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Historian of Pop: Bowling Green professor found value in studying cultural trends of society (Columbus Dispatch editorial, October 28, 2009)

2009-10-28T14:18:00.000-07:00

Before Ray Browne came along, studying Western culture entailed analyzing the masterpieces of literature, music and art that emerged infrequently over the centuries, their importance growing over time and confirmed by generations of scholars.

The idea that Browne nurtured, as he founded the academic study of popular culture, is that, in an age of mass media, humbler transient works of "art" can influence life and society in ways important enough to merit serious study.

At Bowling Green State University in 1973, Browne established the first college-level academic department devoted to studying pop culture; he is credited with coining that term. He died last week at 87.

Browne remained a foremost expert on what Americans are excited about at any given moment. He was widely quoted by journalists trying to explain the latest trend.

Most likely, scholars always will debate whether studying ideas and trends that are popular for a nanosecond and then fade from the mainstream memory -- think J.R. Ewing beer cans -- is worth anyone's time.

Few would suggest that much of the everyday, vast volume of advertisements and plastic toys and imitations of some other recent fad that characterize pop culture has lasting artistic value.

But in the American democracy, public opinion translates into votes and political policy, and public opinion and attitudes are formed as much by reality TV and YouTube as by serious political discourse. What is loved or hated by the public in a particular season can tell the pop-culture scholar something about the public mood that might not be revealed in a standard opinion poll.

Historians trying to understand the 1970s might gain as much from a review of TV Guide magazines and Sears catalogs from that era as from the complete archive of a scholarly journal.

These days, the field Browne founded has grown infinitely more complex, as the Internet has sped up both the dissemination of ideas and how fast they lose popularity. This should keep his successors at Bowling Green, as well as others around the country who followed his lead, busy for the foreseeable future.

--Columbus Dispatch editorial, Oct. 28, 2009

Photo

2009-08-10T15:05:00.001-07:00

Audition label

2009-07-26T22:12:00.001-07:00

Obama testing the left's faith

2009-06-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

The moment that Obama topped Bush in the God-mentioning sweepstakes, cyber-liberals have been attacking the Christian Right like never before. Or, at least, like before. Actually, it's kind of hard to top before, when it comes to faith-bashing.

Why are they doing this? Substitution. They can't bear coming down too hard on Obama, so they go back to their traditional target. Which is stupid, because we Dems hold the power now, and what's going to be the effect of our demonizing any portion of the not-in-power right? Isn't this one of those measures destined to backfire? The kind of measures preferred by my side, it sometimes seems.

Every day, we Dems strive to live up to our "How do we screw things up today?" image.

Anyway, there isn't much to say about this trend, being that it's nothing more than a faith-bad/democracy-good game that rivals the men-bad/women-good movement of the Nineties for sheer brainlessness. Too many on the left seem incapable of facing up to any of our own faults, especially any on Obama's part. Maybe, during our eight years in exile, we got to thinking too much like victims. And a victim, in the language of pop culture, is someone who can do no wrong, by definition.

So, when faced with evidence that we can do, and do do, plenty of wrong, we're forced to scapegoat the usual suspects. Anymore, we have a single usual suspect called the Religious Right. The more we dump on our foes, the angrier they'll get. Something to ponder, I think.

Anyway, Obama's religious. Live with it. He'd be so even if he didn't feel compelled to dispel the not-born-in-America, is-a-Muslim rumors. (In fact, one of Google's standard search lines is "Obama is a Muslim terrorist"! Far out.)

Lee says, let's face up to our faults and get on with the business of worshiping celebrities and snoring loudly while the health insurance lobby owns Congress (step aside, NRA). My personal favorite form of liberal disconnect consists of praising the very same "liberal" media that worked so hard against Gore and Kerry and which now bitches loudly about the aftermath of eight years of Bush. Choose your own form of denial. Personalized denial is the best kind.

The Care and feeding of 78s, Part Three, by Peter Grendysa (1984)

2009-06-10T17:37:00.000-07:00

THE CARE AND FEEDING OF 78'S, PART THREE
IT FOLLOWED ME HOME, CAN I KEEP IT?

Peter Grendysa (Goldmine 96, 3/30/1984)

Whether you have one 78 or 10,000, whether you've been collecting other speeds for six months or sixteen years, you can never forget that a 78rpm is different. Just getting your new find home or receiving an unbroken mail order purchase is a major accomplishment. You deserve a short time to relax and enjoy the sight of this fine shiny black example of American engineering. Before you slap it on your turntable and crank it out, take a moment to get it ready.

The first thing to do is put away all those fancy-schmancy fluids you've been buying to goop up your LP's and 45's. You don't know what is in them, anyway, and if your vinyl plastic records dissolve into freeform objets d'art in twenty years all you can do is write a nasty letter to the manufacturer, if they're still around.

78rpm records are allergic to alcohol in any form or concentration. For them, the Volstead Act was never repealed. Disc-washing fluids contain alcohol to help in cleaning and to dry the surface rapidly. They also contain surfactants which is an expensive word for detergents. Detergents go after everything not nailed down, surround it in a bubble, and let you rinse it all away. This is a good thing to combat dust and gump in the grooves, and surfactants make water "wetter" to get it down into the grooves. You don't need a lot of surfactant to do the job, and the bubbles or foam you see are no measure of how well it is cleaning. Some of the best surfactants don't get a "head" on them at all. And, you definitely do not need or want the alcohol. (Well, at least not on the records).

Alcohol will attack your 78’s and dissolve them. On the other hand, dust particles in the grooves can be extra destructive on a 78 because of the brittleness of the material. How do you clean a 78? Simply stated, you wash it just as you would a dinner plate. Start with a clean sink, fill it with lukewarm water and add a few drops, no more, of a non-lotion dishwashing detergent. Get yourself one of those very soft complexion brushes sold in cosmetic departments, roll up your sleeves and get ready to do some sud-bustin'.

Dunk the entire record in your detergent solution for a few seconds, making certain the entire surface on both sides gets wet. Wipe the surface in the direction of the grooves with your complexion brush or your hand to loosen the dirt in the grooves, and then rinse immediately in lukewarm running water until all traces of detergent are gone. Don't worry about label color fade or lifting. The record won't be in the water long enough to do any damage. The majority of 78's have heavily-varnished labels quite impervious to water. If you leave the record soak too long, you might get some puckering of the label, but even this will disappear when it dries.

To dry the record, wipe it with a soft, lint-free cloth. Most dish towels that have been through the washing machine a few times are lint-free. Old diapers are good, too, as they are quite soft and lintless. Let the record air-dry 15 minutes or so, then put it in a paper sleeve. Chances are the sleeve that came with the record has as much junk on the inside as the record had on the surface, so a new jacket is recommended. If the original sleeve is one of those art-deco beauties or printed with the label name and lists of other records, save it. They're not making those anymore, either. If it's plain brown or green, you might as well throw it away because you can't clean it.

You should, at this point, give some thought to the jackets or sleeves you are going to use to house your 78's. That means you should think about plasticizers. If it wasn't for these crazy chemicals, plastic would be as rigid as a board. When you add plasticizers to plastic, you make it flexible. The bad thing about plasticizers is that they don't stay put, they migrate. The good thing about plasticizers in your 45's and LP's is this migration. Consider this: everytime you use a cleaning fluid or alcohol on those records, you remove some of the plasticizers from the surface. Within 45 minutes, more plasticizers from inside the plastic have migrated to the surface to replace those lost. That's why it's a good idea not to play a record just after you've cleaned it.

