushed by liberal activists with one foot already in the door – they want to eliminate the Defence of Marriage Act and eventually want both same-sex “marriage” legalised federally in the other 44 states where it is not (an episode of Sony Pictures Television's The Newlywed Game 2009 (GSN) featured a celebrity show where one “couple” was a homosexual “married” couple married in 2008 when California courts dictated marriage before Proposition 8 properly reversed the judge's call) and a new “Employment Non-Discrimination Act” that rewards “sexual orientation” as a protected employment class that would reward pedophiles. In fact, the new law was called the “Pedophile Protection Act,” and ENDA, another Kennedy “legacy” bill, would further reward pedophiles since it would be a “sexual orientation” and schools who refuse to hire pedophiles would be in violation of federal law if ENDA was passed.

How dangerous would it be for parents if schools, child-care centres, or other venues where children are involved had sexual predators and pedophiles working in the facilities, and the law rewards them and prohibits punishing them, as ENDA would do in cooperation with the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Act of 2009?

Two years ago, we saw the price we had to pay with an absurd “pork” rider that killed our economy with a severe minimum wage hike as jobs moved overseas. Now we are seeing that our First Amendment rights and the Declaration of Independence are violated in the new Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Act of 2009. Both were stuffed into defence authorisation bills.

In learning about this attack on Christians by passing the hate crime bill that rewards one class of sexual deviants while punishing other groups of people, let us look at these lines of the Declaration again.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

This paragraph was proven by fast-tracking bills and people cannot read them before voting on them.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

While he hasn't dissolved them officially, opponents are chided and shut out and mocked, as Bachmann and Wilson can prove.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

This is proven by the protection of ACORN and other leftist groups.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

After blocking the Bush judges, now we see new tyrants. The new judges use foreign laws to overturn local, state, and federal laws. The President blocked many of those judges in the four years in power.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

All of the "czars" we have seen is evidence.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

His groups, not the military, have superior power.

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

See the proposed Socialised Medicine and what has passed in Porkulus.

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

Those lines hold true when courts use foreign laws to overturn local, state, and federal laws.

"In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."

Those paragraphs I have just posted are from the Declaration. This is the dangers of the Hate Crimes Act, and the entire Presidency by just citing the Declaration of Independence.

* NOTE: The term “illegally altered version” reflects how some songs have been altered without permission, and in other cases ruins the song. In 2003, I called a publisher's office in Nashville and then in Manila after popular Filipino star Mary Jane Mendoza (aka “Jamie Rivera”) recorded a Kathy Troccoli song with gross alterations in the lyrics.

Opera Wednesday

By Mitchell Hadley

The latest issue of Opera News honors this year's winners of the Opera News Awards, and in his tribute to the great Shirley Verrett, F. Paul Driscoll writes that his own favorite Verrett performance was as Eboli in Don Carlo.

Fair enough. Here in this 1971 BBC telecast, is Shirley Verrett singing "O don fatale" from Don Carlo. Exquisite.

Wish I'd Written That

By Bobby Chang

HARVEST FESTIVAL TRUNK OR TREAT OCTOBER 31. “Trunk or treat” I can understand. Some Mormon congregations do this too. It’s a way to suck all the fun out of trick-or-treating by handing out candy in a church parking lot from a row of car trunks. But “Harvest festival”? Uh, for the last time, people: Halloween is the eve of All Saints’ Day, part of the Christian liturgical calendar! “Harvest Festival” would be the pagan holiday! Not the other way around! This would be like a church replacing “Christmas Eve” with “Yule Festival” because some overzealous Sunday regular is anti-Santa. Okay, pastor, I get that you have some nuts in your congregation telling you that Halloween is all about the worship of Satan and his bastard stepchild Harry Potter. I don’t care. It’s time to man up to the weirdos."

-- Ken Jennings, author and three million dollar game show legend.

The List, Part 2

By the way, the next time you run across one of the people mentioned here, be sure and tell them you saw them on the Our Word Enemies List. I'm sure they'll be grateful for the recognition.

