But, Your Grace, it is a windmill!

I'm having great fun this week, both hearing and (online) seeing discussions about candidates for the papacy. In reading of the Cardinals, I am wondering if their comments are related to what they genuinely believe to be important (if so, in some cases, some of them should go on retreat or spend some time in a first rate university), or if it is merely either catering to public silliness or having some fun with the press.

I know little of Cardinal Tettamanzi, though reports hint that he would find Peter's throne to be a pleasant spot to occupy. (That cannot possibly be true of anyone... can it?) Yet what is making me laugh aloud is first that he warns of the DaVinci Code's being contrary to Christian teaching and history, and second that he finds gambling of any kind to be dangerous. I cannot picture that the DaVinci Code would be taken for anything except far-fetched fiction (nor that it was intended as anything else), and have a strong sense that the bets Paddy is taking (for example, on who will be the next pope) are intended more for fun and relaxation than anything else.

My guess is that Cardinal Tettamanzi is a clever man who knows how to get media attention. Italians have far too much experience of the papacy to not be aware that there are true stories from church history which would top anything in the rather silly DaVinci Code. Nor is there the Calvinist influence that would make gambling seem, I imagine, a waste of time for which one must account at the judgement seat.

My generation, in their younger days, often were committed to strong causes. (Today, most of them are super-frumps, some ready with lengthy sermons about, perhaps, how television is the ruination of the world. They have forgotten that people used to consider it rather entertaining to watch someone drawn and quartered... or crucified. Middle age can be a time when one is nostalgic for a past which never existed.) There was conflict involved - for example, those my age who were opposing war were the children of those who thought the Allies had made the world safe for freedom. Today's 'causes' are boring, partly because they are so 'safe.' Someone who is trying to make the world safe from smoking will at most get embarrassed apologies from those who disagree. I also wish that people would remember their history, logic, rhetoric, and so forth, and realise that presenting an argument depends on more than 'our children deserve better than this!' or 'my sainted mother told me that...'

In the early days of the Internet, when I first rejoiced at the potential for online resources and then realised that the down side was that whinge bags and nut cases all could become authors immediately, I remember a tale which still makes me laugh aloud. It had to do with (no, this is not a joke...) Barbie dolls! I imagine it was the domain of parents who, deep down, would like to be protesters, but so fear losing the favour of the Establishment that they take refuge in picketting schools which have soda machines.

Well, one of the Barbie dolls 'talked,' and it seems that she commented that mathematics was difficult. (I heartily concur... I still have not the slightest grasp of mathematics.) Oh, for shame! Here, an image of woman was being promoted that would make females seem inferior in that field. Well, I have taken offence at many things in my day, but never once at words uttered by a plastic mouth.

This gets better! Advertisements showed said doll in settings where she was performing on stage and other rot of that sort. (It is not rot in a kid's imagination - but protesters on such matters have too much imagination in all the wrong places.) Children, of course, would see such things, and be disappointed that they could not reproduce the settings and special effects. The manufacturer, filled with social concern, agreed that further advertisments would show Barbie only in a child's hand, to make it plain what size the doll actually is. I am wondering what child was unaware of that in the first place.

Ah, but things do get worse! The wicked doll is destroying girls' self-esteem today! With her curvaceous body not meeting normal proportions (in fact, if I could grasp the simplest concepts of maths, I dare say I'd gather that a woman actually shaped that way would topple forwards), she is instilling 'body image issues.' If there is any relation at all, I'm sure the little girls here are managing to have their mothers turn them into nut cases, not their dolls.

I'll give odds of five to one that warnings about the DaVinci code are sly and ironic... but that the crusaders against doll-dom are dead serious. I am trying to remember, regarding the latter, just which author originally said that it is futile to try to have a battle of the wits with an unarmed man.