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I blog @ FRIENDLY FIRE read my LATEST COLUMN FRIENDS' BLOGS CATHOLIC LINKS  mater dei, ora pro nobis contact: @ weinkopf.com (C) 2001, - 2007. All rights are reserved. 
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Wednesday, January 09, 2002
HATS OFF TO HOBOKEN What an exciting finish to the 2001 Weinkopf.com Football Pool! Hoboken Headhunters Cris overtook Lakewood Lancers Dave once and for all, defeating him by 3 points to become the first ever pool champion. But it was even closer than that. The hottest performance of the week came from ClevelandDawg Stacey who, with 11 points, leapfrogged over VivaLas49ers Jason and myself to tie LLD for second place. Ultimately, her own loyalty might have done her in -- she picked the hapless Browns over the Steelers, and that cost her what would have been the tying point for first place. In the end, though, only five points separated the top 5 positions, which speaks to what a close competition it was. I look forward to going up against all of you again, hopefully in an expanded Weinkopf.com Football Pool next year. Till then, thanks for making this so much fun this time around. All hail our champion, Hoboken Headhunter Cris! And go Pats! Yours, Chris, the Mighty Mighty Pats Fan WHY I'M NOT A DEMOCRAT If there's a single reason why I could never be a member of the donkey party, it's because it's consistently soulless, thoughtless, and downright deceitful. That may sound overblown, but I think Sen. Majority Leader Tom Daschle neatly proves my point. He's the target of my latest FrontPage column, Debunking Daschlenomics. Monday, January 07, 2002
STAR WARS AND THE CELIBATE PRIESTHOOD This weekend I caught Lord of the Rings, which was fine, but definitely not the best show of the night. That honor belongs to one of the previews that preceded the flick, a trailer for Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Truth be told, the preview didn't seem to up SW standards. It featured a lot of cheesy romance scenes more worthy of Leonardo DiCaprio than Darth Vader. Nonetheless, it also included a few shots of light-saber battles and Boba Fett, which were more than plenty to sell me on the picture (not that I needed much convincing). More interesting, though, is that the film seems to touch, even if clumsily and accidentally, on my recent debate with Jamie Glazov about the celibate priesthood. Two years ago, when SW Episode I came out, I remember thinking that the Jedi Council looked something like the priesthood. The Jedis were seemingly all men, celibate, and faithful to a hierarchical structure. They wore habits resembling those of Franciscan Friars. Like priests, they also seemed to be blessed with special powers. (Although the ability to move objects through the air pales in comparison to turning ordinary bread and wine into the precious Body and Blood.) Still, there was, I thought, an obvious analogy here, even if unintentional. George Lucas frequently borrows from our real world in designing his fictional worlds in the Star Wars universe. In many ways, the Church seems to be the model for his Jedi Council. The trailer for Episode II makes the comparison all the more clear. From the preview, we learn that the central drama of the movie will be the struggle of young Anakin Skywalker, forced to choose between his love for Queen Amidala and his commitment to the Jedi's way of life. Apparently Jedis truly are celibate, and when Anakin signed up for the business, he committed himself to the single life. When he meets Amidala, he reconsiders, and that eventually drives him away from Obi Wan Kenobi and into the hands of the Emperor and the Dark Side. Now Glazov would probably read all this as proof that celibacy makes Vaders out of men, and that's what the Jedi Council gets for its prudish disciplines. Another interpretation, though, is that it was not the rules that brought about Skywalker's downfall, but his straying from them. The Jedi Council effectively defended the galaxy for centuries until some impish mop-top from Tatooine decided he wanted a girlfriend. Discarding the wisdom of the ages in favor of the momentary impulse is dangerous business. True, Lucas probably never meant to enter this debate, but I'll be curious to see which side his movie ends up favoring. It will give me something to think about in between light-saber battles, during all those gushy love scenes. |