And now back to the list. Mitchell launches into these people and organizations for whom he has a deep and abiding, if impersonal, contempt:

Rod Dreher – what’s that old saying about “with friends like this”? Having this crunchy con blogger on your side is like going into a gunfight armed with a butter knife. I’m sure Rod’s a nice guy, a good family man, someone you’d like to have as your next-door neighbor; but on his blog he shows a most unbecoming side. He snarks at conservative talk radio for being snarky, and honestly believes conservative bloggers have done more damage to civility than liberal ones. He wonders about Gingrich’s conversion to Catholicism, while he himself has bounced from Protestantism to Catholicism and now to Orthodoxy. He seems to want so badly to be taken seriously by those with whom he disagrees that he bends over backward to give liberals the benefit of the doubt, assuming their good intentions while questioning those of his “fellow” conservatives. (He reminds me of a boss I once had who was perfectly willing to believe every complaint he ever received about his staff, while dismissing any concerns his staff might have had in turn.) I don’t question Dreher’s sincerity; why does he seem so suspicious about that of others?

For his extremely irritating manner, Dreher lands the number one spot on my list by pure merit.

Mark Shea – his brilliant work as a Catholic apologist is frequently obscured by his frequent rants about the "unjust" war in Iraq, his unbecoming snarkiness about the Bush administration, and his unwillingness to grant that those with whom he disagrees might be acting with good faith and sincere beliefs of his own. Sarcasm and irony, when employed effectively, can be an art form - but Shea doesn't have that particular gift.

Shea is a passionate opponent of the war in Iraq. He can make a compelling, if not persuasive, case against it. Shea's overheated rhetoric may be an accurate reflection of his personality, but it does him no favors when it comes to convincing others of his argument. He can be so nasty about the whole thing, and so dismissive of others, that his arguments have the effect of making one passionately disagree with him regardless of what he's talking about. If he were to insist that the sky was blue, I'd say it was red just to oppose him. Having that effect on people is not the trademark of a particularly useful advocate.

For a long time, Shea held first place on my list, but he’s become better about apologizing for some of the things he’s said, and these mea culpas have softened his image in my eyes somewhat. I truly think he regrets much of what he says in the heat of the moment, but by the same token he continues to put himself there, in what we might consider the proximate cause of sin. Perhaps he’s just someone who should stick to writing articles and forget blogging. Or eliminate his combox, at least.

David Letterman – after what I wrote here, need I say more?

ESPN – it was a good idea to cover the story, but now they’ve become the story. And sport itself becomes secondary to its purpose of filling a spot in the network’s schedule: games with ridiculous start times, college football every night of the week, meaningless bowls created by ESPN simply as a source of cheap programming. Not to mention announcers who think it’s amateur night at the Improv, and their incessant self-promotion. Their “This Is SportsCenter” commercials are great, but not enough to make up for the rest.

Jimmy Carter – one of our worst presidents ever, now one of our worst former presidents ever. I know all the talk about what a great humanitarian he’s supposed to be, but he also constantly denigrates this country while giving aid and comfort to our enemies. He’s shown himself to be a bitter, vindictive, little man. Ronald Reagan deserves to be on Mt. Rushmore for no reason other than having ridded us of this meddlesome president. He's a useful idiot for America's enemies - emphasis on idiot.

Organizations with the word "Christian" in their name but not their mission - you know who you are. Shame on you.

Cathy of Alex castigates not a person, but the mindset that governs such people: mediocrity. In doing so, she ridicules those who believe in the following:

We're all the same. Congratulations! You have not won a thing. There are no winners. There is no such thing because then there would have to be losers and our fragile Western psyches can’t handle that.

Thank God I'm not like those sinners. Heaven may or may not exist but if it does you can be sure the almost perfect are in it. They’ve nominated themselves for the honor.

This is all there is. Nirvana is probably just a band.

Obamamania. Our nation’s leader, who may or may not be an American, is good for the job (not perfect) because he tells us that as a nation we are not perfect. We should be ashamed of ourselves. We have an entire weight of history that we didn’t even live to atone for. Get on that. Don’t work on improving yourself; work on apologizing.

Education. In school, over 90% is no longer the top grade and an A; now, we are graded on a scale so we can be graded with our peers who may or may not actually know anything.

For these people, there is nothing to strive for, she says in conclusion. Good enough is good enough.

And Paul Drew condemns:

The public school system – really, little more than legalized child abuse. (And this is not to besmirch those teachers in that system that do care – prisoners, I dare say, every bit as much as their students.)

