Tag Archives: Umberto Eco

dark ages and rages and sages

A thousand years ago the “dark ages” were dark, but maybe not as dark as we imagine today. Certainly, our forebears themselves did not think so, and they were only half wrong… …In Latin, only a few love songs and … Continue reading

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cartoon messiah: a walt misery construction

…A struggle between the divine and the mythical, Jacob and the Angel as point of departure and building block for a political struggle that of necessity and consequence collides and challenges the established law. Since the beginning, there has always … Continue reading

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dancing with phantoms

…ghost dance and cargo cult…In times of stress look for the prophets of an earthly paradise: Handsome Lake of Mohammed, Lenin or the Teacher of Righteousness. America is always ready willing and able for any millennial cult that presents itself… … Continue reading

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appeal of the kit-kat style

Its popular entertainment to attribute the unknown throughout history to secret societies, the esoteric forces and hints of sacred sexuality gone awry. From Umberto Eco’s Prague Cemetery, Dan Brown or even Schmuley Boteach and his blending of implied messianism with  … Continue reading

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clipped wing and a prayer

When spirituality, politics and money meet. Can faith have a relationship to power? Bizarre plots. Power struggles. Vatican City or Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose? Twelve months to live. Related to the sale of land parcels in the Occupied … Continue reading

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the wanderer: trouble no more

The wandering jew. The white man’s burden has forced the heavy lifting onto the yid but the pop culture articulation of the concept is actually more profound and complex than its various manifestations would care to admit. Once man and … Continue reading

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the golem: oy vay you say

Return of the golem. The problem is not creating these golem, its how to get rid of them. If you don’t kill them off quickly while there is still a bit of moisture left in the clay, they start adapting … Continue reading

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smelly little orthodoxies

Probably the best piece yet on Hitchens since it places him within a wider context than the sniping and nitpicking that has been the norm on the left, or better yet the left-left,that endless recess of bourgeois values, the browned-out … Continue reading

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two faced value

Threatening complacency and self-satisfaction. Wallowing in the glory of inertia. Taking a pass on disturbing entrenched assumptions. By extension, not resisting to conformity means a negation of what is regarded as the uncannily human, meaning one ventures onto the slippery … Continue reading

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8 1/2 disruptions of syntax

In Fellini’s 8 1/2 an intellectual laments that the director, Guido, has no central idea, no clear intellectual concept. An English journalist wedges in,”What do you think about the marriage of Marxism and Catholicism?” In 8 1/2  Fellini doesn’t just … Continue reading

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