Father Z, in a post today on liturgical puppets, includes a quote that goes right to Robbo’s heart:
“We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.”
— Hilaire Belloc, This That and the Other (1912)
Exactly.
I think friends of the decanter will agree that this neatly captures the essence of many of Robbo’s screeds about the barbarism of our so-called modern culchah here. (At least I hope so. Otherwise, my writing is even poorer than I thought.)
Now, you may snarf your hot beverage at this assertion, but the fact of the matter is that I’m neither a prig nor a snob. Really. The point of the matter is that from my studies and observations, I’m simply very aware of the enervating effect of Belloc’s sitting by and watching and the devastating consequences of such moral enervation so often illustrated over the course of history.
In other words, I see those large, awful, unsmiling faces pretty clearly.
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August 23, 2012 at 5:11 pm
captainned
Robbo:
Most proper-thinking people see those same faces every day. Some of us are finally standing up and saying “No more”.
August 23, 2012 at 5:24 pm
mothe
Belloc got it exactly right.
Personally, whenever I hear of someone approvingly described as ‘irreverent’, my gag reflex goes into overdrive. The Alan Alda Syndrome.
August 23, 2012 at 9:41 pm
captainned
Arthur Dent.
You’ve got him down pat.
August 23, 2012 at 9:57 pm
Robbo
“No, that’s just perfectly ordinary paranoia. Everybody in the galaxy has it.”
August 24, 2012 at 2:38 am
captainned
OK Ford, let’s see you settle a bill with an American Express card. I won’t be responsible for the hand or the bird.