Dilettantism

dilettantism
noun

The act of behaving like a dilettante, of being an amateur or "dabbler", sometimes in the arts. Also the act of enjoying the arts, being a connoisseur. Can be perceived as superficial.

When I chose the name of this blog nearly 3 years ago, that was the first word that popped into my head, so I ran with it. I've never fancied myself an expert on anything, although I know a lot about certain things. But this blog is, and always will be, the work of a amateur and (I hope) a connoisseur. And while there's little doubt that treatments around here can be a bit superficial, it's always been my goal to avoid being superficial.

We're at a point now, with over 1,100 posts on the blog, to make a few changes. As I mentioned last week, I am going to be joining the team over at Truth vs. the Machine, one of the pre-eminent spots for conservative commentary in the Minnesota blogosphere. The team there includes some really smart, perceptive and talented people and I count myself both honored and fortunate to have the chance to play in their sandbox. But in order to participate there, it will mean that I will have to change the way I operate this blog.

Here is what I envision will happen once I am fully onboard at TvM:

• Mr. Dilettante will be, generally, less political. I'm not going to be able to give my best effort at TvM if my political writing stays here. The one exception to this rule will be political discussions involving local issues, i.e., directly related to issues in the City of New Brighton and House District 50B. That will stay here, because it's not the ground I intend to cover at TvM.
• Mr. Dilettante will have a larger focus on popular culture concerns. I already write a lot about sports and music here, but I'm equally interested in film and other media. Expect to see more of that in the coming days and weeks.
• In my preliminary exchanges with Gary Miller, the proprietor and majordomo at TvM, we have talked about having an emphasis on both politics and Catholic issues. Their current lineup tends to be more evangelical, although they aren't entirely a bastion of sola scriptura and the topics that TvM has covered are certainly more catholic (and heterodox) than conservative politics and theology. Among other things, TvM is the current perch for Carnivore, one of the best 2nd Amendment bloggers going. Gary and I have more to discuss about my role there and it would be premature to speculate, but it's reasonable to anticipate that a fair amount of my work at TvM will concern the intersection of Catholicism, especially Catholicism in the American idiom, and the political and social scene. It's a topic of great interest and rich with potential. Having said that, I don't envision my role to be simply that of another conservative voice and/or armchair theologian. Part of what has made TvM such a good blog is that the team has a sense of humor and an understanding of the absurdities of the passing scene. There's plenty of opportunity for fun, too.
• I will continue to cross-post articles at True North when and where it makes sense, both from TvM and from here. True North is an excellent resource and we owe it to our colleagues like AAA and Chief to keep it going.

I appreciate everyone who has supported this enterprise as it has developed over the past 3 years. Writers all hope to find an audience and the audience that has found this blog is one that I cherish greatly.

You know what's really cool?

That LIFE magazine has put its entire photo archive on the Web. So much cool stuff to see. Like this shot of Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn backstage at the 1956 Academy Awards.

Let's Get Small

From the things we know that aren't apparently so department: now that the election is over, the myth of the small Obama donor is starting to fade into the mist:

It comes down to which definition of "small donor" you accept:

Someone who donated to the Obama campaign by scraping together $199, period.

Or someone who donated $199 to the Obama campaign several times, perhaps totaling close to the $4,600 legal limit for the primary and general elections. In aggregate, that would vault him/her out of the small donor category that was so useful to the political campaign's public relations campaign portraying the donor base as about two times as broad as it really was.

The reported numbers show that Obama actually received 80% more money from large donors (those giving $1,000 or more total) than from small donors.

The bottom line is pretty simple -- you simply can't get elected without having a lot of people who provide big bucks to your campaign. It would be helpful if people stopped pretending otherwise. McCain had a lot of sugar daddies and mommies, too. No doubt about it.

That's why I still contend that the way to deal with campaign finance is simple -- let people give whatever they want, but they have to give it under their own name and the amount needs to be up on the internet, even if the gift is $1. If some nasty plutocrat of the imaginings of the Left wants to buy Sarah Palin or some other Republican the White House in 2012, so be it. Just as long as we know.

They said you must be joking, where did you get those shoes?

Your tax dollars at work. Well, fortunately not yours unless you're visiting this site from the U.K. From the Daily Mail:

Drunk women who stagger about in high heels are to be protected - at public expense - from twisting their ankles.

