Editorials
CONTENTS Volume CXVIII, Number 13 Correspondence 418 Editorials 419 The politics of mowing: Chris Anderson 420 Wanted: sacrificial lamb: Abigail McCarthy 422 Seizing the high ground: David...
...We do not doubt that aggression was repelled in Kuwait...
...In a very real sense, we need balloons and confetti...
...Going up and down the rows, laying down the pattern, I move into a lawn-mowing trance, my brain waves lengthening...
...10038...
...But whatever its vital statistics, what New York City Mayor David Dinkins called the "Mother of All Parades" certainly lived up to its billing theatrically...
...Mowing is the closest I come to working the land and bringing in a crop, even though I mow without bagging, leaving the clippings to return their nitrogren...
...Mowing is masculine...
...Heading downstairs and up Fulton Street, we soon encountered the human "gridlock" that embraced the parade on either side of Broadway...
...Staff: Harriette Balsky, Carmen Alava, Pamela Quatse Summer Intern: Hugh Garvey Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor Publisher: Edward S. Skillin Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-3330] A Review of Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, is published biweekly, except monthly Christmas, New Year's and July and August, by Commonweal Foundation, 15 Dutch St., New York, N.Y...
...Working in a field or a yard, repeating the same motions over and over, our thoughts subside and the plain fact of things emerges...
...There is the smell of gasoline and the roar of the mower, yet there is also the smell of the cut grass and the sun beating down...
...The fact is the sweetest dream labor knows," Frost says in "Mowing," a poem about (among other things) the scything of a meadow...
...Awards in the annual Catholic Press Association competition (see back page) are usually accompanied by judges' citations...
...For we cannot solve our most pressing social problems using the language of individual rights and self-interest (see Robert Bellah et al., "The Good Society," p. 425...
...and the reward that half of them [those who voted against the war] get is public mortification and rebuke...
...This patriotic arithmetic was later revised to a mere 87 tons...
...The ground is hard...
...The nation's near obsession with celebrating a swift and deceptively "clean" victory over Iraq seems hurried and anxious...
...POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Commonweal, 15 Dutch St...
...As the Independence Day celebrations recently completed reminded us, a love of country is the privilege of every American, whether he or she supported the Bush administration's policy in this war or not...
...This year, explaining one of their rankings of scholarly Catholic magazines, their worships opined as follows: "Social Thought wins third place...
...That must not be the case...
...Who doubts that the "Mother of All Parades" will become--in sharp 30-second sound bites--the mother of all presidential reelection commercials come 1992...
...420: Commonweal...
...Perhaps the nation's ebullient reaction is only simple relief...
...Broadway's so-called "Canyon of Heroes," otherwise the most staid and circumspect of avenues, seemed to reel like some bedecked and benighted New Year's Eve reveler...
...But such crudely partisan uses of the war are in the truest sense unpatriotic...
...The shower of red, blue, green, and yellow Necco-wafer-size confetti, as well as wide swatches of white computer paper, built steadily for well over an hour...
...COMMONWEAL Everybody loves a parade ew York City's June 10 "Welcome Home" parade for the troops of Operation Desert Storm passed clamorously along Broadway two blocks from this office, and two blocks was about as close as any of us could get to seeing the actual guests of honor...
...It's meditative...
...CONTENTS Volume CXVIII, Number 13 Correspondence 418 Editorials 419 The politics of mowing: Chris Anderson 420 Wanted: sacrificial lamb: Abigail McCarthy 422 Seizing the high ground: David R. Carlin, Jr...
...New York, N.Y...
...Or maybe it's harvest...
...All around us people were gazing or pointing up to the ceaseless hail of confetti...
...Display advertising correspondence should be sent to Ruth E. Taylor, 11 Graffam Rd., So...
...New York k City police estimated the crowd--watching, or futilely craning for a glimpse of the heroes--at a staggering 4.7 million...
...In its childlike frivolity, this extravagant and playful display of color and emotion was irresistible...
...Whatever one thought of American actions in the Gulf, only the most dour of dissidents could suppress a smile at seeing the city that the country most loves to hate turned for some hours into the nation's jubilant jester...
...Mead 436 Screen: Richard Alleva 437 Stage: Gerald Weales 438 Art: Patrick Jordan 439 BOOKS The Convent at Auschwitz: Mark O' Connor 440 The Catholic Church and the French Nation, 1589-1989: Steven Englund 442 Faith's Freedom: Robert P. lmbelli 443 STAFF Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Associate Editor: Paul Baumann Production Editor: Jacqueline Dowdell Senior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt Movies: Richard Alleva Stage: Gerald Weales Poetry: Rosemary Deen Columnists: John Garvey, J. Bryan Hehir, Abigail McCarthy, David R. Carlin, Jr...