Most 78rpm records made of shellac and beeswax, etc. do not contain plasticizers. But many plastic sleeves do. (There are exceptions, such as mylar.) Putting a plastic sleeve on a 78rpm record is an invitation for plasticizers to migrate to the surface of the record, where they will soften the shellac over a period of time. Furthermore, everytime you slide the record out of the plastic sleeve, you generate a static charge, which is exactly what you don't want, as every mote of dust in the house will make a beeline for your record. Some plastics are made "anti-static" to avoid this well-known propensity. But the common method of rendering plastic "anti-static" is to add surfactants to the compound. You don't need this against your record, either. In the medical and aerospace industries, "anti-static" plastic bags are just one small part of a complete handling system that includes ionized air flow, grounded work surfaces, and grounded people. If you have all this in your record room, congratulations, static is not a problem for you.

If you don't worry about static-attracted dust in your environment for your 45's and LP's, chances are it won't be a problem for your 78's. You still want to keep plastic away from the surface of the record. Use a paper sleeve for your 78rpm records. The heavy green "stock" sleeves favored by record shops in the past were chosen not for any magical protective properties. They simply lasted longer under heavy handling and re-use. When you bought a record, it was taken out of the stock jacket and put into a plain paper one for you. The stock jacket was used again and again.

Collectors should consider the higher cost of the green stock
jacket and the extra space it requires on your shelves. The plain paper sleeves will do very nicely for most of us. Neither one is going to protect your 78 from breakage.

Sometimes, on a clear, silent evening you can sit in your record room and listen to the 78's cracking on your shelves. Or, so it seems. A record that has been given reasonable care and stored properly over the years will sometimes, for no apparent reason, develop a hairline crack all by itself. Second to receiving a most-wanted mint 78 in pieces through the mail, this is the most depressing occurrence. Some of this is caused by stresses built into the record during the manufacturing process those long years ago. Often you will find several copies of the same record with hairline cracks in the same place. One thing you can do to avoid this is to keep the 78's in a place that does not have extremes of temperature - whether too hot or too cold. For most of us, that means keeping them where we live - not in the garage or attic, but living room or bedroom. If your spouse or friend has already resigned her- or himself to you spending large sums of money on noisy old low-fi and fragile records, they won't mind sleeping in the same room with them.

The second thing you can do is shelve the records with strong dividers spaced every ten records or so to keep them from leaning on each other. Never store them flat, always upright.

(Originally appeared in Goldmine #96, 3/30/84. Posted here by kind permission of the author.)

Atheists are not only okay, we love them

2009-05-10T18:03:00.001-07:00

For one thing, I'm not about to stop loving my sister. Or any of the other nonbelievers I know. Well, not unless I didn't love them in the first place, but only if.

My beef with faith-bashing lies with the current fad of characterizing all believers as ultra-conservative hypocrites with no concept of what's currently cool. Yes, I fit that last part perfectly--I wouldn't know current fashion if it ran me over with a team of horses. I'm not, however, a conservative. Nor, hopefully, a hypocrite. Except when I say one thing and do another.

Yes, a high percentage of believers (who make for quite a large and diverse group) are okay with terror-suspect torture to one extent or another, but so is the entire population. Given that believers are a majority, those two observations are pretty much the same thing. Believers, as a demographic, are no more or less conservative or liberal than the body politic. There's money to be made in suggesting otherwise (ask Pew or Huff-Po), but the faithful aren't some alien segment of our population, no matter how often that meme (I've always wanted to type "that meme") is presented by Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, Family Guy, or NPR.

That is, my beef isn't with people who don't believe--please, by all means, don't-believe with all your heart (just make sure it's what you really and truly don't believe). In my book (The Book of Lee), we're all children of the universe, we all have equal worth, and whatever's coming to us is coming to everyone--fate plays no favorites. Or so the Book of Lee maintains. For what it's worth, I don't believe in a prayer-granting, controller-of-the-elements God who gets back at everyone who fails to follow this or that version of the Truth--I imagine God has little use for our various portrayals of his will, plan, etc. It's fitting that we try to understand (and choose to accept or reject) God in terms of ourselves--i.e., as if God were an extension of humanity. But only so long as we realize we're projecting ourselves onto God/no-God. And only so long as we realize that humanity is one more detail in the cosmic mix, no more or less important than any other. Well, okay. More important than rap music, Ellen's awful TV show, or Elvis-invented-rock-and-roll mythology.

I comment on the faith-bashing trend because it's become huge, and because it's been part of the entertainment blogosphere since I arrived here in 2005, and probably before. I figure that, if it's acceptable for believers to be portrayed as comical throwbacks in evolution, then I can be allowed to offer a word or two in rebuttal. I didn't raise the issue, after all. Of course, a number of on-line atheists have me almost convinced that I'm at fault for existing.

On-line atheists, please note--not all atheists. I'm not equating the two. In fact, probably most of those involved in the neo-atheist fad (as I call it) are believers upset with "organized" religion (read: traditional church services). It continues to weird me out, but many of the idea-carriers for Richard Dawkins and the rest are people who, in fact, believe in God. Ah, but it's their God, not the evil organized-religion God. Whatever. As a group phenomenon, that branch of bashing takes the cake--church-going, before the Gen-X revival, was like Borg society, only worse. According to them. Unlike old-church types like me (organ preludes/interludes, sermon, collection plate, announcements, etc.), the new-church types have figured out that God is within them. What a novel thought. They've discovered a personal God. Far out. I can't wait for them to discover the wheel, indoor plumbing, and the fact that men and women view sex differently. Stay tuned.

No, I'm not referring to all Gen-X'ers. I'm too close to one myself, after all. Depending on where you consult, I'm either a Boomer or a Gen Jones. I'm probably the latter, given that I was never a hippie, didn't protest the war (too young), and only vaguely remember the social and political issues of the (echo chamber) SIXTIES. My version of the Sixties was Batman, The Outer Limits, and Famous Monsters. I was a kid.

In conclusion, atheists are fine. The only folks in that demographic who irk me are the on-line sorts who, on one hand, condemn anyone who believes the Bible literally and in full and, on the other, condemns anyone who doesn't. They belong to the James Randi school of treating the Bible like a Sears catalog--one that you'd pitch out for being out of date and, therefore, invalid. And Sears catalogs, like the Bible, make lousy science texts.

As for the younger people of faith who refuse to become a mindless faith robot like me, well--good for them. Maybe they can introduce me to their personal God, who's probably way better than my version, who loves everyone and simply wants us all to participate in the celebration of being.

110 percent of Christians approve of waterboarding

2009-05-09T17:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, it's only 90 percent--according to writer, actor, comic, musician and radio DJ Paul Day, who is so furious, he can barely type. In a piece categorized under "Blatant Assholes," "Christians," and "Vomiting in My Mouth," he writes:

"I guess if you base your religion on the torture and death of an innocent man then you probably shouldn’t have a problem with torture and death. Still, when 90% of your followers believe that waterboarding is ethical, then Jesus need to come down and kick some serious ass.

I’m so furious I can barely type."

Wow--learn something new every day. Not only didn't I know that my religion was based on the torture and death of an innocent man, it stuns me learn to 90 percent of my kind think waterboarding is ethical. Paul's proof? A poll at OneNewsNow, where (when I checked, at least) nearly 85 percent of respondents disagreed with a "high profile Baptist leader" named Richard Land, who feels waterboarding is wrong. According to onenewsnow.com, Land is one of "a growing chorus of religious leaders" who do. But 85 percent of OneNewsNow respondents aren't with Richard. (I voted with the mere 9.16 percent who are.)

