An incoherent culture:
Garvey, John
award went to Mia. The citation reads: "In tions of the theory, but we are making rapid bringing the idea of common obligation an age of moral subjectivism; in an age progress....
...Incest be- scenes of (for example) a bus-full of peoselves that certain forms of inhuman tween consenting adults is a further im- ple traveling across the country allowing conduct constitute a higher and more en- plication, which Woody Allen gets credit themselves to be led in song...
...A movement away from a COMMONWEAL 15 Dutch Street, New York, NY 10038 rights-based approach to many legal quesCommonweal 18 June 1993: 11...
...The best a black nationalist as he but see the right to bear arms as very com- abstract expressionist artists-deKooning, threatens to kill white peo- plicated...
...All other essays will be returned to their authors after January 1. obligation can be brought about by political means...
...If you listen speaks of the need to send black people seriously, but apply it to their favorite caus- to the Miles Davis recordings from that back to Africa and end the Jewish control es where it serves their purpose...
...in an age in to Dr...
...Announcement of Prize: December 17, 1993...
...ing about the naivete of it...
...Maybe not...
...The dog is about to make a mess recent form of this sentimentality, with GIs upon, will eventually lead to immeasur- on the carpet, while the future president named O'Leary, Valucci, and Bernstein able corruption...
...The award-winning submission, belongs to the man who owns one," it is which may take the form of a scholarly or critical essay or a personal narraeasier now to own one: technology makes tive, should appeal to the interests of the general educated reader...
...To date, we are a long way chides him, saying, "But that would be all headed into battle together...
...Whether it is possible for civic culture was a lie...
...is not that we are morally corrupt...
...Kevorkian's pioneering work, we War II-era movies in which there were which we have learned to persuade our- are just learning to carry out...
...There were from having carried out all the implica- wrong...
...Vietnam made rently dominates the political scene is the visiveness that seems inevitable at presthe sixties happen, in combination with reflection of a fragmented culture, and not ent is a vital question...
...Let's give Mia credit for not At the same time there was something movwe are terrible sinners, but probably not being a good sport...
...O excluded minorities all over the place, but an ideal was suggested...
...The select more than one winner or not to award the prize at all...
...There was no equiva- The Friars of Atonement announce the fourth annual Graymoor Prize, to be lent, in Vietnam, to Ernie Pyle or other awarded to the best essay on any aspect of ecumenical or interreligious affairs...
...But that is because of technology...
...This is of everything...
...The operative word Saint Patrick's Day parade, as did conflicts the interviews with people on both sides was "cool...
...There was an understated rebetween gay Jews and a parade celebrat- made it clear enough that people all seem action going on against those happy ing Israel...
...It is impossible to think of segment of the artistic community re- War II is probably not possible any more, a society continuing as a single thing, in garded as the presuppositions that led and isn't desirable...
...From the euphonious Anthea Dove sus now, and such technologies as cable (1993) to the exotic Ty Mam Duw Community (1992) to the formidable Ed television and desk-top publishing offer Marciniak (1991), Graymoor winners have written about the difficulties as well a much more diverse range of voices and as the satisfactions, the personal as well as the theological dimensions of ecuviewpoints...
...In both cases it was a matter of to want a united society, one based on final singers on the bus...
...The tensions are the vision of the fifties...
...It appealed to much worse than most people at most She can pick up her award at the one version of the dream of the possibiltimes...
...The beat generation and bop were in their ways reactions to the world revealed in World War II and Korea...
...World War II a theory of morality (or better, a theory of Nixon as a senator and Checkers as a was probably the beginning of the most no-morality) which, if consistently acted puppy...
...I believe in ians have done a valuable service in of some genuinely beautiful but difficult10: 18 June 1993 Commonweal to-define things, and a realization that the tions may be a beginning, but it could be through law...
...It is an old photo of ity of life lived in common...
...Communitar- tivity...
...There was an coerce us into common understanding, movement in another direction...
...Those movies lightened morality, provided they are for discovering...
...that, and have to do with radical and iralism were reactions to World War I, se- The kind of propaganda that seemed reconcilable visions of what life is meant rious rejections of what an important to move most Americans during World to be about...
...The prize is intended to encourage and support new ecumeniA.J...
...This isn't done de- ways, and it was all detached from any Irish and parade organizers disrupted the liberately-in the parade cases, reading sort of propaganda...
...No doubt mand either...
...Euthanasia is another, which, thanks ing the current atmosphere with the World ters of objective obligation...
...This outlook began to fall apart in the fifties...
...The winning essay will receive in a society which increasingly sees itself $1,000 and will be published in COMMONWEAL...