...Running the mower is the first mechanical skill I learned--put your foot on the rim here, my dad taught me, adjust the choke so---and I remember feeling accomplished and grown-up as I practiced in our backyard, overlapping the wheels just slightly at each new row, smiling with authority...
...The more limited audience for this publication is still no excuse for its insightful comments...
...In the interminable rain of confetti from the miraculously blue June sky, we sensed goodness and the warm bonds of a common life affirmed...
...10038...
...But the suggestion that our common life here has been altered in any significant way, let alone transformed, is an all-too-familiar and, alas, wearying falsehood...
...The clean, even rows give the illusion of order and accomplishment...
...Ahead, at the intersection of Fulton and Broadway, spumes of shimmering paper danced above the marchers in an almost liquid swirl of color...
...Americans must once again be able to meet along that figurative parade route, and from such celebrations bring back to everyday concerns the avowedly communitarian enthusiasms our all-too-small-minded politics now lacks...
...There is pattern and regularity, and the feel of the earth beneath my feet--the sense of covering ground, my own ground...
...The emblems of patriotism, the conviviality of community ritual, even the bright, childish excitement of balloons, melting ice cream, and marching bands are good for the soul...
...It was a display of chauvinistic ardor that, at least for the course of a day, had the aura of a volcanic eruption...
...Telephone: (212) 732-0800...
...REPORT FROM THE BACK YARD THE POLITICS OF MOWING GENTLEMEN, SLOW YOUR ENGINES owing the lawn has always given me a private pleasure...
...The United States is a big and powerful nation, and its public ceremonies are rarely understated...
...So, while we think parades are on the whole a good thing--and balloons and confetti absolute musts---our sense of elation is "The trick is to swallow the worm without swallowing the whole hook, line, and sinker'" haunted by the profane purposes to which the rituals of public life are routinely put...
...Along the impassable sidewalks, vendors were eagerly hawking all the paraphernalia of proper political sentiment, from American flags and tiny flag decals, to Tee-shirts commemorating the war or reviling the Iraqis...
...We desperately need just this symbolic vocabulary if we hope to really transform American life...
...The trees and flowers have a presence, a density...
...These reservations are not meant to begrudge the joy of those who exalt in American forthrightness or the safe return of American soldiers...
...oar compulsive self-gratulation seems out of proportion to the military and political goals attained or, in retrospect, the risks taken...
...As Meg Greenfield has written (Newsweek, March 18, 1991), the congressional debate on the Gulf War was a "rare and admirable exercise in political accountability...
...Initial reports put the amount of paper shavings showered on the 12,000 marchers at 1,200 tons...
...The roaring of the engine is an element in the pleasure, silencing everything else...
...ET CETERA SO CUT I T OUT...
...Even many sympathetic to the use of force in the Gulf hesitate before the headlong rush to solemnize this war...
...423 'The good society': Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven Tipton 425 Enabled for the kingdom: Lucretia B. Yaghjian 430 Heirs of the kingdom?: Joseph H. Fichter 432 A married priest: Thomas A. McCabe 434 Poetry: Carl L. Bankston III, S.E...
...Portland, Me...
...A slight drizzle of paper started floating down into the narrow alley we look out on shortly after the start of the parade around noon...
...The cynical politics George Bush practiced so expertly in 1988 will surely make good use of this now famous "victory...
...Mowing is mechanical...
...It is a shell of sound keeping out external influence...
...the Washington bunch did the right thing...
...Still, it is hard to abide President Bush's claim that the Gulf War exorcised the so-called "Vietnam syndrome," or that American troops went abroad to repel aggression and returned home to find a "nation transformed...
...In the partisan tidying up ahead we fear a calculated exploitation, if not betrayal...
...That's politics, say a good many people...
...Still, like President George Bush's claims about a "new world order," a degree of hyperbole inevitably shadowed the festivities...
...Nor are military successes likely to 12 July 1991:419 be the object of sorrowful hand-wringing...
...They speak to a common life using symbols that afford all of us a social intimacy largely absent in a proudly competitive and individualistic culture, ha doing so, they evoke the legitimate authority of a community to articulate its values and celebrate its life...
...Something in our attitude borders on moral exhibitionism...
...To the victor belong the rights to spoilage...
...For Frost it's the whisper of the scythe that brings this knowledge, not the droning of a four-cycle engine, but I think I know what he means...
...04106 (207) 799-4387, classified advertising correspondence to 15 Dutch St...
Vol. 118 • July 1991 • No. 13