Is that 85 percent rate very surprising? Well, consider the Pew poll which revealed that 71 percent of the public is okay with torture to some extent. Kind of puts things into perspective a little, no? And consider the fact that OneNewsNow.com "is part of the American Family News Network, an offshoot of the American Family Association founded by arch-religious right conservative Donald Wildmon," according to Salon.com. Would we expect a low rate of support for waterboarding at such a site?

And why would someone assume that such views are those of the Christian community at large, blatant assholes though we may be? Thanks, Paul, for presuming that my views are in alignment with people whose social and religious views differ from mine in any number of vital respects. But I guess Jesus is going to kick my ass along with the others'.

At any rate, I don't support waterboarding at all, ever. Not even for people who misrepresent my most cherished beliefs.

The blatant stereotyping of whole groups of human beings seems to be a trend, anymore, on the cyber-left, though I wish it weren't so. I wrote earlier about the Social-Darwinistic mentality of the neo-atheist crowd, in which their brand of "logic" and "reason" constitutes, in their humble view, the only path of hope for the species. Well, those folks seem to have taken over the cyber-wing of the Democratic Party. When it's not someone assuming I'm a fanatical apologist for Bush because I suggest that church/state separation still stands firm in spite of anything the guy did, then it's someone concluding I support public-school prayer because I point out that "no law respecting" means "no law in regard to."

Never mind that I gave neither person any reason to think I'm a Bush apologist or supporter of public-school prayer (and every reason to conclude otherwise)--apparently, anything short of a loud, lock-step party-line declaration isn't good enough.

Progressivism will cease to have a future the moment it turns into a series of pledges. Sameness of thinking shouldn't be the goal--uniting people around a common cause or series thereof, yes--but recited values are simply words. I'm beginning to think that the Internet is accelerating the devolution of our language into mere word units. Maybe it's the say-it-quick nature of cyber-writing, though I suspect it's context that loses its power on the Net, given the medium's unprecedented ability to slice and dice whatever tries to pass through it (text, picture, sound, etc.). Context is the glue that holds ideas together, that forms the basis for meaningful comparison and contrast.

Just as numbers, when divorced from Math, become magical symbols, don't words follow suit when divorced from the higher language of context? This may be what we're witnessing.

Lying, Part 2

2009-05-05T03:01:00.001-07:00

In my Sunday rant, I forgot to mention that the big Huff-Po piece on the Peee-ew torture survey is titled Church Going Americans More Likely to Support Torture, which has nothing to do with the headline used by their source, CNN: Support for terror suspect torture differs among the faithful.

In other words, the study found a difference in support for torture among certain types of churchgoers--it's an internal comparison, not an indictment of believers vs. the body politic. But no matter--Huff-Po went ahead and announced that "church going Americans" are more likely to support torture, knowing that most readers would take that to mean "are more likely than the public at large to support torture."

For that to be true, support for torture among church going Americans would have to be greater then seventy-one percent. Was it? Nothing I've read so far tells me.

I always try to give the media the benefit of the doubt when it comes to misleading headlines--bad headline-writing is always a possible culprit. But it looks for all the world as if Pew wanted to find greater support for torture among the faithful and, when it didn't, went ahead and tweaked the data in that direction anyway. O, Lee of little faith? In this case, yep.

Integrity dictated reporting the data as is, not as Pew was hoping it would materialize. But integrity can't dictate anything unless it's there to do so.

Anyway, in this Internet-based era of misinformation as a matter of course, the only way to confront such lies is to do it aggressively. Which, of course, makes the confronter sound disingenuous or possessed of an agenda. The easier it becomes to state and spread a falsehood, the more the burden of proof shifts to those trying to convey the truth. So, the Internet isn't all good, by any means.

Sunday rant: How to falsely sell poll data, or, Peee-ew Research

2009-05-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

Not content to distort the findings of this poll just once, both Peee-ew "Research" and the media decided to twice falsely sell it. Next poll, they'll go for a trinity.

Now, be sure to check the link above, which goes to a pie chart that shows the poll results in question. Note the heading: "Total U.S. population." Note the breakdown of responses, wherein a whopping twenty-five percent of respondents said no to torture. Note that four percent didn't know or care, or else hung up the phone. Notice that this leaves a large and (in my view) scary percentage of folks who think torture is justified to some extent or another: seventy-one percent. That's 71 out of every 100 folks, people. I mean people, folks.

So, of course, all around the Net you'll find discussions of that seventy-one percent figure. Yes? Well, not exactly. Rather, you'll encounter people discussing one of two press articles--the one which has the population pretty evenly split on the issue (!!) and the other, more famous one, which links rate of churchgoing to willingness to condone torture! At Huff-Po, well over 4,000 comments have appeared at the site's main religion-responsible-for-torture post, and most of these are variations on or exact repeats of the same ol' Why Don't Religionists Go Back to Religion Land Where They Came From? corn. People of faith can't think, we have no morality, we live in the Dark Ages, we don't even try to crack wind quietly, etcetera. (What do you mean, all true??)

How did the fact that 71 out of 100 citizens support torture become a population evenly split and/or a matter of church attendance? Because Peee-ew and the press have the combined integrity of a bubblegum molecule left on the surface of Mercury for 500 years and then stomped on repeatedly by an angry bull. On a good day, that is. On a bad day, considerably less.

The pretty-much-evenly-split lie was easily accomplished: Pee-ew and/or the press combined the "never" and "rarely" responses. Sweet, no? Never mind that those who think torture is justified "rarely" are advocates of torture. Never mind the fact that, in a pro/con poll, "never" means no but "rarely" still means yes. Too nuanced for Pee-ew, I guess.

The swipe against religion was also easily managed: Pee-ew and/or our alleged press simply broke down the data according to religious groupings. And what's wrong with that, you ask?

Plenty. Namely, there was no reason whatsoever to introduce the poll findings to the public in a manner that indicts religion when the main poll (from which the religious study was derived) indicts 71 out of 100 citizens. When seventy-one percent of the darn population is pro-torture, it isn't a matter of religion. Or car ownership. Or where you live. Or what bus you take. Nearly 3/4 of the public IS the public. The body politic is the culprit, not people of faith.

Of course, both Pee-ew and the our alleged press wanted to soft-pedal the bad news, and so why not in a way that caters to the prejudices of the primary consumers of data? I refer, of course, to the secular left, as it's called (which, technically, I'm a part of). To be sure, the main deifiers of data are liberals who simply "know," owing to their superior intellect and education, that data is never wrong, that whatever is computed from a poll is the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the (Peee-ew) stinking truth. Funny how those who worship at the altar of Data have the nerve to ridicule those who worship a human-style God. Anyway....

Please note that I didn't say all liberals are this stupid when it comes to data, though I am convinced it's most of us. Everybody's dumb about something, and the left's main area of brain-shutdown is data. Statistics. Study results. Ooooo-woooo! Study results!!! Data! Figures!!

Ahhhh.... Cigarette time.

Did I mention that most of the data worshipers at Huff-Po apparently failed to follow the links to the pie chart--the one which clearly lays out the figures? The reason they didn't is because, unlike me, they smelled nothing fishy about the poll reports, such as the fact that the two main reports didn't gel. You see, that's always a clue that things haven't been reported correctly--when two big stories turn out to be at odds with one another. Just call me gifted, that I'm able to pick up on such subtle and obscure clues.

Even after I pointed people to the link, no one could fathom what I was complaining about. Too abstract, I guess. I mean, here we have a main poll that indicts 71 out of 100 respondents, yet the results are being touted as a virtual tie between pro and con, and/or another example of why religion is evil and smelly and just so un-HBO. It's almost as if... as if... dare I say? Almost as if the peddlers of the data intended to cater to what their data consumers most want to hear. Which, of course, isn't the truth (something no one wants to hear, anyway).