They will be handed flip-flops to wear by police outside nightclubs as they wend their way home. The scheme is part of a £30,000 drive by police and councillors to prevent 'alcohol-related harm'.

It has been prompted by fears that women wearing stilettos or similar footwear could tumble over.

Officials also claim that female revellers are at risk of cutting the soles of their feet by walking barefoot.

The flip-flops will be given to anyone whose footwear is 'uncomfortable, inappropriate or soiled' and will be paid for with a Home Office grant.

The scheme is to begin next month in the centre of Torquay, Devon, a popular destination for hen and stag parties. It will be run by Safer Communities Torbay, a partnership between police, Torbay Council and the Local Education Authority.

Police officers will carry bags of coloured flip-flops on their rounds and will hand them to those who look unsteady on their feet.

Publicly-subsidized practical footwear: just the thing for your hen and stag party! I'm thinking this program won't be coming to the Warehouse District, Rush Street or College Avenue any time soon; at least until May or so when the whether is nicer. Handing out Sorels would get pretty expensive.

Apparently prospective officers will need to add an internship at Famous Footwear to their coursework at the Police Academy. To serve, protect and provide a proper fitting. Given our continuing slide into the nanny state this does seem, well, fitting.

(H/T: The Corner)

Fearless Dilettante Football Predictions - Not Much Left Edition

There aren't many games left to pick. High school football around here is concluding, it's done in Wisconsin and the colleges we care about are awaiting their next assignments. But we need to pick at least four games. So let's go for the O.

Oklahoma Sooners 41, Oklahoma State Cowboys 17. The Sooners convinced me by thrashing Texas Tech. Sooners could be headed for the national championship game. That won't stop this week, although the Cowboys are pretty good.

ACTUAL RESULT: SOONERS 61, COWBOYS 41. Oklahoma has now score 60+ points two weeks in a row. Pretty impressive and the reason they've apparently leapfrogged Texas in the BCS standings, even though Texas beat them earlier. By the way, the BCS is full of FAIL, but that's another post.

Oregon Ducks 24, Oregon State Beavers 21. This game matters to the Big Ten and specifically to our Badgers and Gophers. If the Beavers win, they go to the Rose Bowl and chances are Ohio State gets knocked out of the BCS. Unless you want the Gophers in the Motor City Bowl, you'd better be rooting for the Ducks in the game known as the Civil War.

ACTUAL RESULT: DUCKS 65, BEAVERS 38. And thus the Gophers probably go to Orlando for the Champs Sports Bowl, since the Badgers would prefer a trip to Arizona. Neither gets to visit Detroit for the holidays, which they greatly appreciate.

Green Bay Psychos 31, Carolina Panthers 24. Who knows which Packers will show up this week. Better be the team that whipped on the Bears, or this season is pretty much ovah.

ACTUAL RESULT: CAROLINA 35, PACK 31. I've already seen plenty of commentary blaming Aaron Rodgers for what is becoming a lost season. Well, Aaron Rodgers didn't give up 86 points in the last two games. Go 0-4 against the NFC South? Stay home for the playoffs. It's really that simple.

Munsters of the Midway 31, Purple Helmeted Love Warriors 17. The Vikings can't stand prosperity this year. Our friend Brad Carlson is calling for a new quarterback for the Purple next year. Too bad it can't be this week. I just have a feeling that this one won't go the Purple's way.

ACTUAL RESULT: VIKINGS 34, DA BEARZ 14. The Bears share one thing in common with the Packers -- they are running out of guys because of injuries. The Vikings are healthy and playing better now. Give them credit. Purple fans have to hope that Roger Goodell stays his hand in re the Williamses. If the suspension comes down this week, suddenly the Vikings are low on guys.

Fried Chicken and French Silk Pie - A Dilettante Family Thanksgiving

This is long overdue -- a guest post from Mrs. D! Enjoy.

For the last couple of Thanksgivings, the four of us have spent the day together. At first it seemed too quiet and a bit strange to prepare and eat a Thanksgiving dinner with only four people at our table while other relatives spent the holiday gathered at their own homes having their own dinner. I started to not look forward to Thanksgiving.