Keith Olbermann – is there, honestly, anyone more wretched, angry, and nasty on television today? I’ve seen programs on Animal Planet where the wild beasts weren’t as vicious as Olbermann. (Perhaps he’ll name me Worst Person of the Day for saying that. I’d take it as a badge of honor.)

Mike Antonovich - the Los Angeles County Supervisor who wanted the L.A. Opera to drop Wagner's Ring Cycle because the composer was anti-Semitic. Earth to Antonovich: where have you been the last few years? Did you just hear about this Wagner guy and find out what he believed in? Love or hate him, the man wrote some of the most sublime music ever, and to suggest that politics pull rank over art is, in this case, rank. What a knucklehead.

Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, et al – why are we even listening to these fools? It only encourages them.

Sportswriters who can’t keep their politics out of their columns - don’t try this at home, boys. Leave the heavy intellectual work to the professional political pundits, boys. (P.S. I probably know more about sports than most of you, too.)

*****And there you have it - the 2009 Our Word Enemies List. Feel free to email us with your additions to the list, or suggestions for next year's. And if you don't see your name here, don't give up hopee - we all need something to which we can aspire. There's still plenty of room for more names!

Opera Wednesday

By Paul Drew

Apropos of our list-making, here is the world-famous D'oyly Carte Opera Company with "I've Got a Little List" from Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado. As is the custom, the lyrics have been updated to include references to contemporary events.

The List, Part 1

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list — I've got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!
There's the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs —
All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs —
All children who are up in dates, and floor you with 'em flat —
All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you like that —
And all third persons who on spoiling tête-á-têtes insist —
They'd none of 'em be missed — they'd none of 'em be missed!

W.S. Gilbert, The Mikado

As P.J. O'Rourke once pointed out: Santa has a list, Saint Peter has a list, Joe McCarthy said he had a list. Ko-Ko sang about his list (above), while Richard Nixon recorded his.

And now we've got a list, too.

The purpose of the 2009 Our Word Enemies List is, of course, to be entertaining. But after all the fun, keep in mind there's a serious side to it as well. Many of the names on this list - people, institutions, organizations, and other various flora and fauna - are, as O'Rourke said of those on his list, "useless, politically disgraceful, and downright foolish." For all the good points they may have, they've done at least one thing that merits being denounced, at least by someone. That doesn't mean they're necessarily bad people, although some of them come pretty close. We're not trying to attack them personally, even though many of them have no reservations about doing so. Some of us may even venture a few constructive suggestions as to how our honorees can avoid a repeat appearance on next year's list.

Happy reading - and if you're so inspired, feel free to email us with your list of enemies. As long as none of us show up on it, we'll be glad to share.

*****

If you're a regular reader of Bobby's columns, you'll recognize many of the names he offered. Whether they're from the world of politics, sports, entertainment, or "culture," they all have one thing in common - they've made the list based on merit.

Barack Obama - Chicago-style politics and now the idea of seizing political opponents who contributed to his opponents (see the automakers; Wagoner and Nardelli gave to Romney). The late Peter Tomarken would probably have said to America, (Foghorn sounds) "Stop at an Obammy!"

Leo Hindrey Jnr - Even though he owns the Nelson Bible publishing house, he is responsible for corruption (Daschle's tax situation) and printing bad theology.

Rick Warren - The kingpin of the life enhancement instead of God's Word "churches" that are too prevalent anywhere.

Luc Bondy - What he did to Tosca.

GIA Music, Oregon Catholic Press, EMI, Universal, Warner Music, Kona (Integrity) - For bad church music that has no doctrine or theology.

Nancy Pelosi - For imposing her totalitarian regime that led to Joe Wilson's complaints.

MTV - For causing the demise in morals, standards, and music. Witness the rapid demise in church music.

Title IX - For becoming a Quota Queen, making boys second-class citizens in our schools, and telling boys there is no place for them to play sports because the percentage of boys to girls in the school is not enough.

Al Franken - For helping South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama become irrelevant in the Senate.
Susan G. Komen Foundation - For promoting Pink Sunday in churches to fund them. To declare Pink Sunday relevant and supporting abortion is not a church.

ESPN - For the idea of bad sports coverage, and to make college football for the worse by the premium television package that I believe will lead to pay-per-view BCS Championship Football. And what was with the crazy Monday Night Football gimmick of Bocephus en español during the opening?