I guess it's an aberration of the Information Age that data has become a church--I can't see people in the days before computers investing all of their trust in figures on a piece of paper, though there must have been some people so inclined. Anyway, we have three reasons to not feel at ease here: 1) A bunch of people are reading an awful lot into results from a for/against poll; 2) no one notices or at least cares when it's demonstrated that the data has been misrepresented; and 3) pollsters and the press seem to have no moral reservations about shaping data to the expectations of their core audience. Which raises the obvious question: why don't they simply make the stuff up in the first place? Why even go to the trouble of collecting it?

Fabricating it from the get-go would be a lot easier, but, hey--maybe they like the challenge.

What would Jesus conclude? That the credulity of data consumers stems from wishful thinking and vanity. Like so many human evils. That's my guess. Actually, I don't know what he'd say. "Dimwits," perhaps.

Internet "debate" and its effect on the economy

2009-04-21T19:28:00.000-07:00

None, far as I can tell. But I'll keep you posted.

I've been engaging in fun Internet "debate" of a "religious" nature. Here's how it works: Followers of Richard Dawkins and Imagine play skeptic to various "claims" of theism, treating all such "claims" as assertions about the physical world and the workings thereof. In doing so, they're stepping outside of the lines of conventional debate by 1) allowing themselves to state their opponents' positions--and in advance, no less, and 2) confusing faith statements with scientific claims. Writing the other guy's lines and mischaracterizing his positions are, the last time I checked, debate no-no's. I mean, really big ones.

Otherwise, the people in question are masterful arguers.

Actually, there's a third thing they do. Namely, if I take issue with any of the words they've penned for me--for instance, if I protest, "Um, that's not my position"--they get annoyed and cite poll results that apparently prove that such and such a position is, in fact, mine. In other words, they're sorry, but that's what I think. They probably think I'm crazy for not even knowing my own positions. Meanwhile, I'm not allowed to script their lines for them. (How fair is that??)

So, anyway, I've spent the last couple of years being told what I believe and how irrational I am for believing it (whether I believe it or not), and I've almost forgotten what I do believe. Maybe that's the plan. Clever rascals, those one-sided debaters.

Anyway, I asked Bev why I keep on "debating" these people, and she responded, "Because you have fun doing it." As usual, she's right.

Things got a little hairy tonight, with an especially aggressive opponent insisting that I'm against gays and in favor of stoning and enslaving people. I responded that I think nothing of the kind, and that I'm a liberal Democrat--something he obviously isn't, given his habit of demonizing me for not sharing his views. I'm sure he'll appreciate that observation. (So far, he hasn't signed on to thank me.)

I've determined that the whole faith-bashing trend began in the mass entertainment sphere--rock bands, comedians, filmmakers, etc. Now, of course, we all know that nobody gets his or her values from the entertainment blasted into our ears 24/7, but you can't deny the influence of same. (Actually, people can, and do. Still, they shouldn't.) Anyway, what's cool for rock and movies and stand-up routines is cool for intellectuals. How that works, I have no idea, but it does.

As faith-bashing became the new thing to do on the media-hip left, folks like James Randi and Sam Harris took note of this trend and decided to turn up the volume on scapegoating religion for our culture's lack of scientific literacy. They joined the ritual, and best-selling volumes ensued, and suddenly modern comics were given an instant-laugh alternative to swearing profusely--mocking faith. And all they had to do was recycle George Carlin recycling Lenny Bruce. Work, like originality, being for losers.

My favorite characteristics of the bashing-for-cred crowd? The way they insist they're not characterizing all people of faith as fundies while characterizing all people of faith as fundies. How they insist that they're not claiming we all think alike while claiming that we all think alike. How they denounce the Christian Bible as an insane, totally irrational document while citing it as an authority (something they have to do, for reasons that have never been clear to me). How they ridicule the idea of God as a super being suitable for photographing and framing while restricting themselves to that very comic-book concept of God, thus making fun of their own view of God (while refusing to deal with more advanced claims for the Big Guy).

Ah, to be a best-selling skeptic of theism. I'd get to script my opponents' "claims" and, simultaneously, shoot them down in whatever form I choose to present them, making sure to insult my opponents every other sentence for the benefit of all the intellectually insecure readers who wish they were me. Then I'd refuse to debate my critics, insisting that I've heard it all and that there's no requirement to deal with nonsense, anyway, beyond labeling it as such.

The perfect scam. Disgusting isn't the word. However, the fallout is fun! But I'm not sure if it's helping the economy or not. Probably isn't.

Doris Akers--Glad Tidings

2009-03-31T23:15:00.001-07:00

Statement issued today (Oct. 22) by Ohio Governor Ted Strickland

2008-10-22T21:55:00.001-07:00

Did you know about this?

“I am deeply troubled by the news that Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and her family have been subjected to repeated serious threats. This sort of behavior simply has no place in a healthy democracy. I know we can all agree that, regardless of which party we belong to or which candidates we support, threatening our public officials or their family members with physical harm has no place in Ohio or America. I admire the steady resolve of Secretary Brunner and her partners at the local bipartisan boards of elections as they continue to prepare for this historic election, and I wish them well as they work to ensure that our elections are administered fairly.”

--Ohio Governor Ted Strickland.

None of this has received anything approaching proper coverage in the local media. In fact, last night, the local 11o'clock news (at least, on the channel we watch) waited until 11:15 to casually announce that the Ohio Supreme Court had dropped the latest suit against Brunner (which would have required challenging all newly-registered voters from early 2008 on!).

Then again, at least they covered it.

Meanwhile, the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch has endorsed McCain, whom they feel is up to dealing with the great challenges that lie ahead. Why? Because he was a POW, why else? Did you even need to ask?

The country is in a big mess, they acknowledge. Yeah, and it's in that mess because of George W. Bush.

And who did the Dispatch endorse in 2000 and 2004? Right! George W. Bush.

The 'Patch also warns against a situation in which the Democrats control the House and Senate and have a man in the White House. A situation that was just fine with them when Republicans enjoyed it.

Speaking of shilling for the GOP, the 'Patch has been keeping up with a local story involving thirteen people who came to Ohio to get out the vote (something Repubs disapprove of, especially when the election's this close), even while it gives precious little coverage to the GOP vote-suppress-athon. Their right-wing--I mean, nonpartisan--political cartoonist of little talent, Jeff Stahler, recently drew a panel which depicted a dog wearing "I Voted" sticker. In the background is a newspaper headline reading "Voting Fraud Alleged." See the offensive cartoon here, if only to prove to yourself I'm not making this up: Voting--a big joke, to some.

Yeah, Dispatch. The war on Ohio's voters is hilarious, isn't it?

Ohio's not the ultra-conservative place it's fabled to be, but it is dull and uninvolved. With a streak of nastiness. Maybe it's this dull, nasty disposition that makes us such an easy mark for GOP evil. I tend to think so.

Lee

Our precious American right to vote vs. database field mismatches. Guess which issue takes precedence?

2008-10-18T09:59:00.000-07:00

The voter-suppression-athon in progress is one that's happening across the country, of course, though Ohio (as usual) is getting most of the attention. Which is great, so long as people are paying attention and getting very, very concerned.

And they are. I think. Maybe. (Public? Hello? Wakey-wakey time.)

