Correspondence
SPIELBERGER, JOEY & ZIMMERMAN, SILVIA B. & McTAGGART, BILL & HOFF, MARIE & McMENAMIN, ELIZABETH & MAHONEY, (REV.) JOHN P. & MAHONY, JOHN F. & LORENZONI, (REV.) LARRY N. & Koller, Christopher F.
CORROSPONDENCE
Buy the rug that smiles
I was watching a Chicago Cubs baseball game on television when my dad came downstairs and read to me the article by Abigail McCarthy on child labor ("Pulling...
...It saved me from missing an innovative and remarkable movie...
...But I think he ought to remember that there are other Catholic issues besides abortion...
...Kick upstairs whoever is responsible...
...But that money went to pay off the debts of their families...
...You may put ads any place except page 2 (which is for Correspondence) and page 3 (which is for editorials...
...SILVIA B. ZIMMERMAN Washington, D.C...
...The rugs that the boys made go to Europe and the United States, and they are very expensive...
...I contend these artists deliberately and consistently select material to shock and offend, and then, when we react accordingly, we are met with a pained expression, a patient sigh, and variations on "You just don't understand...
...Ultimately, aesthetics and morals intersect...
...A little payola...
...But...please, don't touch that familiar, privileged, inside-front-cover Correspondence spot: I can't help resenting any full-page ad that keeps me from turning blindfolded to your readers' reactions...
...The emperor is rich Your contributors' commentaries on the relationship between Catholicism and popular culture reveal, among other things, the spookily pervasive position Madonna occupies in our collective psyche...
...Dennis O'Brien's essay was so nebulous that in spite of reading it twice I could not discern what his point was...
...Yes, the characters and events of the film made that milieu look funny, but also pitiful and most repulsive...
...If s the reason I have been a faithful subscriber for twenty-five years...
...The demonstration involved kids from all over India who carried signs saying, "Stop Child Labour" and "Child Labour Is a Cruse [This is how it was written on the sign] on Humanity...
...A truly profound cultural critique is needed to understand why we have become a culture obsessed with the portrayal of viciousness, death, and ugliness (to wit, your own brief report on the "art" of portraying dead, decaying cows...
...I am as much appalled by violence as is Alleva's critic, John D. Hagen, Jr...
...I met some of the older boys in the demonstration when my dad and I went in a motor rickshaw to the Mukti Ashram, a place where boys who had been freed from the factories learn how to read and to do something other than weave carpets...
...Culture is determined by profitability-Catholicism stands (or, sometimes, kneels) in the face of an ethic of materialism, of value by majority vote, and of an all-too-human inclination to greed and self-preoccupation which much of our market-driven popular culture so assiduously exploits...
...I live in Chicago, but the demonstration was in New Delhi, India, when it was 100 degrees...
...Categories oversimplify matters, and I think Carlin engaged in that exercise in this column...
...Now I must protest...
...Better to raise the ante on Associates than lose your soul...
...I hope we don't return to the good old days when cheers and laughter sounded whenever "another redskin bit the dust," and naive little girls had no idea what happened in Joan Crawford's Grand Hotel room...
...Does Crossroad now dictate policy on Dutch Street...
...I wonder how he would classify Congressman Henry Hyde, who is quite rightly anti-abortion yet fully supports Newt Gingrich's views on welfare, child care, and education...
...September 22], and I deplore, with Senator Moynihan, "the nonchalance of many Americans toward violence in our culture...
...Like it...
...On May 1,1995,1 participated in my first demonstration...
...ELIZABETH MCMENAMIN Scranton, Pa...
...San Francisco, Calif...
...Is someone on the take...
...This September 8 style must go...
...This is not printing, it's typing...
...Categorical Carlin I do wish David Carlin, Jr., would devote as much space to dissecting Catholic conservatives as he used in dealing with Catholic liberals (read: Democrats) ["A Liberal Catholic Taxonomy," September 22...
...One is an esthetic decision, meaningful or sleazy...
...Is Hyde to be considered an exemplary Catholic, while Edward M. Kennedy and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who backed the bishops on welfare, are outside the pale...
...John Hagen ("It's Time to Take Sides") was utterly "right on" (to use a popular phrase) in his critique of Commonweal's reviewers, and I thought Richard Alleva's and Frank McConnell's rebuttals were inadequate to the issue at hand...
