Mickey Kaus has a slight modification of the previous interpretation. He feels that Gregg wafted through my version of a meddling preference, and went on to a different version. He attempted to "guilt" Eisner and Weinstein not by an appeal to anti-materialist Orthodoxy, but by an appeal to an anti-violence ethic as members of a special class of victims of violence. Well, since Kaus knows him personally, and the whole thing makes a lot of sense, I defer to that interpretation.
But I still can't figure out what TNR's "apology" is all about. They imply they understand, but I don't think they do. The "offense" is a grievous meddling preference. It's an attempt to place yourself within another's skin in order to convey to them how enormously immoral you think they are: a strategy that is always fraught with danger. But that's what meddling preferences are, by definition. You'd rather prevent someone else from some action, than allow yourself an exemption. Such preferences are, by nature, almost masochistic.
I have to say that I haven't the slightest inclination to see Kill Bill, and I'm sorry I saw Pulp Fiction. I understand the notion of meddling in the preference to produce such crap, but I have no confidence in the strategy itself. There ought to be a more direct route to shame.
Well, here's a thought. In Beauty: The Value of Values Frederick Turner proposes that the experience of shame is tied closely to the capacity to experience beauty. So the shameless, according to this philosophy, live lives that substitute aesthetics for beauty. They have no genuine beauty in their lives. It doesn't get more direct than that.
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great joy being here..
Posted by: Paula Sue at January 7, 2005 05:50 AM