(In case you didn't see this yesterday.)
Posted on 09/24/2003 4:36:03 PM PDT by Choose Ye This Day
SEP. 22, 2003: HEEERE'S LAURA
Delayed by Hurricane Isabel, here is the long-awaited Q&A with Laura Ingraham, host of the Laura Ingraham Show and now the author of Shut Up and Sing: How Elites From Hollywood, Politics, and the UN Are Subverting America.
I can't pretend to be objective about Laura: She is not only one of my favorite radio hosts, but one of my favorite people: Fearless, inventive, funny, shrewd, and kind-hearted. Her Labrador Retriever also happens to be the uncle of my Labrador Retriever - yes, Washington is that small a small town.
I can't pretend to keep up with Laura either. Her rapid-fire mind shoots off witticisms and perceptions like some kind of futuristic machine-gun. I caught up with her in bursts of email as she toured the country before last week's storm.
Q: "Laura, welcome to NRO. I'd better say straight off that I've often had the pleasure of being interviewed by you on your radio show. But now the mike is mine, and I get to ask the questions. So let me start with your take on Hollywood. Why has Hollywood swung to such bizarre political extremes? And does it matter?"
A:"I don't think it's all that surprising that Hollywood would have some extreme views. When the only 'normal' people you see are held back by security guards while you walk through a rope line, you tend to get a jaundiced view of the average American. And over time, I think that Hollywood has developed a strong left-wing culture and people naturally feel pressure to conform -- as they would in any closed-minded environment, like China or Harvard.
"Does it matter? Absolutely. The Hollywood elites can use their fame and influence to promote ideas that might not otherwise get such a favorable hearing. Sometimes this happens directly, like when Tim Robbins or Susan Sarandon turn up on TV to complain about President Bush. But it can also happen indirectly. Everyone recognizes that Hollywood constantly undermines traditional values, and traditional religious beliefs, and has done so for decades. In the past, great artists like Mozart and Bach supported religion and traditional values. We have almost no such art. Over time, that can have a tremendous effect on a society."
Q: "Yet to listen to Hollywood people, you'd think that they were all quivering victims, about to be swept up by John Ashcroft's secret police - and that it is talk-radio stars like you who have all the real power?"
A: "When anti-Bush/anti-war/anti-marriage Tim Robbins, speaking at the National Press Club last Spring complained about the 'chill wind' against free expression blowing through Hollywood, I screamed laughing. It would take a Category 5 hurricane to shut him up--I mean, he was the invited guest of the National Press Club, for goodness sake! What chill wind is he talking about? You couldn't turn on Fox, CNN or C-Span without seeing Janeane Garafalo and Mike Farrell, or Tim's 'life partner' Susan Sarandon spouting off about Iraq or how terrible President Bush is."
Q: "What about our elite universities: you are a proud (I think!) graduate of two of them, Dartmouth and the University of Virginia? What harm do they do - and why did you escape?"
A: "Yes, I believe the universities do a great deal of harm. Most of the time we worry about how they're brainwashing the students, but I don't really think that's the worst thing they do. They take young minds -- at a time when you have the greatest chance to encourage a love of truth and beauty -- and they try to convince them that Western culture is basically worthless. So we have all these young Americans with no appreciation for art, for literature, for philosophy, for all of the things that make life worth living. It's no wonder that our culture grows cruder and coarser every year.
"I think I escaped these effects because I was taught strong values at home. Unfortunately, not all college students are that lucky."
Q: "When Democrats and liberals talk about 'elites' they use the term to mean rich people. You don't - and yet you condemn a lot of what's happened on Wall Street in the past decade. What's the difference between the financial elitism you condemn and the business success you celebrate?"
A: "When I talk about financial/business elites, I'm talking about people who manipulate the system to help themselves, while remaining completely indifferent to the effects of their actions on everybody else and on America at larage. If you work hard and you create a profitable company, all of us benefit from the products you sell and the jobs you generate. But if you just run a scam, with funny accounting numbers, you're not helping anyone else, and you're defrauding lots of people. Similarly, if you make money by transferring advanced-weapons technology to China, that might benefit you, but it hurts the rest of us.
"A lot of Republicans are nervous about taking on these type of issues, because we are so committed to the free market. But the free market won't survive long if most Americans lose faith in it. We have to make the system work well, or the entire system itself will be in danger. If class warfare becomes as popular as it was under FDR, we could easily go back to the type of heavily-regulated economy that we had before Ronald Reagan was elected.
"Right now we are seeing a backlash against the business elites in the reaction to the $140 million compensation of the NYSE's Dick Grasso. Ditto for the public's reaction to the FCC's decision to relax media ownership rules. The elites weren't listening. The public outcry was amazing. The Senate did something amazing this week in voting to rollback the FCC ruling--IT LISTENED TO THE PEOPLE!"
Q: "Again and again in Shut Up and Sing, you emphasize the harm that destructive elites in Hollywood, the universities, and the foreign policy establishment in Europe and this country do to religious faith and traditional values. This is a new theme for you. How do you explain this hostility? And what's the right response to it?"
A: "The elites are hostile to traditional values because those values act as a check on their behavior. Elites don't like to acknowledge that any force that prevent them from doing exactly what they want. So they see religion as a threat, and they're constantly trying to tear it down. This is not new; the first Christians were thrown the lions by the elites of their day. The Old Testament is filled with examples of how the ancient Israelites faced religious oppression.
"The right response is to literally 'keep the faith.' We can't allow the elites to cow us into giving up our beliefs. Certainly we don't face the type of persecution that Moses or Paul experienced, or that Christians face in countries like China today. And the stronger our faith, the harder it will be for elites to do anything about it."
Q: "Laura, thank you!"
(In case you didn't see this yesterday.)
Nice ..uh...shirt!
This is hardly a new phenomenon. As noted, the church musicians of old were the most famous composers of the day. But the great 20th century composers of church music (e.g., Vierne, Widor), have names that are probably not known to most people who aren't sacred music and/or organ music buffs.
In addition, I've done photography in a couple of hundred churches and, based on what I've seen of church architecture and decor, the artistic die-off was well underway early in the 20th century (IMHO).
And this is not limited to America. When I visted Holland 20 hears ago, the lady who ran the hotel said something to the effect that "The cathedrals are only there for the tourists".
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