2. It is obvious from my own experience over the years that many (of course not all)kinds of religious "reasoning"* are rather more consonant with left politics than any form of "detectivve reasoning" (whether of the really obnoxious "British" school or of the (admittedly pleasant) Columbo form). (*On this list we have C.G.E. & Chip Berlet.) In the English-speaking world no 'model' of class warfare has so far definitely transcended The Chartist Movement. And while I too liked Columbo I would prefer the Chartists or the late Father Joe Kelley (of Normal, Illinois) or the Berrigan Brothers to any detective, whatever kind of reasoning he/she uses. I'm afraid detective fiction, _especially_ where 'reasoning' is involved, bears unavoidably the deep stain left on it by Sherlock Holmes.
3. Most religions involve (I think) bad reasoning -- or rather false premises, but it is bizarre to make "religion" and "reason" polar opposites. It's like making cooking the polar opposite of iceskating.
4. Moreover, of course Doug is quite correct -- class warfare with a badge is not class warfare by any strecth of the imagination, under any circumstances. If crime fiction is to be really left (regardless of the intentions of its creator) the police not the criminal must be the hero's primary enemy.
5.And most of all (and this error is omnipresent in left critique of fiction and film), if individual capitalists are the villain, than the fiction is PRO-capitalist, not anti-capitalist. Haven't any of you people seen any of the old B-Westerns: all pro-capitalist and a capitalist is ALWAYS the villain.
6. General Principle: Enjoy the TV show or novelist or poet that you enjoy -- and don't think you have to justify it politically. See some of the debates over Buffy (either on the old marxism list or on this list). They became quite absurd. I love the fascist poet Pound and the Christian poet Milton and the aristocratic apologist Jonson!
Carrol
Carl Remick wrote:
>
> >On Aug 31, 2007, at 12:27 PM, joanna wrote:
> >
> > > Not just smarts. Columbo uses inference, deduction, ....science.
> > > Columbo
> > > is what class warfare looks like when the working class aligns itself
> > > with reason rather than religion.
> >
> >It didn't hurt he was part of the LAPD either. Is class warfare with
> >a badge really class warfare?
> >
> >Doug
>
> Well, another unique thing about Columbo is that he is an outsider who
> functions successfully on the inside. The archetype of the public avenger
> as total outsider was probably best defined by Raymond Chandler, whose hero,
> Philip Marlowe, brandishes his identity as a *private* investigator to
> shield him from the corruption of the police and maintain his purity as
> knight errant. As Chandler famously described his hero in "The Simple Art
> of Murder": "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean,
> who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The [private] detective must be a
> complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a
> rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age
> talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust
> for sham, and a contempt for pettiness."
>
> Columbo, a master of finesse, is able to go Marlowe one better and actually
> work *within* the system -- making use of the resources of the LAPD without
> being burdened and tainted by its authoritarian values. In one memorable
> episode, Columbo manages to nab a murderer who is in fact his superior on
> the police force, the LAPD Deputy Police Commissioner (played by Richard
> Kiley).
>
> It's remarkable indeed that Columbo can do his outsider-on-the-inside shtick
> since his character is affiliated with the LAPD, arguably the most rigid,
> militaristic pack of police mofos in the US. But there he is at the crime
> scene -- a guy with long uncombed hair, wearing a rumpled suit, standing in
> a sea of crew-cut, spit-and-polish, patrolmen dressed in SS-black uniforms.
> Columbo is the only cop on the scene who isn't carrying a gun (and can't
> really remember where he stored his), but he's the only one there who knows
> what's going on and what to do. A subversive guy, Columbo.
>
> Carl
>
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