My Disappointment with the Sopranos Ending

I know that I am so far behind the times on this story, but this is what happens when you rely on DVDs rather than HBO for your Sopranos kick. Anyway, I finally finished the Sopranos last night and I must say that I'm disappointed, but not for the popular reasons. Contrary to popular opinion, I loved the ending scene on an artistic level, although I had been prepared for it by the loud criticisms surrounding the episode.

Rather, I was disappointed in the Soprano family. The strength of the Sopranos as a show was getting the viewer so involved in its characters. Throughout their six seasons, I have seen the characters grow, take steps back, and yes, get whacked, but through it all, I developed a connection with them. It's because of this, that I was disappointed to see Meadow compromise on her beliefs so that she can become a high paid defense attorney for the mob. I was glad to see A.J. show some backbone in working hard, but just as disappointed when he compromised his beliefs because his parents made him a better offer.

Throughout the series, I had been hoping that the Soprano children would be able to avoid making the moral lapses of their father. Unfortunately, the finale offered us bleak moral prospects for the Sopranos, let alone the ambiguous immediate future of the family's patriarch. This, however, is not an artistic criticism at all.

The final scene was nothing short of brilliant, living up to the show's reputation for writing and cinematography. The public outrage over the disappointment says something about the blood lust and lack of imagination of Americans. We have no room in movies, books, or television for endings where there is no clear cut resolution. Artists are supposed to wrap up the message for their viewers, rather than let the audience struggle with it themselves. (Look at the response to my favorite movie this year: No Country For Old Men) Sure I love conclusions that are made for me, but I find them to be more artificial than natural. The Sopranos ending was true to life in the respect that it was morally ambiguous and anti-climactic.

Huckabee's Theocratic Vision

There was a time in this election season when former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee was my favorite Republican candidate. Unfortunately, Governor Huckabee has shown some frightening ideas regarding the Constitution.
In a recent speech and subsequent interview with Beliefnet.com, Governor Huckabee argued that we should re-write the Constitution to better reflect God's standards. It's hard to choose a place to start complaining in that series of questions. I'll just start with the first.

Well, I probably said it awkwardly, but the point I was trying to make– and I’ve said it better in the past – is that people sometimes say we shouldn’t have a human life amendment or a marriage amendment because the Constitution is far too sacred to change, and my point is, the Constitution was created as a document that could be changed. That’s the genius of it. The Bible, however, was not created to be amended and altered with each passing culture. If we have a definition of marriage, that we don’t change that definition, that we affirm that definition. And that the sanctity of human life is not just a religious issue. It’s an issue that goes to the very heart of our civilization of all people being equal, endowed by their creator with alienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That was the point. The Bible was not written to be amended. The Constitution was. Without amendments to the Constitution, women couldn’t vote, African-Americans wouldn’t be considered people. We have had to historically go back and to clarify, because there’ve been injustices made because the Constitution wasn’t as clear as it needed to be, and that’s the point.

Governor Huckabee is obviously correct in his assumption that the Constitution was made to be corrected. The founders specifically built an amendment process into the Constitution so that the nation could better adapt its government to modern society. However, Huckabee says that this is not the case with the Bible and that we should amend our secular Constitution to better reflect his interpretation of the unamendable Bible.

Let's take a look just at his example of marriage. If we were to base our vision of marriage on the Bible's, all men could have multiple wives and harems filled with concubines. This view, however, is unacceptable to all but a fringe population in the Christian world, not including Governor Huckabee. This view, however, automatically requires a specific interpretation of the Scriptures, an amendment of sorts.

Now, even if we were to agree that Huckabee's vision of marriage was without a doubt the vision presented by the Scripture, he requires us to take the step of making it law. There have been very few precedents in history where a law has been passed solely because it is based on Scripture. And that is exactly the point. The idea of one religion dominating over all the others was reprehensible to the founding fathers and is personified in this mindset.

Well, I expected to write more about this, and I could go on for pages on this one interview, but I'll leave it at this. I expect to re-visit this in the future, especially if Gov. Huckabee wins the South Carolina primary.

Goal of the Blog

So, this is not my first blog, and I usually start these things with the best of intentions, so here goes. My main goal for this is to simply practice writing, to make sure that I still can put a sentence together. There will be no rhyme or reason to this blog's content, because, it'll pretty much be whatever I'm thinking about at the time (most likely baseball, politics, religion, or whatever Andrew Sullivan has posted on the Daily Dish). Anyway, please critique and judge any post, because that's the only way I will get better.