"Costly Confessions"

Washington Free Beacon:  Art critics, like Oscar Wilde’s definition of the cynic, know the price of everything and the value of nothing, Roger Scruton says in an essay about kitsch that begins his latest book, Confessions of a Heretic. Today critics praise modern art filled with so much that “tells you how nice you are: it offers easy feelings on the cheap.”

Although early modernists such as Eliot and Pound sincerely attempted to make room for the human spirit in modern life through discipline and sacrifice, according to Scruton, the hard task of sustaining that tradition “proved less attractive than the cheap ways of rejecting it.” Later modernists rejected that costly tradition in favor of a different, century old one of ugly and effortless clichés. Now it is easy to make, sell, and display the objects of the artist, critic, and audience.

Scruton writes that many people today, including his fellow philosophers, favor affordable dogmas that require little thought, instead of the more arduous and costly task of conservatism. Needless to say, this stance has not ingratiated Scruton to some. His new anthology is titled Confessions of a Heretic because the essays in it “reveal aspects of my thinking which, if I am to believe my critics, ought to have been kept to myself.” The essays share the overall theme that Westerners increasingly act like Wilde’s cynic: We value good feelings but do not value the difficult means of sustaining our inheritance. (Please read the whole thing if you can)

http://freebeacon.com/culture/costly-confessions/#sthash.pk2fvPWe.dpuf

"Durst will return to L.A. to face murder charge"

Eccentric real-estate heir Robert Durst waived extradition Monday in New Orleans and agreed to go to Los Angeles to face a murder charge, hours after an HBO documentary was aired in which he mumbled "What did I do? Kill them all, of course."

"There it is. You're caught," Durst is heard mumbling to himself, adding "What the hell did I do? Killed them all of course."

Filmmaker Andrew Jarecki told Good Morning America on Monday that his team didn't notice Durst's bathroom ramblings for two years because the recording had no video and "you're making a film."

"It took a while to really understand the impact of it," Jarecki said. "It was so chilling to hear it."

If you are following this bit of news, do you hear a confession or do you hear something else? People say all kinds of things all the time that sound like a confession. I don't know.

"Argentina's president Cristina Fernandez suffers brain haematoma"

Fernandez, 60, was admitted on Saturday to a Buenos Aires hospital. The president suffered trauma to the brain in August, her spokesman, Alfredo Scoccimarro, said. He did not elaborate.

Fernandez is in an electoral campaign for elections at the end of October that will determine control of Congress.

A subdural haematoma is an accumulation of blood under a membrane that covers the brain and usually occurs after a blow to the head.

Fernandez, who has been president since 2007, had her thyroid glands removed last year after she was diagnosed with cancer, although later tests indicated no cancer was present.

The first thing that came to my mind after reading that was Hillary Clinton. Remember when Hillary Clinton suffered a fall and a concussion?
I'm one hundred percent sure the two events are completely unrelated. Nevertheless, for reasons, which I can only conclude must spring from the sexists influences that have distorted my perspective, there it is. My thinking, as limited and warped as it is, trying to connect these unconnected, certifiably un-connectable events. It's the darndest thing.

The blood clot that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suffered is inside her skull but did not result in a stroke or neurological damage, her physicians said late Monday.

The clot was discovered during a routine MRI on Sunday at New York-Presbyterian Hospital as Clinton was recuperating from a fall and concussion, according to a statement from spokesman Philippe Reines and the physicians. The doctors predicted a full recovery.

Hopefully, I too, will some day, with the help of confessionals such as this one, will be able to make a partial, if not a complete recovery. I say partial, because I'm not sure that a male, any male, can be totally 100 percent free of sexism. It's a subtle scourge.

the guardian, Washington post

"Because I said I Would"

“My name is Matthew Cordle and on June 22, 2013, I hit and killed Vincent Canzani. This video will act as my confession.”

In a powerful online video, a young man says he is prepared to pay for a night of heavy drinking and a head-on, wrong-way crash on I-670 near Third Street.

The man promises to tell the truth about how he caused the death of a 61-year-old photographer and Navy submarine veteran from Gahanna.

“I struck a car. I killed a man,” the man says in the video posted Tuesday to becauseisaidiwould.com and YouTube.

The video is helping launch a new dot com called Because I Said I Would.

When the camera blur fades and his reflection comes into view he says, “My name is Matthew Cordle and on June 22, 2013, I hit and killed Vincent Canzani. This video will act as my confession.” Mr. Cordle continues to say that he will plead guilty when charges are filed against him and intends to take full responsibility for his actions. The county prosecutor has already said he intends to ask the state to indict Mr. Cordle.

The video is powerful and serious testament to the dangers of drinking and driving and the importance of taking responsibility for poor choices, but it’s also something else: it’s a promotional video for a new not for profit startup called Because I Said I Would.

The nonprofit’s website calls it “a social movement dedicated to bettering humanity through the power of a promise.” In addition to helping “execute charitable projects in support of other non-profit organizations,” Because I Said I Would offers free “promise cards,” little postcards that users can write on to help them remember to keep the promises they’ve made.

I watched the video. Some things about the confession lead me to believe it could be a fake, but after watching it a few times I'm not so sure it is a fake. Click to see the video at the jump.