...BILL MCTAGGART Logansport, Ind...
...I am almost eleven years old and in the fifth grade...
...Must I range over a whole page...
...what really sells Commonweal is substance, not style...
...Sometimes their fathers got beaten too, when they tried to free their sons...
...Hagen was right The editors are to be congratulated on addressing the important issue of the congruence or conflict between values expressed through American popular culture and the values of Catholicism...
...Yes, but...
...We have no upstairs Over the years you have occasionally altered Commonweal's look and typography, and-although I might have preferred the 1978 style-I went along...
...Many of the kids had worked in carpet factories for twelve or fourteen hours a day, every day of the year, for many years...
...And it is very annoying to try to read...
...A lot of them didn't get any money at all...
...But if the rug has the "Rugmark" logo (a rug with a smiley face on it), it means that the rug was not made by a child slave...
...JOHN F. MAHONY Mahopac, N.Y...
...San Francisco, Calif...
...MARIE HOFF Boise, Idaho Alleva to the rescue I want to thank Richard Alleva for his good review of Pulp Fiction [November 18,1994...
...I can't understand, though, why Alleva calls Pulp Fiction a "romanti-cization" of the gangster milieu...
...CORROSPONDENCE Buy the rug that smiles I was watching a Chicago Cubs baseball game on television when my dad came downstairs and read to me the article by Abigail McCarthy on child labor ("Pulling the Rug out," September 22...
...REV...
...In many ways I admire David Carlin...
...Bravo...
...Providence, R.I...
...If the boys did not do their work, they were beaten...
...Oh, yes...
...Some of the boys had been kidnapped to work in the factories, and some did not know their own age...
...But surely violence in a work of art is not the same as violence in the streets or in our houses...
...Former Governor Mario Cuomo once remarked that journalists love terms like "liberal," "conservative," "neoliberal," "neoconservative" because they serve as cheap substitutes for thought...
...Don't get me wrong...
...Contents belong, unobtrusively, to the left of editorials, where they may be read at a glance...
...Am I missing something here...
...JOHN P. MAHONEY, O.P...
...Looks different...
...LARRY N. LORENZONI, S.D.B...
...That compliment may gain weight when I mention that I am a Cuban-American journalist whose work at a human-rights organization includes clipping articles on Cuba in the national and international press...
...Bring back August 18...
...in fact, several years back I voted for him in his unsuccessful run for Congress...
...All the best...
...As for Correspondence, which used to be printed, let me paraphrase Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac...
...An informed source I'm about to leave on a trip but not without telling you how much I enjoyed the articles by Joseph Policano and Gary Prevost (September 8...
...REV...
...JOEY SPIELBERGER Chicago, III...
...And yes, keep the "Last Word" on the last, inside-back-cover page, and not on page 30, where it appeared in your inaugural "new-look" issue of September 8. But don't worry...
...What is this, the new New Yorker...
...Grace may infuse us at unlikely times-as when Bruce encores with "Born to Run," or the Bills galvanize Buffalo-but greed puts Pocahontas on our sleeping bags and Shaquille O'Neal on our gas station cups...
...We are all uncomfortable with censorship, but viewers have a right to note that the emperor is not only buck naked but is of times engaged in some pretty bizarre behavior...
...Catholicism provides, among other things, the detachment to help tell the difference...
...I do expect sophisticated, aesthetic, and moral critique from the "leading Catholic intellectual journal...
...But a few were fortunate enough to get a little, like about six or seven dollars (or 200 rupees) a year...
...LARRY N. LORENZONI, S.D.B...
...But neither they nor your editorial pay enough attention to the inexorable economic physics of our society: To be popular is to be profitable...
...The head of the Ashram is a man named Kalash Satyarthi who freed many of the boys...
...The other is sinful and possibly criminal...
...REV...
...The emperor is off his nut Re: Your issue [September 22] on "Catholicism and Popular Culture": My main point of contention with aficionados of Mapplethorpe, Serrano, etc., is their insistence that we ignore subject matter...
...I urge you to continue the discussion because the current offerings [issue of September 22] are just a beginning...
...CHRISTOPHER F. KOLLER Buffalo, N.Y...
...Our "material world" has put the pop of real dollars and economic markets in pop culture...
Vol. 122 • October 1995 • No. 18
