>. . . or more to the point are becoming like that
>obnoxious 'L'Opinion publique' in Offenbach's _Orphée aux enfers_ ("To
>hell with Orpheus") who struts with great self-importance onto the
>stage to "hand out the palm or the anathema". john mage
>
>I am pleased to present you with the Carroll Cox
>Olympian Put-Down Award.
Are you a Dionysian Man, Max? :)
I -- along with Michael Hoover -- am a connoisseur of an endless stream of decorous _& devastating_ put-downs that Carrol issues out of his expert knowledge of the English language & literature. Remember my insistence upon the comedy _of the highest order_:
At 12:58 PM -0500 12/17/00, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>On LBO-talk, comedy should go above the level of _Meet the Parents_
>(much of its "comedy" relies upon the "real" name of the protagonist
>played by Ben Stiller: "Gaylord Focker"), _Scary Movie_, _There's
>Something about Mary_, etc. Shouldn't be a difficult request, given
>the stellar cast of regular posters....
>
>Yoshie
Now, speaking of decorum, here's Walter Benjamin on "politeness":
***** It is well known that the recognized imperatives of ethics -- honesty, humility, brotherly love, compassion, and many others -- come off second-best in the daily clash of interests. It is all the more surprising, then, that people have so seldom reflected on the mediating factor that human beings have sought and found for thousands of years. The true mediator, the product of the conflict between morality and the struggle for existence, is politeness. Politeness is neither the one nor the other -- neither moral imperative nor a weapon in the struggle -- yet it is nevertheless both. In other words, it is nothing and everything, depending on the way it is regarded. It is nothing in its capacity as beautiful appearance [_Schein_], as form, as an agreeable way of enabling us to overlook the cruelty of the conflict raging between the opposing parties. And just as it is anything but a rigorous moral prescription (but merely the representation of a morality that has been annulled), so too its value in the struggle for existence is a fiction (the representation of the fact that this struggle is unresolved). Alternatively, the very same politeness is everything -- namely, when it frees itself, and thus the events concerned, from convention. If a negotiating room is entirely surrounded by the barriers of convention, like the lists of a jousting tournament, then true politeness comes into its own, since it tears down these barriers; in other words, it widens the conflict past all bounds, while at the same time granting entry -- as helpers, mediators, and conciliators -- to all those forces and authorities that it had excluded. Anyone who allows himself to be dominated by the abstract picture of the relationship in which he finds himself with his opponent will never be able to make anything but violent attempts to gain the upper hand in this conflict. He has every opportunity to remain impolite. Whereas an alert openness to the extreme, the comic, the private, and the surprising aspects in a situation is the advanced school of politeness. Anyone who practices this will be able to seize the reins in a negotiation, and ultimately also gain control of the interests at stake. Finally, he will be able to astonish his opponent by manipulating the conflicting elements of the situation as if they were cards in a game of patience [solitaire]. Patience is in any case at the heart of politeness and, of all virtues, is perhaps the only one that politeness adopts without modification. As to the others, which a godforsaken conventionality imagines could receive their due only in a "conflict of duties," politeness as the muse of the middle way has long since given them this due -- that is to say, a real chance for the underdog.
(Walter Benjamin, "Ibizan Sequence," _Selected Writings_ Vol. 2, 1927-1934, trans. Rodney Livingstone, et al., ed. Michael W. Jennings, et al., Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1999, pp. 586-7) *****
Yoshie
P.S. As for John Mage, it goes without saying that he is a man of many graces -- literary, political, & sartorial (the latter based upon Anita's testimony)....