However, now that we have a couple of small Thanksgiving celebrations under our belt, I have come to enjoy the holiday again. A huge benefit to having only the four of us at the table is that we can have a "Burger King" meal. Like the old commercial said, "Have it your way, have it your way at Burger King." We all have input with the menu. This year, I purchased the basic items (turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie) early in November. Last week, the kids informed me that they do not really like pumpkin pie. So, when they went to the grocery store with me on Tuesday for the weekly regular run, we just "happened" to come home with French silk pie. In addition, Maria asked me if we could have fried chicken. Not to replace the turkey, just to go with the turkey. As we passed the deli counter, Maria saw the fried chicken and lobbied again for me to buy some since it was already made it would be quick and easy and a great addition to the Thanksgiving meal. Sorry Maria, one meat main dish is a tradition that I am still sticking with year to year.

So, I hope that all of you had the kind of day we had yesterday. A day to sleep late, time to enjoy a big breakfast, a quiet afternoon playing a favorite board game, a good dinner composed of food everyone enjoyed and a classic movie to round out the night all added up to a wonderful Thanksgiving day.

Blessings to all,

Mrs. D.

No Bargain

The New York Daily News reports that a man was trampled to death in the doorway of a Long Island Wal-Mart this morning:

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."

Maybe the people who did this will be able to watch the news reports about it later on their new $599 LCD television sets. And did this horrific event cause anyone a second thought?

Before police shut down the store, eager shoppers streamed past emergency crews as they worked furiously to save the store clerk's life.

"They were working on him, but you could see he was dead, said Halcyon Alexander, 29. "People were still coming through."

Only a few stopped.

"They're savages," said shopper Kimberly Cribbs, 27. "It's sad. It's terrible."

Hard to argue that.

Nothing to Do But Feed All the Kangaroos

Have you been out shopping yet? Well, why not? America is depending on you! In honor of this guy, I bring you a little Black Friday doggerel:

Black Friday

We must fight impending doom

Heed the mandate - go consume!

Join the buying polyglot

In the Rosedale parking lot

Time to fight financial stress

Get out and buy that GPS

Hank Paulson's fought the stormy seas

Of manufactured urgency

The Big 3 come with cups in hand

As mendicants to Waxmanland

Detroit's adrift, or so it seems

With pension plans as Ponzi schemes

The bills are steep, the air is rank

With wealth transfers to Citibank

You try to run, nowhere to go

With your drained portfolio

Do you dance? Or do you cry?

With brokers falling from the sky?

The sun gleams through my windowpane

It always does despite the rain

Of finances sour and dispatches bleak

And tragedies that fill the week

How do you face it? Are you pissed?

I'd rather be an optimist

I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

Happy Thanksgiving!

(Photo from Orlando Sentinel)

Count your blessings -- chances are pretty good you don't root for the Detroit Lions. And if you need any further reason to be grateful on that score, check out the invaluable Curse of Bobby Layne website. A splendid compilation of 50 years of futility and probably one of the better concentrations of schadenfreude you'll find on the Web.

Guilty Pleasures Part Thirty-Four -- Thanksgiving 1983

You know what I'm thankful for? That we're already 25 years past 1983. Was it really a quarter century ago? It's hard to believe that we're that far away now. It's amazing when I look at the Top 100 chart for the year and I remember every single song. 1983 was a year of great transition in our family. I was in the middle of my college years and we ended up moving to a new home on edge of town. In order to make things work, my dad had to go through a series of very complicated financial transactions and for a few painful months was paying mortgages on 3 houses. I can't even imagine the stress that must have caused, especially because interest rates were just awful -- a typical 30-year loan carried a 13.4% interest rate. That financial strain changed my life, because it meant that the semester I'd planned for the following winter, which was supposed to be in Spain, ended up being back at Beloit. Goodbye Spanish major and hello, English major. As a consolation prize, I ended up running the school newspaper instead.

In those days a lot of my interest was in drinking beer and listening to music. And it was a good year for both drinking beer and for music, despite such dubious milestones as Frank Stallone's "Far From Over" and the collected works of Laura Branigan. But there were some songs that are easy to forget that would push your fun button. And the videos were always a hoot, in the classic 1980s incoherent way. Remember any of these?

Dead Giveaway, featuring Jody Watley getting all robotic

Der Kommissar, with icy Eurobabes and unexplained tarantulas

Twilight Zone, with gratuitous chorus girls dressed in dominatrix outfits

Our House, with moms in drag and great Wallace and Gromit-style wallpaper

Come On Eileen, with fashions by Oshkosh B'Gosh

Just a festival of odd random stimulation! When you try to sort all that stuff out now, it makes it easy to understand why beer was so necessary back in the day.

