Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

After the best original song nomination for "Alone Yet Not Alone" was rescinded, "Schindler's List" producer Gerald Molen rips the Academy for "faith-based bigotry" (VIDEO)

Here is a sequence of stories over Joni Eareckson Tada's singing "Alone Yet Not Alone" in a movie of the same name:

-- Joni Eareckson Tada  is surprised and delighted at the song's nomination

-- Academy strips "Along Yet Not Alone" of its Oscar nomination

-- Oscar winner pens letter accusing Academy of Christian "bigotry" in song flap

Joni Eareckson Tada, in the first link above, makes the following inspiring statement:

What message do you want to leave with the song’s listeners?

Years ago I wrote a mission statement for my life, and the mission statement is simply “I want to be God’s best audio-visual aid of how His power shows up best in weakness.” And, I see this opportunity as just another example of God answering that mission statement. God seems to delight in taking the ill-equipped, untrained, unskilled, and unprofessional and placing them to do a job so that the whole world would know that God is God. And, if people watch that video link [see above], that’s the message I hope they’ll get.

THE C-SPAN ARCHIVE REVISITED

I published once before about the c-span archive and I do so once again on the strength of Jim Kearney's recent post which highlights additional video.  Herewith some of Kearney's recommendations (and only some, check his post for more):

Sarah Palin might enjoy C-SPAN’s interview with an earlier conservative superstar, Margaret Thatcher, discussing The Downing Street Years in 1993.

Important thinkers are also stars in the C-SPAN firmament. Free from pressures

GOLD MINE: C-SPAN OPENS ITS ARCHIVES TO THE INTERNET

This means, as Joe Carter points out, free online access to the more than 160,000 hours(!) of television footage.  Carter helpfully suggests:

Check out some of the videos of First Things‘ editors Richard John Neuhaus, Joseph Bottum, James Nuechterlein; FT contributors Mary Eberstadt, Alan Jacobs, and Yuval Levin; and FT board members Hadley Arkes, James Burtchaell, Eric Cohen, David Dalin, Midge Decter, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Suzanne Garment, Robert George, Mary Ann Glendon, Russell Hittinger, Glenn Loury, George Marsden, Wilfred M. McClay, Gilbert Meilaender, David Novak, Michael Novak, George Weigel, William Burleigh, and Peter Thiel.

Happy days are here again!

Since I am currently reading Alan Jacobs' The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis (as I  mentioned before), I enjoyed watching and listening to Jacobs discuss his book at the Cambridge Forum.  In his brief talk (followed by a Q&A), he mentioned the impact Lewis had on one of his students, Kenneth Tynan, who would go on to excel as a dramatist, a screenwriter, a critic, an essayist, a director, and a theatrical impresario, a man given to "pushing boundaries" (he was the director of the first all-nude musical, "Oh Calcutta!").  His "peacockish" (Jacobs' term) flamboyance might lead us to suppose his relationship with Lewis would be rocky, but it wasn't.  Tynan struggled