*****

Judie's list also includes names from the world of opera and sports. It's short, but to the point. She upbraids:

Peter Gelb, who simultaneously brought thousands of viewers to the Metropolitan Opera thorugh HD transmissions and gave them nothing to see.

Mike Hill, the ESPN announcer who helps each night to ruin the English language with his mispronunciations of words beginning with "ST" by inserting an "H" in between. Got that shtraight?

And, of course, a woman who truly desrves to be denounced - Oprah Winfrey [only Elvis goes by one name around here], for making men believe that she knows what women think.

[Well, Judie, now she knows what at least one woman thinks.]

*****
Are we having fun yet? Yes, we know, too much of anything - even an enemies list - isn't necessarily a good thing. That's why you'll have to wait for part 2. Hope you can stand the suspense. And for those of you who haven't seen your names pop up yet - well, you've still got at least twenty-four hours to mend your ways.

The "Triumph" of Leni Riefenstahl

By Paul Drew

Since I didn't have anything for you on Opera Wednesday this week, I thought I'd dip into the past for this column from 2006. Hopefully I'll be back with some new material this week.
Finally, Riefenstahl.

It's been so long since I started this thread that's it's difficult to recall what the point of it all was supposed to be. (And I'm glad I haven't been kicked off the blog for being so late in getting this up!)

But this whole discussion started with the death of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf last month. As was mentioned back then, virtually every obit of the great opera star mentioned her past association with the Nazi party in WW2 Germany. And I supposed it's a natural segueway, once you've talked about Schwarzkopf, to look at the lives of two other prominent German artists: Leni Riefenstahl and Richard Wagner. (Günter Grass doesn't really count, since he wasn't part of my original plan and, anyway, I've already talked about him enough.)

And in looking at their lives, we continue to be drawn to the central question of the discussion: what is the relationship between the artist and the art? As Roger Ebert has noted, it raises the “classic question of the contest between art and morality: Is there such a thing as pure art, or does all art make a political statement?"

Leni Riefenstahl was one of the great film documentarians of the 20th century. From Wikipedia: (I'll quote liberally here, since I have no desire to get this blog tied up in a plagerism accusation:

Riefenstahl's techniques, such as moving cameras, the use of telephoto lenses to create a distorted perspective, aerial photography, and revolutionary approach to the use of music and cinematography, have earned Triumph recognition as one of the greatest propaganda films in history. [...] The film was popular in the Third Reich and elsewhere, and has continued to influence movies, documentaries, and commercials to this day, even as it raises the question over the dividing line between "art and morality."

But, as you might have gathered from the above paragraph, there’s that Nazi thing again. Of all Riefenstahl's documentaries, none is perhaps as famous - and infamous - as Triumph of the Will. It is a magnificent, terrible film of a horrible story - the Nazis and their Nuremberg rallies during the '30s. And in telling that horrible story, it also ensured that filmmaking would never be the same again.

Film historians have seen Riefenstahl's influence in movies ever since. Star Wars, Citizen Kane, Gladiator, Lord of the Rings - all bear the marks of Riefenstahl's style. The famous opening scene of Triumph, in which the camera moves through the clouds to capture an aerial shot of the city of Nuremberg (to the music of Wagner, naturally) must have influenced Wim Wenders' opening of Wings of Desire. The sports documentarian Bud Greenspan, one of the finest filmmakers of the 20th century (Ken Burns could take a chapter from him), considers her one of the greats.

It's an assertion few would dispute, in the academic sense. But can’t you detect just the smallest bit of embarrassment whenever one praises the work of Riefenstahl? True, Triumph of the Will is a staple of many “best all-time” lists, but there’s this sense that even when we praise Riefenstahl, we must immediately apologize or explain away the praise, lest we fall under guilt-by-association. The closer we get to her work, the more we edge away from it. It’s not likely you’d hear Seinfeld emerge from the theatre saying, “It’s about Nazis! Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” (Warning: Do not insert any Soup Nazi jokes here.)

No, you’ll never hear anyone say there’s nothing wrong with being a Nazi. In our time the Nazi brand is, as I've said before, the Scarlet Swastika, an accusation so accursed that its use has become widespread, indiscriminate, a self-parody. And yet it is a charge that carries power, a negative sort of prestige, a stigma that taints whatever it touches. And we ask ourselves if we should be ashamed by our admiration and praise of the artist’s work, if we can morally separate the ideology of the artist from the art itself.