So, you know the drill -- pick your favorite (if you have one) and/or tell me what was going on for you back in 1983.

The rest of us are playing for second place

Why? Because Iowahawk owns the blogosphere.

Change You Can Believe In

I am pleased to announce that I will be joining the team at Truth vs. The Machine in the coming days. This is an exciting opportunity to work at one of the most prestigious addresses in the Minnesota blogosphere, with a very high-level group of bloggers. We're still working on the details but I'll have more to tell you soon.

In case you are wondering: this feature will continue, but it may undergo a bit of "repurposing" as a result of my move to TvM. Stay tuned.

Uneasy Lies the Crown

If you've followed this feature for any length of time, you've likely noticed that I post regular, somewhat tongue-in-cheek updates on my son's (and my daughter's) various teams. If you've read these breathless dispatches, you've also noticed that, in the main, my son has played on teams that haven't been especially, ahem, successful. But right now things are very different. And it's making me a little queasy.

Big Blue, my son's in-house Irondale basketball team, is off to a 3-0 start in the 7-8 in-house league. All three games have been routs, including the last one, a 72-29 thrashing of another Irondale team. As has been the case with most of these teams, I've been serving as an assistant coach, mostly because my voice carries pretty well. While my son really has enjoyed the experience of playing with a group of very talented kids, especially at an in-house level, winning by 43 points is problematic. It's no fun for the kids on the other team. I know, because 2 years ago Ben was on a basketball team that lost a game 70-6.

As it happens, a couple of the kids on Ben's team this year were on the team that did the thrashing 2 years ago. Both of these kids are fine young men and are good sportsmen -- they do not play unfairly, but they and their teammates have significantly more talent than some of the kids on other teams. And as a result, they are dominating. We've seen some of the other teams that our lads will face later on and there's no reason to believe that these teams will fare much better than the teams we've played thus far against our talented squad. It's good for Ben, because he'll have a lot of fun playing on a winning team. The key is to keep games from turning into this (initial part of this link not safe for work). That is my job this year, because it's no fun to get your butt kicked when you're a 13-year old kid. Teaching basketball is only part of the process. Teaching good sportsmanship is much more important.

Two Men Say They’re Jesus, One of Them Must Be Wrong

Obama promotes fiscal restraint, big spending

No wonder he won the election. That takes talent.

Does anyone at the AP even bother to read the headlines anymore?

WPA Blues

So it sounds like we're going to be piddling around again. Barack Obama has proposed a jobs program to repair infrastructure that could employ up to 2.5 million Americans by 2011. It's the WPA all over again.

The WPA and similar New Deal programs were everywhere and you still see evidence of the work that was done today. Walk down the steps at Minnehaha Falls and you'll still see evidence of the work that the WPA did there. The picture I've posted is of the Outagamie County Courthouse back home in Appleton, an FDR-era structure that is one of the finest examples of Stalinist architecture that you'll ever see, with the extra special irony of a larger-than-life sized bust of Senator Joseph McCarthy inside the building.

And that is only one of the many ironies of the WPA and similar New Deal-era programs. The problem with them was pretty simple - they didn't really work because they unsurprisingly misallocated the time and talents of the participants. And by tying up so many workers for so long, they simply prolonged the Depression. WPA had its hands in just about everything -- including the "Voodoo Macbeth" that a very young Orson Welles staged as part of the Federal Theater Project.

The people who participated in the WPA tended to be ambivalent about it. Besides the efforts of Welles and others involved in the various arts programs that the WPA sponsored, the organization itself brought on some interesting art of its own, including the WPA Blues written by Casey Bill Weldon, in which the protagonist worries that in the name of progress, that the WPA is going to tear down his domicile:

Everybody's working in this town and it's worrying me night and day
Everybody's working in this town and it's worrying me night and day
If that mean working too, have to work for the WPA

Well well the landlord come this morning and he knocked on my door
He asked me if I was going to pay my rent no more
He said you have to move if you can't pay
And then he turned and he walked slowly away

So I have to try find me some other place to stay
That housewrecking crew's coming from the WPA

We're going to learn a lot more about what the president-elect has planned in the coming weeks. I don't think it's necessary to man the ramparts -- it's possible that my friend Rich's theory is correct and that Obama is more of a centrist than he might have appeared to be. But that's the problem with a guy who is still tabula rasa for most people. And we don't know if the housewrecking crew's coming from the WPA.