Wow. Talk about a deep sleep. Anyway, no sooner had the marvelous Jennifer Brunner, our wonderful Secretary of State, won the U.S. Supreme Court case, the Repubs--oh, I'm sorry, a private (and, no doubt, highly and legitimately concerned) citizen--filed a lawsuit with the Ohio Supreme Court. This article supplies many details:

http://www.daytondailynews.com/o/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/ohiopolitics/entries/2008/10/18/mismatch_legal_battle_moves_to.html

The despicable, thuggish, un-American notion underlying such actions? Nothing less than a presumption to defraud on the part of the American voting public. It's that simple, and that blatant. In other words, any American who registers, or has ever registered, to vote is presumed to be part of a conspiracy to cast multiple, fraudulent votes. And for the Dems, of course. We're desperate, you know, to get that Arab, socialist, tax-raising terrorist lover into office so he can destroy America, or whatever it is he's planning to do to OUR country--so insist Palin-McCain and the GOP.

Is such a bigoted and idiotic notion buried in laughter whenever it's aired? Well, no, because it's coming from the right. If the right insisted that 17-foot jelly doughnut creatures from Pluto were breaking into the homes of true, red-blooded Americans and taking their guns, the right to breathe would be suspended until an act was passed to send soldiers into space to fight the menace.

The Halt America's Vote Act (HAVA) provides the perfect cover for this Jim-Crow-esque behavior, since it all comes down to data-field mismatches. (As if.) Think about it--our right to vote apparently stands on such shaky, uncertain ground that a data-field mismatch can leave it in doubt. Our most precious and important right is optional. Subject to suspension or denial. And all because the Republicans insist, without a shred of evidence, that a mass conspiracy is afoot.

No, ACORN is not evidence of a mass conspiracy. The burden of proof for a huge, nationwide plot to defraud at the polls is not remotely met by the fact that ACORN has collected fake registrations. No matter how obsessively the right treats the ACORN situation like the End of Life As We True-Blooded Americans (sorry about the rest of us) Know It.

The moral of this sorry story should be very clear--when the public stops caring about its most precious right, that precious right can, and will, be taken away.

It's that simple. The Republicans get away with this stuff because, as a group, we LET them.

Oh, for the day (if it ever existed) when the American people imagined they had rights. And stood up for them.

Ohio GOP is on the case

2008-10-07T11:12:00.000-07:00

Shocking news from the "battleground" state of Ohio (where I reside)--people are registering to vote! Can you believe it?

What's more, some of them are taking the next step and voting!

Luckily, the Ohio GOP is on the case, playing games via the voter-suppression measure called the Help America Vote Act, which requires that new registrants have their info matched against state and federal records. The latter, if things don't line up state-wise.

Ain't that great. Voting is such a precious, fundamental right, no? So precious that it comes down to a database match. If this keeps up, other precious American rights--home ownership, for instance--may come down to a data field in doubt. "Sorry, but we've got to take your home, car, and the children. Data base mismatch."

And, so, the Ohio Republican Party has gone to a federal court to complain that people are voting. And, because they're Republicans, they're being (pick one) A) told to get a life, B) laughed at, C) razzed by the citizens of this great state, or D) getting their way, as usual.

D? How did you guess!!

Leethinks that his party (the Democratic Party) should take a break from bashing religion and making fun of Sarah Palin's "folksy" asides to look into this latest assault on voters. That's a big sacrifice, yes, but class- and faith-bashing are always going to be there--our right to vote may not. And, remember--the Hinder--er, Help America Vote Act is nationwide. It's not just Ohio and Florida and a few other reluctant-to-speak-up spots. It's everywhere.

Meanwhile, our Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner (a Dem) states, "I don't know when it became vogue to put fear into the voting process, except if you don't want people to vote." My memory tells me it's been years. Eight, at least.

Anyway, the Columbus Dispatch reports that "The Ohio Republican Part asked a federal court on Sunday to force Brunner to identify mismatches since Jan. 1 and try to resolve any discrepancies before the Nov. 4 election." Yes, sir--our fine Republicans, using our tax dollars wisely and frugally, as ever. Here in Ohio, there's no money for most things, but apparently we've got the time and dough to investigate database-field discrepancies with less than a month to go before the big day. Far out.

In its court filing, the on-the-case GOP said: "This is no mere technicality; it is the cornerstone of American democracy that every qualified voter should vote, but that persons who are not qualified voters should not vote." Wise users of public dough AND super-patriots. Wow. I'm impressed.

Yeah, the problem of people lying and cheating to get into the voting booth is about as massive as the issue of cat-shelter break-ins. Maybe the GOP can look into that when it's finished "helping" America vote. They can issue a statement about the problem of emptied-out cat shelters and long lines of Americans waiting in the cold and rain, and in vain, for a used feline.

Anyway, the bombs are dropping--must take cover. I hate living in a battleground state. It's hell on property rates, even when the market isn't tanking.

Does the left's hysteria Palin comparison to the right's?

2008-09-21T02:52:00.001-07:00

Sorry--I had to do "Palin" word play, and that was the best I could manage. It won't happen again. At least, not in this post.

So... in case you haven't heard, some on the left (my side, by the way) want the media to question Sarah Palin hard and in detail about her possible ties to the Third Wave/Joel's Army movement--specifically, they want her to reveal, once and for all, her intentions regarding the end of the world. As in, if she becomes VP, does she plan to use her office to bring it about? The end of the world, I mean. Just what are her End Times policies?

Questions like that. Someone suggested Bill Moyers to do the interview, though Art Bell seems like a better choice to me.

In other words, we're (the left) up to our usual Oh-my-God-somebody-mentioned-God dumbness. Last time, it was Obama with his talk of faith-based initiatives--before that, it was Nancy Pelosi revealing to the press that she (gasp!) prays. Palin's Assembly of God association, of course, has caused far more progressive consternation (and it does seem to be progressing), but the root issue is the same. That issue being the left's determination to use religion as a metaphor for 1) the Religious Right, 2) everything and anything conservative, 3) "organized" religion, 4) uncoolness, 5) mind control, 6) etc.

That is, the left has programmed itself to assume a sarcastic, superior, preachy, and generally hostile posture whenever the subjects of religion, God, prayer, the end of the world, the Bible, Word Records, or Little Marcy comes up in print or speech. As a result, the general public has assumed that the left is anti-God. And why wouldn't they? Sure, we aren't, but because we've worked so hard to create that impression, we've earned everything that goes with it. Including lost votes, talking points for the right, and so on.

Our anti-God stance is a fashion statement. It's how we distinguish us from them. It's a knee-jerk ritual, and few of us spend two seconds thinking about the harm we're causing with such a posture. After all, as richard dawkins and sam harris point out, why treat religion as some sacred subject (no pun intended)? Why can't we speak critically of faith? Never mind that we've been doing just that for several years now, and nonstop, and with no one ending up in prison, the nearest river, Hell, or Alaska.

Griff gallery

2008-08-21T15:37:00.001-07:00

The newest member of my tuxedo trio, Griff (short for Griffin, as in Merv).

The rest of the cats, remember, are officially Seaton cats, though all are part of the one (hopefully big and happy) family o' cats and their caretakers.

Herrrrrrrrrrre's Griffy!

Separation of Sports and State

2008-08-10T01:40:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to clarify some things regarding my sports/state separation stance, lest anyone think I'm an asportsiest.

First of all, I have nothing against sports, so long as the government keeps its paws out of same, and vice versa. What people do in the privacy of their homes or sports facilities is no business of mine, so long as I'm not being asked to watch, listen to, buy tickets for, or feign interest in athletics.

