MY REAL LIFE ROCK TOP TEN

[onlyabunny]

(with apologies to Greil Marcus, who no longer writes it).

In no particular order:

1. KDOX X-15 X-TREME RADIO

Mount Hood Community College, my place of distracted drudgery, has a little radio station, KDOX, which happens to have an online presence as well. When they're not yelping in frat boy cadences about "X-treme Radio!!" and broadcasting

Comments

[zevhonith]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#Early_life

The rationale isn't "everyone was doing it" the rationale is "it was legally required, he convinced one of his teachers to vouch for him so he never had to attend a single meeting, his father was an Anti-nazi police officer, and he deserted the German Army."

I feel like the Nazi argument eclipses everything that's actually a valid point about his beliefs and the direction in which he's likely to take the church, which is a scary enough story on its own. The Nazi thing isn't where the danger is with that man; it's a skeleton that almost the entire German population over a certain age struggles with, and in that crowd, his hands are pretty damn clean.

[onlyabunny]

Fucking Nazi Pope.

[zevhonith]

Fucking Nazi... something something. :P

[onlyabunny]

Okay, the price of cheekiness is high. I feel bad. I'm sorry.

You have an excellent point, and it's callous--not to mention hypocritical--for me to condemn someone who has had to make far more difficult (even life-threatening) choices than I have. And he mostly made the right ones, given the circumstances.

But there's something grievously disheartening about moving from someone who (considerable problems aside) was known for his heroic leadership of resistance against oppression to one who simply sidestepped the issue entirely.

Were Bush so inclined, he could claim his nonparticipation in the Air National Guard was a blow against American Imperialism.

But desertion heroic is not.

[zevhonith]

That's true. But the heroism of John Paul was the heroism of a man - Joseph was just a kid when he went through all that.

I don't mean to excuse - I just think that with 78 years of life to examine, it's hard to condemn a man for the things he did (or failed to do) when he was, essentially, a child.

[onlyabunny]

That's true as well. It's a consequence of our tendency to encapsulate lives into coherent narratives and see straight lines and characters arcs. It's not always relevant or effective, but it's all we know how to do.

If anything, we would be better able to extrapolate the rest of his life from his early childhood rather than young adulthood (most soldiers are kids, yet they are given power over the fate of the world, so what do these terms mean?).

From what I gather, he spent the rest of his life upholding the status quo and being generally grumpy, homophobic and intolerant of other faiths. Which means he was probably a shoe-in for the position.

[zevhonith]

From what I gather, he spent the rest of his life upholding the status quo and being generally grumpy, homophobic and intolerant of other faiths. Which means he was probably a shoe-in for the position.

Ditto. And it's *that* part of his life that's meaningful to me, inasmuch as it makes ME grumpy. :P

[onlyabunny]

Oh, and this argument pretty much deflates mine as well.

Well said, both of you. ;)