Riefenstahl’s work does not allow us that luxury. The subject matter of Triumph of the Will is in your face, and you can't ignore it. As the Wikipedia bio puts it, "it is nearly impossible to separate the subject from the artist behind it." She “claimed that she was naïve about the Nazis when she made it and had no knowledge of Hitler's genocidal policies. She also pointed out that Triumph contains ‘not one single anti-Semitic word’“; but it is difficult (although not impossible) to conceive of her as both ingénue and naïve girl, the brilliant and innovative filmmaker who was still a babe in the woods when it came to world politics. This is what she would have liked you to believe, but her actions often belie that contention. Roger Ebert points out, "the very absence of anti-Semitism in Triumph of the Will looks like a calculation; excluding the central motif of almost all of Hitler's public speeches must have been a deliberate decision to make the film more efficient as propaganda." And so, given all this, we’re tempted to see in her films things that aren’t really there, images that dance before us like the ghosts from black & white TV. Only these are real, the ghosts of Hitler’s victims that only become clearer as the picture is drawn into sharper focus.

Therefore, as viewers do we punish the filmmaker because of the subject of her films? Do we hold Riefenstahl accountable for her Nazi associations? And if so, do we also apply the same standards to Sergei Eisenstein, who exploited Russian nationalistic pride in Potemkin and Alexander Nevsky? (Yes, I know Eisenstein had his quarrels with the authorities, but large families often do that.) Eisenstein is often ranked in the pantheon of filmmaking, Potemkin appearing on most ten-best lists, but I rarely see him carrying around the baggage that accompanies Riefenstahl. And we won't even get into the almost-paranoid, conspiracy-laden propaganda of liberal filmmakers like Oliver Stone?

Now, it's true that Eisenstein wasn't a documentarian as was Riefenstahl. Nonetheless, his movies were fraught with nationalistic fervor, clearly designed to influence and inspire the viewer. (The Communists, in fact, thought Eisenstein worried too much about things like art and budgeting, and wanted even more propaganda in the content.) As for Stone - well, we know most of his films have an agenda.

Some like to pair up Triumph of the Will with Frank Capra’s direct answer to them, the Why We Fight series of films. (And, by the way, given how anti-American Hollywood has become, it would have been interesting to see how Capra's reputation might have suffered had he been young enough when he made this series. Surely in the Hollywood of the late 60s through today, he would have been seen as a toady for the government.)

In fact, however, the true companion to Riefenstahl’s masterwork might be D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. This truly was a landmark of filmmaking, but most today remember it only as a racist piece of propaganda, glorifying the Ku Klux Klan. True, perhaps, but Griffith's influence, like Riefenstahl's, cannot be denied. True also that Griffith, like Riefenstahl, is held at arms' length by most.

So what's the point here? It's not an apology for Leni Riefenstahl (or D.W. Griffith, for that matter). It's merely an observation on how we allow our politics to color the way we see things. As I've asserted in the past, it is hard to believe that Riefensthal would be held in such contempt had the Triumph in question been Lenin's October Revolution.

As we watch the ridiculous accusations of Nazism that are so commonplace nowadays across the political blogosphere, and perhaps most absurdly from the Muslims who brand the Jews with the contemptuous tag, we are reminded that Nazism is the singular golden sin, the mark from which its bearers cannot recover. It is reminiscent of the "unforgivable sin" that Christ warns us of, though most of those wielding it would fail to recognize that analogy since they don't recognize the source.

National Socialism keeps us in a trance, as perhaps it should. It holds the figures of history hostage, as perhaps it might. But we do not diminish the horror of the truth it represents to assert also that the word "Nazi" is the crown jewel of political correctness, the golden spike to be driven through the heart, the one word that guarantees the discrediting of its intended. Some would wear the title as a badge of honor, an ideology to be embraced, others are shamed with a scarlet letter and their lips burn with Judas' kiss of betrayal, and still others feel the sting of its indiscriminant application.

But while Schwarzkopf shrugged off the label, and Riefenstahl tried to run from it, Richard Wagner might have welcomed it with open arms. But that's for another time.