Secondly, honor, integrity, goodwill, and group pride and unity are hardly qualities uniquely found in (or uniquely promoted by) athletics, despite endless suggestions to this effect in print, on TV, and over loudspeakers.

Thir.... Um, just a second--an email just came in.

"Hey, Lee--what are you, against the American way? You don't like sports? What else don't you like? Liberty? The flag? NASCAR? Prepared piano?"

Well, at least he didn't question my manhood. Oops. Here's another one.

"Oh, and are you some kind of sissy? You like cats, Muzak, and you think Rachel Dratch is hot. But you hate sports. 'Nuff said."

Yeah, well, as I'm trying to point out, I don't hate sports. Rather, I want sports kept out of government. I want people to stop behaving as if sports represented the only path to accomplishment, to maturity, to fulfillment, to.... Here's another one.

"Greetings, Lee. I'm with you to a point, but the problem is that the Constitution specifies state/church separation. You know--'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,' which clearly means that any candidate who mentions religion should be tossed in prison. Whereas, the C. says nothing about state/sports separation."

I see. Are we to presume, then, that everything BUT religion can be promoted, hand over fist, by our tax dollars? I'm sorry, but....

"That's a straw man argument."

No, it isn't. I'm taking your point to its logical limit--i.e., if there's no basis for restricting state/sports interaction simply because the issue isn't addressed in print, then....

Wait....

"Hi, I recently left West Bosgodia with three million dollars that my husband the ex-King, had safelly hidden from those, who illegally seized power... I arrived today in United, States today, and naturally, I don't feel safe to carrying around three million dollars. I need the help, of good people like you--If you are would be willing to cash for me a check, of the amount $50,000 and send $40,000 back to me...."

Ha. Fool me once....

TO BE CONTINUED

Lee

The hard facts

2008-07-11T23:23:00.000-07:00

The world can be unkind. I explained this tonight to our young and fairly new red-striped (well, cream-striped) cat, Savio. Savio's been bummed out over the two new Manxes in our midst--he thinks we may not love him as much anymore. We do, I explained. At the same time, I added, it's a tough world out there.

Which he should already know, seeing as how he was rescued from outside a bar where someone had dumped him. Anyway, he needed our assurance we love him, and we gave it. I hope it helped.

From new Manxes to new polls--namely, this one from Newsweek. Simply put, suddenly Obama's not doing so hot--his Newsweek numbers have dropped amazingly from just last month. Says Newsweek, "Obama's rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate. "

Yeah, as in right after his high numbers coming out of the primaries. As in, right at a time his numbers should be steadily rising. In other words, ohhhhhhh, shit.

Naturally, Newsweek, being a strong Obama supporter, is choosing its words carefully, but there's a depressed (and stunned) tone to the piece. Those of us who predicted this months ago aren't shocked, of course. Well, I am, a little--I didn't expect things to get so hairy so fast. Then again, Obama has shown, and continues to show, all the political savvy of a crumpled gum wrapper.

People will debate this latest poll's findings. Others will point out that polls don't mean anything. And most of them were saying nothing of the sort when polls showed Obama well ahead of McCain.

Note the article's mention of the faith-based stuff and its effect on his image. Last time around, I received several lectures about my alleged views regarding faith and politics and/or Progressivism and politics--which is funny, since I hadn't conveyed any. The whole point of my piece was simple: Obama's faith-talk is annoying a lot of progressives.

Proof? These two links provide a good start:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/30/43736/5222

http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=28011

My own views re religion and politics (in case you want to know) are simply summed up: religion is a feature of our culture and that fact should be reflected in and by our popular, representative democracy. The institutions of sports, business, education, and entertainment are represented 24/7 in and by our system--why not religion?

If religion is not to be represented in any way, then let's cut all official, taxpayer-dime associations between government and sports, business, education, mass media, and so on. And let's do it without delay.

Anyway, folks, I think we're looking at President McCain. I don't like the idea one bit, but no one asked me. Hell, I'm a Hillary supporter from Ohio. As far as the press is concerned, I can't even read, and I probably don't understand words when they're spoken to me.

Lee

Talking the F-word (Faith): To Obama's progressive supporters, I say...

2008-06-29T16:43:00.001-07:00

Nya, nya, nya, nya, nyaaaa!!

By now you've possibly heard this portion (or a portion thereof) of a 2006 Obama speech. The entire text can be found at Obama's site.

Here's the juicy part:

"But what I am suggesting is this - secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant (sic), Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their 'personal morality' into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition."

Oh, my. Oh, oh, my.

So, progressive Obama fans, starting to regard B.O. as less cool, maybe? Less of a spokesperson for your views?

Yes? No?

Ohhhhhh, I had no idea things would get this entertaining this quickly.

Lee

The Wright Scandal, continued

2008-04-30T14:56:00.000-07:00

What scandal? The only scandal we see is the press pretending there's a scandal. Wright is non-news.

All that stuff about white folks not understanding black prophetic preaching and about blue collar Midwesterners being racist, etc.? That was all a pun.

No, no. A palindrome.

Barack's slick move wherein he sided with Wright, leaving himself wide open to an about-face by the guy? That was... um....

A palindrome.

What do I know? I come, after all, from a lower-middle-class background in Ohio. I'm so dumb I don't even realize that "nuance" is a synonym for "context." Neither, oddly enough, do any of the dictionaries I've referenced, but stranger things have happened. I'm so dumb, I thought that Wright's rantings were in context, even before it was shown that they, in fact, were in context. Getting ahead of the smart folks isn't nice, and I should stop doing it.

Anyway, if I were a sophisticated sort, I wouldn't be saying things like, "A piece of dryer lint could have foreseen that Wright wasn't going to cooperate with Obama or the press." I'd be blaming the Wright Scandal (which I'd put in quotes, as if it were something that didn't really exist) on the press, religion, white voters, the weather, dryer lint, the press, a lack of palindromes in print and on the Internet, the press, and the press. And white voters.

And it would all depend on your definition of "definition." And its palindromic version, "noitinifed."

Anyway, it's perfectly O.K. for my party's presumptive nominee to screw up non-stop, because Barack will be granted a wide, wide margin for error during the general election. Ask Gore. Or Kerry.

We've got this in the bag. Obama's the man! Wow, I feel more sophisticated by the minute.

My shockingly racist Ohio experience--a confession

2008-03-16T03:41:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of The Christian Century reveals which part of the U.S. is the most religiously diverse. Something we've all wondered, right? And that part is (drum roll...) the Midwest. So there.

I didn't know that. I also didn't know that Ohio is one of the most racist states in the country. But I've been reading and hearing that a lot lately. Of course, my first reaction was, no way. Then again, if my own experience is anything to go by, perhaps there's something to the idea.

To be sure, I had little contact with black people when I was a kid growing up in Toledo, Ohio. Except for my parents' black acquaintances, including a drummer named Al, who was my dad's best friend circa 1970, and who visited us often. And except for a couple African-American students of my piano teacher. Otherwise, for all I knew, the whole world was white.

There were, of course, no black students at my grade school. Native American Indian, Polish-American, Mexican-American, yes. But no African-Americans. It wasn't until I got to high school, where blacks made up 52 percent of the student body, that I experienced minority status as a Caucasian (roughly 35 percent).

Then it was off to the Navy, where I lived and worked with a number of fellow sailors who were black, including three guys in my Electronic Warfare division. My shipboard buddies also included a Jamaican, a Puerto Rican, and a Japanese-American who didn't care a lot for Japan (where we were stationed).

