Thou Shalt Not Discuss Politics and Religion… Culture, Discussion, Love, and Millionaire Matchmaker?

I was fortunate enough to have a brief moment of pause this holiday season that allowed me to try and catch up on some television shows I don’t regularly watch. That is my excuse for watching Millionaire Matchmaker the other day, and I’m sticking to it. The premise of the show is that some obnoxious woman has crowned herself queen of coupling what were once single millionaires, and she has some sort of database from which she draws her ingredients (other singles whom, I assume, spend the rest of their days like zombies wandering around aimlessly waiting for her call) and throws them into her witch’s brew of love. Of course, the Millionaire Matchmaker has to place the prized single man or woman in all sorts of situations with other singles in order to make sure the two ingredients have a chance of merging into some erotic souffle.

What I heard during one episode, and I am not sure whether these rules are laid out during every episode, was the matchmaker telling the singles that the rules included “no talking about religion or politics.” Imagine meeting several people and going on dates with them to establish a relationship that you hope will take you longer than the evening and awkward morning thereafter, and not being able to talk about the most important topics to our heart.

This is no different than the unspoken rules of a party or a bar scene: religion and politics are strictly forbidden (of course, in some circumstances you can throw another important topic in there: sports). Anything that might excite the passions of the party-goers or cause someone to take a stand on an issue and defend that stance has to be expelled. Yes, we cannot have people fighting over the concept of God, or what is right, good or just; but you are welcome to fight over beer pong, which person can drink more, why the Washington Redskins are vastly inferior to the Dallas Cowboys, or because you have the wrong Greek letters on your t-shirt.

In a culture open to looking up to 17 year-old pop stars poll dancing on ice cream carts, or a culture that has a film director being applauded because he was fighting an NC-17 rating because he felt “the messy sex seen was tastefully done,” we simply cannot offend our peers’ sensibilities by discussing such nugatory issues like politics and religion.

It is rather unfair for me to comment on what I see as a cultural trend, based on my watching a television show on Bravo. However, these same rules exist in countless situations in an effort to define what we should consider to be “polite company.” Furthermore, large institutions that have been around for hundreds of year now have rules that advocate the same censorship of conversation. Imagine a large and prestigious guild of men that once prided themselves in their meetings that discussed politics and religion to such a degree that they helped shape political and religious thought. Now that same organization has those same activities condemned during their official meetings.

There is a funny shirt out there that defines a liberal as “someone who is so open-minded, their brains have fallen out.” While that shirt is looking to define a contemporary liberal on the political spectrum, I think it speaks loudly about our liberal culture (classically or progressive). Have we become so open minded that we cannot even discuss those things dear to our heart and worth defending? What does that say about our culture, or country, our schools, or even ourselves? One need not look too far and find an example of our brains falling out: one in four students cannot pass the military entrance exam, and we find ourselves in the middle of the pack of industrialized nations with regard to standardized testing scores.

In the end, the moral of the story seems to be this, gentlemen: if you are planning on having conversations with women at a bar, a restaurant, or any good old fashioned dates, do not venture into the deep end of the pool. It is preferable to stay in the shallow end and establish your relationship on tid-bits of popular culture instead so that no one might drown and you can guarantee a successful “relationship.” Allan Bloom called the term “relationship” a “pallid, pseudoscientific word the very timidity of which makes substantial attachments impossible.” Our social compacts, our “relationships” are based on Sartre’s idea that “hell is- other people.” Now, however, hell is deep conversation with other people.

Despite the leitmotif of despair in my article, there is, and I hate to use the term, Hope. Some people are perfectly content with the idea of holding shallow conversations with a significant other, and it seems to work out well on Millionaire Matchmaker (actually I jest, I’d love to know exactly how many of those relationships pan out). I wouldn’t be so timid as to avoid such conversations with people at a bar; if they do not find your company agreeable, they will leave or change the topic. But you can become closer with a group of people after one evening of fruitful conversation that stems from those thoughts that truly dwell in your heart than countless Thirsty Thursdays talking about nothing (how Seinfeldian). What’s better, if you find someone with whom you can talk to about important topics night after night, then you can have your Beatrice to lift you from Sartre’s hell after all!

-rj

The No-Bull Prize: 2009

Friday, October 9, 2009; the President of the United States became the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner through a committee vote.? Alfred Nobel stipulated in his will that the peace prize should be awarded ?to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.?? The Nobel committee cited President Obama as deserving of the award ?for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.??

The first question to escape the lips of many people when the announcement was made was, ?for what??? Surely it is no shock to the diligent observer that the committee would award it to someone who has yet to accomplish anything truly substantive (I am not saying that he won?t), when we cannot forget the fact that President Obama was nominated a mere two weeks after he was inaugurated.? Again, ?for what??? Giving the Nobel Peace prize to President Obama before he has even done anything is like the NFL awarding Tony Romo the MVP for the 2009-2010 season.? I think both Romo’s start to the season, and President Obama’s start to his presidency, warrant the parallel.?

To be honest, the Nobel prize has proven itself less and less relevant and less and less capable of understanding the world as it is.? Instead of awarding true innovators, or people with the drive or spirited attempt to?change the world for the better, right wrongs and free people; the Nobel has been bastardized to mean nothing more than what?a New York Timesendorsement means to elections.? Everyone knows it?s going to someone who adheres to the conformity of the worldy leftist-geist and will rarely if ever adorn the garb of someone who has actually made a principled stand against evil in the world.? ??

-rj