Iowahawk Is A Genius, Volume XXXIV (or thereabouts)

Remember how Congress sent the mendicants from Detroit back on their corporate jets last week because they didn't come with a plan? Iowahawk has figured it out. Just read it.

Happy motoring!

Stasis You Can Believe In

Victor Davis Hanson asks a good question:

So a mere two weeks after victory, 'hope and change' and 'a break from the past' reified into parceling out posts to dozens of Clintonite retreads, plenty of the old requisite Ivy-League law degrees, ample influence from establishment ex-lobbyists, de rigueur Sidwell Friends for the kids, and apparent sudden existential angst and uncertainty over FISA, getting out pronto from Iraq, closing down the Constitution-shredding Gitmo, and overturning the McCarthyite Patriot Act—and all to acclaim and relief from aristocratic Beltway pundits of both parties? So that was all the election was about? Just new faces on the same old, same old?

Here's one more question: if it tuns out that President Obama pursues many of the same policies that George W. Bush pursued, but receives acclaim instead of denunciations, what does that say about those bien pensants who have been doing the denouncing over the past 8 years?

Big Blue Wins Again

Three in a row for Big Blue, as the Irondale 3 team cruises to a 72-29 victory over Irondale 6 (the Orange team) at Island Lake Elementary School in Shoreview. The game followed a familiar pattern with the Blues jumping to a big early lead and cruising from there. Ben had a good overall game, scoring 4 points including a buzzer beater at the end of the 6th period (we play eight 5-minute periods in this league).

The team takes a break next week for Thanksgiving then resumes play on Saturday, December 6 against the mysterious Mounds View 73 squad (sounds like a Grateful Dead album, eh?) Game time is 1 p.m., again at Island Lake. Remember, Mr. Dilettante is the place to go for exciting coverage of Irondale 7-8 in-house youth basketball.

Hecker's Veto

If you live in the Twin Cities and your domicile isn't under a rock, it's almost certain that you've heard the name of Denny Hecker. Hecker built a hydra-headed empire that sprung out of his small armada of car dealerships. In recent years he also acquired Advantage Rent-A-Car and for a time even got into the home mortgage business. He was a friendly looking, ruddy-faced guy and you'd see his mug on at least one commercial just about every day if you watched even an hour of television, it seemed. His earworm jingle and slogan "Good people helping good people" is pure Twin Cities.

It all seems to be spinning out of control now. I'd heard rumblings that he was in trouble and there were reports that he was fighting it out with various suppliers and had filed a federal lawsuit against Chrysler Financial Services, which had allegedly cut off financing that Hecker had needed to finance his operations.

But now we learn that Hecker has had to close six of his dealerships and has sold 3 others. Some of the dealerships in question are pretty big ones:

In a news release late Friday, Hecker said the shutdown of the Blaine Bargain Lot, Forest Lake Chrysler Jeep Dodge Mitsubishi, Monticello Dodge Ford and Mercury Suzuki Kia, Rosedale Hyundai, Shakopee Chrysler Jeep Dodge and Stillwater Ford Lincoln Mercury has resulted in layoffs for about 400 employees, about a third of Hecker's workforce.

In addition, Hecker's Inver Grove Heights Hyundai, Inver Grove Heights Volkswagen and Peninsula Dodge in Redwood City, Calif., were sold.

It's difficult to tell if these moves will stop the bleeding, but it's yet another sign of the overall weakness we're seeing in the economy. People are afraid to make big purchases now. Mrs. D reminded me of that with an observation she made this morning. She noted that on our street, no one has bought a new car, or even a used car, in the past year. We live on a short street and there are 24 houses on it from beginning to end. You know everyone's vehicle on a street like that and nothing has changed here. Until people are willing to spend money again, the changes won't be happening on short residential streets, but the changes will continue on the main thoroughfares where car dealerships are located. And eventually, different changes may come to our short residential street.

Speaking of State Championship Teams

Behold the 1963 Xavier High team, state champions. The young man who is second from the front on the left side did fairly well for himself later on in life. This year is the 50th anniversary of XHS basketball and for the most part it's been a highly successful run. We'll probably have a few more vintage posts of this sort over the course of the next few months.