...It may be technologically impossible to have another world war, at least in the propaganda sense...
...The citation reads: "In tions of the theory, but we are making rapid bringing the idea of common obligation an age of moral subjectivism...
...This essay will become the property of the Graymoor Ecumenical idea that this sense of common, mutual Institute...
...The editors reserve the right to made up of competing interest groups...
...Dadaism and surre- what we are as a society...
...were as corny as could be, and could not done in the name of `conscience' and 'hon- What Mia Farrow gets credit for is hav- be done today, except cynically...
...Abortion-on-demand is one im- back into the discussion...
...the divisions are deeper than in reaction to wars...
...The subservience of the Washington Post's Ben Bradlee to the Kennedy family may have been the last time that was possible...
...cheerleading World War II journalists...
...sense of any common society is eroding fast, and in this context the communitar- Deadline: October 1, 1993...
...Nor is it possible to any sense, unless there is a profound people to accept slaughter...
...The fact esty'-in such an age Mia Farrow is to ing sufficient moral intelligence to scream that they could be done at all is something be commended for having rediscovered in pain...
...Jack Kerouac could rights versus rights: the rights of the gay agreement, and few people really want to be as sentimental as those old movies, but groups who wanted to march versus the win at the expense of others-but it is an he was part of a reaction against a derights of the parade organizers...
...a press a little more affordable...
...Conflicts between gay balkanize the society...
...prize-winning essay will be published in COMMONWEAL's January 14, 1994, I see a problem here, though: that is the issue...
...During the forties there were only a few radio networks, a relatively few channels of information that could reach great numbers of people within a fairly short time, and they had a friendly attitude toward the people they represented to the public and served...
...In some ways this is exciting and offers an un- Original and unpublished essays of approximately 2,500-4,000 words should precedented opportunity for cultural be submitted to the editors of COMMONWEAL who will make the final decision democracy, but the opportunity happens following consultation with a panel of experts...
...didn't take much moral intelligence to ob- ly produced and just as sincerely received, The trouble with contemporary America ject to euthanasia and abortion-on-de- and so it is our form of socialist realism...
...The question facing us is whether not simply expressions of cultural diA lot of cultural history defines itself we can move toward a common sense of versity...
...The ACLU prepares to de- of these cases have in common is that the the era in which the beat generation was fend Dr...
...Like all fundamentalists, they re- Kline, Pollock, Hartigan, Mitchell-were ple or you can watch a neo-Nazi as he ally don't take the letter of the law all that producing wonderful work...
...in which moral codes are considered to plication, one we have thoroughly carried You can learn something by contrastbe matters of personal preference, not mat- out...
...The ian impulse is an important one...
...This realization that the rights-based discourse that cur- us to move away from the increased diwas central to the sixties...
...inevitable result of making rights dis- liberate civic culture, a wartime collecThere are great differences here-these proportionately important...
...Liebling wrote, "freedom of the press cal and interreligious ideas and perspectives...
...While it may be true that, as menical work...
...the war THE GRAYMOOR PRIZE in Vietnam wasn't one that had the filter earlier wars had...
...Jack Kevorkian's right to kill off idea of rights has been used, in each, to born, jazz and art got interesting in new depressed people...
...That era is often remembered in the OF SEVERAL MINDS John Garvey popular imagination as a quiet time, and even the revisionism (justified, I think) of a writer like Garry Wills, who has argued AN INCOHERENT CULTURE that Eisenhower was a much better president than Kennedy or Johnson, does not LIFE AFTER 'OZZIE & HARRIET' obscure the general impression of a world in which "Ozzie and Harriet," and maybe Henry Luce's Time, were the major cul0 n cable access television the right to free speech, and it means tol- tural influences...
...What all era they sound fresh, immediate...
...It an ancient truth, namely, that some things in the way of moral smarts to object to in- was no doubt part of the atmosphere in are just plain wrong, no matter how much cest...
...in Westchester County, erating even ACLU fundamentalists who But the fifties were much more comNew York, you can watch see the right to free speech as absolute, plicated and interesting than that...
...0 appropriate cynicism that followed the war...
...The reaction was based on a vision are not all equivalent cases...
...But once upon a time it which wartime propaganda was sincereyou finesse and sophisticate them...
...No one really knows what that war was about...
...No, the real trouble is that we have Commonweal office...
...You may say it doesn't take much that separates that time from our own...
...It Our previous winners have reported from England, Wales, Jerusalem, Eisenach, is more difficult to manufacture consen- Germany, and Chicago, among other places...
...its cause...
Vol. 120 • June 1993 • No. 12