After the Navy and college, I worked at a big company in Columbus, Ohio, whose workforce was, oh, twenty-five percent African-American. Maybe a little higher. Riding the bus to and from my job, I was often the only Caucasian person. I used to sit and nap, dreaming of the day when I would at last have the opportunity to interact with people of other backgrounds, ethnicities and/or skin hues.

But I am what I am--an Ohioan. And that there Obama fellow is, well, differ'nt. And the only other choice is a lady. Good grief--a lady president? I can't even picture that. What's a Dem to do?

If only my background had prepared me for any of this. But I'm from Ohio.

My New Year's resolution: To favor science and fact

2007-12-31T23:13:00.000-08:00

Because apparently I don't. So says Tom Gregory in his
New Year's Huff-Po piece.

Religion, it seems, is the answer to the timeless question of why we, as humans, are so violent. It's the cause of it all.

And you thought there was some long, complicated answer to that question for the ages. Stop making things so hard.

As Tom points out, "Humanity's habit of violence is counterintuitive to progress. Now more than ever we need a choice to leave the religion behind in favor of science and fact. Perhaps then humankind can see its way clear of the bloodshed that has plagued man since written history."

Clearly, religion is the cause for the bloodshed that has plagued man since written history, though all of the violence prior to that point was caused by eating undercooked meat and sleeping in stuffy, smoke-filled caves.

Yes, when people leave science and fact behind in favor of "the religion," they become violent. And then they become even more violent. And, eventually, they do violence. Got that? I hope so. There'll be a test.

This answers a lot of questions for me. Because, for as long as I can remember, I've been opposed to facts and science, especially scientific facts. Not to mention the very fact of science. Why must science exist, I used to yell out loud to no one in particular? Why? Why?

Now I know where I was coming from in those days. My religiousness made it impossible for me to respect, let alone embrace, science and fact.

Tom continues: "Violence such as Bhutto's death and the Iraq war, jar change on a political scale, but science can stir truthful, meaningful change."

And precisely how can science do that? By showing us images of Earth--how else? (You were probably thinking along the lines of creating a drug that calms human aggression, or concocting some way to accelerate the evolution of the human brain, a la The Outer Limits. Get with it.) Nope, with faraway images of our planet. "The space program's most arresting image proves just how far science, not superstition, can take mankind."

Gregory is referring to an image taken of the Earth by "Voyager one (sic)" in 1990 after it passed Saturn--an image in which our planet registers as nothing but a tiny spot of light. "Humanity's most poetic image," he calls this. This is supposed to get us to thinking about how tiny we are in the scheme of things, and how, therefore, there can be no God. Because, prior to that 1990 image, no one--especially religious people--ever considered our tininess in the vastness of space. Not to mention our tinniness. (Can you imagine sound waves from Earth getting even so far as Mars?) Once you realize that, God just sort of fades away.

"Change your perspective and alter our world." Okey-dokey! I'll do that. And Tom's advice is not only free, he didn't even get paid for dispensing it. So, it's free in two senses.

Like so many drop-religion-and-save-the-world types, Gregory has trouble with elementary punctuation and meaningful word choice. Which makes it a good thing he's not suggesting we trust in his wisdom, but rather in the wisdom of fact and science. That way, it's O.K. that he types things like "Now more than ever we need a choice...." Which must mean, "Now, more than ever, we must make the choice between...." I'm just guessing. My Huff-Po-to-English software recently crashed, so I'm at the mercy of my best shots in the dark.

Then there's the lost comma at the start of "Violence such as Bhutto's death and the Iraq war, jar change on a political scale." (Jar change? Is that any different from coinage kept in a sock?)

Now, what an interesting concept in punctuation--a comma following a clause but not preceding it ("Such as Bhutto's death and the Iraq war"). Amazing. And Tom definitely makes his point that science is not the same thing as the Iraq war or the assassination of Bhutto. Wow. And here we were, thinking it was. Damn, we people of faith are dumb.

That's one of the reasons I was so opposed to science. Not just because I was religious, but because I didn't realize science was different from the Iraq war or the assassination of Bhutto. How could I have known? We're all raised to think these are the same things, and so we never think to question the connection. Until something jars change. And I think I spotted a device along those lines in a Harriet Carter catalog, next to a "World's Greatest Source of Natural Gas" ballcap.

"Humanity needs its own a New Year's resolution." Exactly. I've been saying this for years.

"Faint Light for the New Year," Tom's essay is called. I think I might have changed that title if I knew that my photo and byline would be appearing above it.

'Twas the Weekend Before Christmas (and all through the land, the ARSEs were stirring)

2007-12-22T15:22:00.000-08:00

I mean, 'tis the weekend before Christmas.

And what, to my surprise, should appear in both papers (local and big city)? Why, mention of Christmas! On the front pages, no less.

Yikes. And we just heard from some guy who was all upset because he spotted a Nativity scene at a small suburban city hall. This traumatized him to the point of having to complain officially. And to write to our big city paper. He loudly expressed the wish that religious people (Christians, in this case) keep our views private. Fittingly, he used a public forum to convey this. I guess some views are more sacred than others.

Hugh Briss, president of our local Americans Riled by Sacred Expressions (ARSE) chapter and author of Shutting People Up in the Name of Free Speech, recently wrote a friendly essay to"religious morons everywhere" in which he pointed out, "It's about not promoting religion. Once you start allowing Christmas scenes on statehouse lawns and such, people start celebrating Christmas. Before you know it, they start singing carols. And I don't like carols. Therefore, you people should either stop singing them OR sing the damn things where I can't hear them. Got it?" Asked if he plans to take the holiday off, he replied, "Of course. Are you nuts?"

Hugh's authority? The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which states, "Let it be established that Nativity scenes, in particular, piss us off."

In another local piece, a person objecting to some other Nativity display asked that he remain anonymous, lest religious fanatics come after him. Good point--the pages of recent history are littered with terrifying tales of Nativity scene gripers who disappeared or were found floating in a lake someplace. Thus, it takes a heck of a lot of courage to speak out in this fashion. In the Hall of Heroes, a special wing has been dedicated to the take-down-the-creche cause and its manly members.

Being a Christian, I am, of course, too dumb to understand evolution, the need for stem cell research, or why HBO shows are--as a rule--vital and indispensable, but even I can grasp that the Establishment Clause is mainly about not creating a state church. Which is why we don't have one.

Now, creches are familiar symbols of our culture's biggest (by far) annual holiday. They go up for the season; they come down when it's over. In any way, shape, or form, does the displaying of these symbols contribute toward making Christianity the state religion?

I'm glad there are people loony enough to think so, but we need not bend to their perceptions, any more than you or I need to take down our back porch light because the guy down the street thinks it's a beacon for space monsters.

As for Christianity becoming the official religion, good galloping luck. There are only five million different versions thereof. I'm amazed by those who think Christianity exists in a single, simple, totally-agreed-upon version--no, scared by them. People capable of stereotyping that broadly are people who need help.

Anyway, try sometime to get ten humans to agree on what to bring to the next potluck. Multiply those odds by a million, and you have some idea how likely we are to wake up anytime to church rule, no matter how many creche scenes we establish annually.

Talking the F-word (Faith): Great wisdom is needed these days. Until then, we have mine.

2007-12-16T14:51:00.000-08:00

I'm going to cheat and back-date this to yesterday to create the illusion that I wrote and posted it on Sunday. Sneaky, no? But no one will know. Unless, of course, I reveal that I....

Wait a minute. Oops.

Anyway, this is the essay I would have written yesterday, had I done so. But I didn't.

