VICE SQUAD: Those neo-Calvinists at Calvin College extended, then rescinded, an invitation for the New Pornographers to play on campus. Why? The college explains, in a press release so earnest that it's comical, that although it is clear that neither the New Pornographers nor Calvin College endorse, promote, or engage in pornography, the band's name could lead some to associate the band mistakenly with pornography, which might lead to some people mistakenly believing that Calvin College is endorsing a band that promotes pornography. This is known as the transitive property of mistaken pornographic associations. My two cents: (1) I'm having a hard time thinking of a single literal reference to sex in the band's catalog; and (2) John Calvin would never have approved of inviting the band in the first place, not because of the mistaken pornography connection, but because rock and roll seems definitionally an indication that one has not been elected to salvation.
On a related (note: not related) note, in the race to sequence the entire genome of the cocoa tree -- a critical precursor to the drug chocolate -- Hershey's and M&M/Mars have tied.
I prefer to read this press release as "Calvin Coolidge does not endorse pornography."
ReplyDeleteIsaac neglects to point out that we actually had the exact same problem in our house when our then-four-year-old spaceboy became a big fan of The New Pornographers. We solved the problem by adopting his then-reading of the word; in our house, they are known as The New Proggers. Has no one suggested this obvious remedy to Calvin College?
ReplyDeleteThere really isn't any logical (or theological) reason why their on-field sports mascot shouldn't be Calvin Coolidge.
ReplyDeleteMan, I'd love to hear Neko Case's thoughts on this issue.
ReplyDeleteThe word on the street is that Coolidge is about to get a revival, historically.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet they had no problem with Death Cab for Cutie, whose entire catalog is about pornography.
ReplyDeleteHaving lived in GR for awhile, I can tell you I'm stunned a band with that name ever got invited in the first place to play at Calvin. I'm picturing some student slipping the paperwork past a Dean Womer-like character.
ReplyDeleteCalvin is home to one of the more heated rivalries in DIII basketball against Hope College (of Sufjan Stevens fame). It represents the underlying tensions of the Reformed Church of America and their split from the Christian Reformed Church.
So Calvin College is not associated with skinny teenage boys in baggy underwear?
ReplyDeleteNo more than Oral Roberts is with the Cavity Creeps.
ReplyDeleteSo I guess "entering white Cecilia" *is* dirty after all ....
ReplyDeleteIt's only divine right.
ReplyDelete