I neglected to post the winners from last week’s Watchers Council vote. To remedy that, I’d like to give a great big shout out to Dymphna at Gates of Vienna for one of the better Christmas posts you’ll ever read. I bookmarked it and I hope Dymphna re-posts it every year because it is a timeless reminder of what Christmas should be all about. It was the top vote getter in the Council category.
Entitled “Above Thy Deep and Dreamless Sleep…”, here’s a short excerpt:
Yeah, Christmas at an orphanage sounds bad. But when you’re six years old, what do you know? It was Christmas, just like everybody else.
There are parts that stand out for me. One is the hymns we prepared all through Advent so we’d be ready for Christmas morning (years later, in middle school, the Gregorian choir was my introduction to midnight Mass. Besides getting to stay up till midnight to sing, there was the excitement of singing “Adeste Fideles to a packed house which emitted enough alcohol fumes to share a little cheer with us, way up in the choir loft). There were strong delineations between the hymns we sang and the Christmas carols we prepared for the school party. Somehow they didn’t mix back then.
[...]
The nuns took us shopping the Saturday before Christmas. It’s hard to believe they herded sixty little girls down the street to the dime store near the Florida Theater, but perhaps they took us in groups. Of course, back then, weirdoes weren’t stalking the aisles of stores checking for loose kids, so maybe they did take us all in one fell swoop. We each got a dollar to spend and we deliberated long and carefully over our choices. It really was a dime store. Most years I got my mother my heart’s desire: a box of chocolate covered cherries, which left enough to buy a handkerchief for my brother. One year, though, I splurged and got two sherry glasses for mother and nothing for Mark. I still have one of those glasses, etched with grapes.
Read the whole thing and share it with someone you care about.
Finishing a strong second was this post by Shrinkwrapped who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite sites. The writer has a sharp, penetrating mind and writes in clear, lucid prose to which he applies his considerable experience in the mental health field.
The article is entitled “The Suicidal Pursuit of Perfection:”
It seems to me there are only two possible reasons the leakers, and those who print the leaks, can have for airing such potentially harmful information. The first possibility is that they are true believers in the absolute primacy of civil liberties; these are people who believe, for all sorts of often excellent reasons, that government power to control individuals is the ultimate danger and that any compromise of their position starts us on the “slippery slope” to totalitarianism. This position is, in some ways, quite admirable, though the logic of their uncompromising position leads to great harm to their own cause and to any influence they might wield or seek to wield. The other possibility is that they are political opportunists, using the issue for its value in damaging the Republican opposition for short term political gain. Aside from the noxiousness of this kind of behavior, I would suggest that their approach is similarly self-defeating, and threatens to marginalize their party and destroy whatever influence they might hope to wield.
There is a certain type of person who is intolerant of imperfection in themselves, and in others. They maintain the highest of standards for themselves and their society. In a profoundly important book written 20 years ago, the Psychoanalyst Arnold Rothstein described them as being involved in The Narcissistic Pursuit of Perfection. Their need for perfection leads them to attack all those who, inevitably, disappoint them; no one is ever good enough to make them feel satisfied.
Sound like anyone we know?
In the Non-Council category, the winner was Sigmund, Carl and Alfred’s “The New, Updated, Alice In Wonderland.” Great stuff!
What the real world, high priced analysts won’t tell you is a millennia old truth: The Jews just want to be left alone. They have been slaughtered by those who have hated them and slaughtered by those who have claimed to love them. The world was happy as long as that paradigm was valid. Now that Israelis and Jews defend themselves, they are hated with even more ferocity.
The Arabs could not beat the ragtag Jews, shell shocked from the Holocaust, into submission. The Arabs had never seen Jews defend themselves and they could not imagine a ‘dhimmi’ not acceding to their demands. The Arabs were seen for what they really were- failures. The one thousand year decline of Islam was now visible for all to see- including themselves. The blame game began in earnest. Someone had to be blamed for the failures. That ’someone’ was the Jews.
As for this week’s winners, my post on MSNBC’s Craig Crawford idiocy was nosed out once again by Dymphna at Gatesof Vienna for “Let Me Tell You Something, President Bush” that continues the story about the Indonesian guest worker in Saudi Arabia who was horribly abused at the hands of her master.
I might mention that for the only time in my memory, every single member of the Council received at least 1 vote from a fellow Council member on their submission. Excellent work all around.
Finishing first in the Non Council category was a heartfelt post by Neo-Neocon about the problems she has as a conservative while running in very liberal social circles. It’s called “To Speak or Not To Speak: Coming Out As a Neocon.”
Finally, the Watcher has tallied the 1st place votes from all the weekly contests held during 2005 and I’m proud to say that Right Wing Nut House finished with the most votes among all Council members. Finishing a close second (and closing fast at the end I might add) was Dr. Sanity followed by the irrepressible Dymphna of Gates of Vienna.. Congrats are also in order for Winds of Change who finished with the most 1st place votes in the Non-Council category.
If you’d like to participate in next week’s Watchers Council vote, you can submit a post by following the instructions here.
Here’s hoping that 2006 brings continued excellent work from all my friends on the Council.