The issue of religion in politics (as in, its proper role) is one of the most boring topics on Earth, but one kept alive by the inability of huge numbers of people to understand the issues involved. No one sums up the basic facts better than Charles Krauthammer in a column that just appeared in our paper. And I would gladly link to his column if 1) The Washington Post site had it, and 2) If using the site didn't require registering. To heck with that. I'm tired of creating new passwords. Aren't you? I think we all are.

Anyway, Krauthammer notes that there are two issues being confused as one--the fact that religion is very much okay for the public square (we live in a free country, after all) vs. the fact it's not O.K. (it's unconstitutional, in fact) for the government to favor one religion or religious view over another. And, therefore, it's a cause for concern when someone (like Mitt) gives a speech suggesting that the establishment clause was written mainly to waste ink.

Such is the essence of the exciting, energizing, talk-to-your-friends-at-the-watercooler-until-you-lose-track-of-time "dialogue" that is faith and politics.

Point being, Krauthammer puts his finger on the real topic--which is not the establishment clause/principle itself, but the inability of people to grasp it. Which is to be expected when the issue is constantly being side-stepped and/or misrepresented. People get confused. Confusion not being a bad thing (it's a good defense against the mass input of b.s., after all) unless it remains unresolved.

Unresolved confusion tends to lead to indifference. That's the main danger.

The press has no time to worry about its role in generating indifference--it has sponsors to please and jobs to keep. And so, in our case, it focuses on religious controversy, to the point of generating it. For the same reason, of course, that it goes on about Britney's cellulite--such issues are easier than heck to report on, they can be repeated over and over, they simply require the rerunning of the same tape loops, and any controversy they generate is safe controversy. The press doesn't have to answer to how (no pun intended) it covers Britney's ass OR how it covers the latest complaint from Americans Against Religion. It's the safest stuff to cover, and the easiest, and it generates lots of money.

Otherwise, the press would have to do its job. Which, in defense of the press, the public tends not to make worth its while. (Yes, you heard me correctly.) Put yourself in the press' place. When you knock yourself out to get the news to the folks, what's your reward? Complaints about the negativity of the reports, accusations of bias, and a generally indifferent reaction to items that OUGHT to (but don't) concern the news-viewing public. Worst of all, three months after you've covered something, there are angry bloggers accusing you of not having covered it. Never mind that, back when you made the mistake of bringing it up, nobody gave a tinker's dam. Then, once people DO start caring, they start asking why you didn't warn them. The press can't win.

So, in a very real way, I can't blame the press for dumbing down its coverage. As far as I'm concerned, the audience is chiefly to blame. Ultimately, news consumers determine the menu.

It's just another way of saying that, if McDonald's patrons wanted healthier food, they'd demand it. And they don't. I'm thinking of a quarter pounder with cheese, so that's why the McD's metaphor. (As if I needed the fat.)

Anyway, the milking of religion in politics is to be expected in a dumbed-down media. Not that the faith-based issues are meaningless, by a long shot. Not that we aren't being given a wonderful opportunity right now to meaningfully discuss the basic American principles in question. Not that there's anything wrong with reviewing who we are and how we got there. (Help--I'm running out of cliches.) But it's not going to happen, so long as the cheap exploitation of faith means ratings.

And, yes, the press is helping this stuff along. Mightily. Frank Rich--a columnist I like most of the time--just wrote about the hyping of Romney's speech on religious intoler.... I mean, the role of religion in governing. Rich concludes that the press pre-hyped the thing because it thought Romney was going to give a JFK-level speech.

Frank. Frank. Frank. Earth calling Frank.

Nobody in the press thought Romney was going to give a JFK-style speech. The media hyped up the speech so that everyone would get even more upset about it than they would have, sans any build-up. The press smelled a fight, and it proceeded to make it as big a fight as possible. Again, safe coverage.

I'm only the one-zillionth blogger to suggest that the press focuses on non-issues in order to avoid the real stuff. It's not a new concept. Yet, specific instances of this practice, no matter how blatant, aren't always obvious to us. And that's where I come in.

I'm the specific instance pointer-outer. Or, the SIPO. The sound of which I don't like. SIPO.

Let me come up with a different phrase.

Oh, and did I mention that this is Sunday?

Lee

Let's Talk the F-word (Faith): "YES, I am the brain surgeon!"

2007-12-09T00:42:00.000-08:00

Secular--what does it mean? I mean, really mean. Here are some of the on-line-dictionary definitions I found:

"Worldly rather than spiritual." "Relating to or advocating secularism." "Of or relating to the worldly or temporal." "Of or pertaining to this present world, or to things not spiritual or holy."

A synonym for secular is irreligious. Antonym-wise, "spiritual" fills the bill.

Of course, relying on a dictionary to find out what a word means is so... old hat. I'm not pretending otherwise. I'm fully aware that, to be completely with it ("Uh... man"--Roger Price), we're supposed to A) make a wild guess or B) go with the NPR definition. Such as NPR's definition of "problematic," which I wrote about several weeks ago. There's what the word really means (puzzling, enigmatic) and there is what people misuse it to mean (problem-filled).

Actually, to me, "problematic" sounds like some TV product designed to solve problems. "Get your Problematic today! Only $19.99. Call now and get an Enigmatic FREE of charge!"

Anyway, secular is the opposite of religious or spiritual. We can agree on that, I hope.

So, what are many people taking it to mean? Neutral. They think it denotes neutrality. Our Founding Fathers, for instance, were neutral on the subject of religion. Religiously neutral about religion, we could say. (Get it? Ha-yuk, yuk!)

And, somehow, that stance is seen by many today as a secular one. Worse, it's cited as proof that our government is a secular government. (Stop me when this starts to sound sane.)

And we're hearing this dictionary-uninformed notion a lot in the wake of Mitt Romney's half-baked speech about the role of religion in politics--the one in which he pointed out that, no, we aren't a religious nation, but yes, we are a religious nation.

Which brings to mind the Monty Python sketch with John Cleese saying, "No, I am not the brain surgeon! No, I am not.... YES, I am the brain surgeon!" Somebody please send Mitt to Dr. Cleese.

And, so, some folks are scolding Romney for (guess which?) A) continually contradicting himself virtually within the same damn sentences, or for B) failing to recognize that our nation is a secular one, in spite of the fact that it isn't. If you guessed B, then you're pretty far-left-literate.

The secularists in question are chiding Romney for not grasping, as any self-respecting dictionary avoider would, that our Founding Fathers, by not establishing a state religion, were in effect creating a secular nation. Because the opposite of religion in government is....

A) A neutral stance in regard to the religious AND the secular or B) The United States of richard dawkins.

Idiots choose B. I'm guessing you chose A. Congratulations.

Is a non-religion-based system of government necessarily a worldly, irreligious, or secularist one? Of course not. It's entirely possible to have a form of government that doesn't cater or answer to religion yet which does not embrace secularism. Proof: that's the government we happen to have.

It's so beautifully simple. By contrast, the false notion of a secularist America is based on a series of Homer-Simpson-style pseudo-conclusions. It starts with some dawkins-style celebrity atheist (take your pick) insisting that atheism is not a belief system but rather something based on absence of belief. And, because the point is so meaningless, we're willing to agree. Fine. Who cares.

Then, suddenly, atheism becomes secularism. And secularism, by misdefinition, becomes the absence of a stance. Secularism therefore comes to be misdefined as neutral.

In other words, "No, I am not the brain surgeon! I am not the.... YES, I am the brain surgeon!!"

In reality, whereas atheism is the absence of belief, secularism is nothing of the kind. Equating the two is therefore a mistake. And, in terms of keeping our tradition of ideological freedom intact, even a dangerous one.