Homegrown American Taliban Threatens Christian Evangelicals with Blame for Ruining America if Obama Wins

My friend Joel, in an effort to show the world just how well he knows me, sent me an article and asked for my thoughts on it. Now, one might think that only a total geek and a rabid politics junkie would enjoy receiving a writing assignment on a political topic from a friend. Well, Joel knows "total geek" and "politics junkie" pretty much sums me up.

Even more telling, Joel sent me something that he knew would make my blood boil faster and hotter than Ramen noodle broth in a microwave (which is what we lived on while we were college roommates). And boy, was he right. This piece is a doozy.

Posted on Dr. James Dobson’s “Focus On The Family” website, the piece is designed as an imaginary letter from a Christian, writing back to us from the nearly apocalyptic world of 2012, where, after the machinations of an Obama administration, the nation has gone to hell in a hand basket. Before I lay into the piece itself (which, it seems, no one who currently inhabits our particular location in the space-time continuum wants to take credit for by name), I have to ask: Joel, why in the hell are you reading this trash? Did some evil person send it on to you just to drive you crazy, too? Or do you regularly check up on the American Taliban for fun?

Okay, now to the piece, “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America”. It’s long (16 pages in a downloadable pdf), and though I’ll link to it in the name of fairness, I don’t recommend reading it unless you are a masochist who likes migraines, or a Dobson fan, which is itself a kind of socially acceptable sadism. I know I said I wished I could be more respectful to people I disagree with in a recent post, but I also said I can’t manage it, and if you were to subject yourself to this piece you would know why. The piece is particularly galling for me because I consider myself a Christian. For years I’ve admitted that with a great deal of embarrassment, not because I’m ashamed of Jesus Christ, but because I’m ashamed to be associated with many of his followers, especially those in power in my country. Lately I’ve begun to wonder about the term itself. The definitions of words are cultural constructions, and when I describe myself as a Christian I mean something so wholly different from what someone like Dobson would accept that I feel like a guy who says, "I'm a phrenologist, by which I mean that I live in Oregon”

“But that’s not what the term 'Phrenologist' means,” they say to me. “Phrenology refers to the people who study the bumps on people’s heads to learn about their personalities.”

“That’s not what it means to me,” I say. “I mean a person who lives in Oregon.”

“Well then you are ignorant of the term’s meaning, or crazy,” they say.

That's the same thing they would say when I describe myself as a Christian, if “they” were the kinds of people who treat James Dobson as an authority on theology, family dynamics, national politics, or anything more consequential than the location of his own backside, which he may or may not be able to find with both hands.

You see, when I say I’m a Christian, beyond meaning that I believe in and serve Jesus Christ, I extend that to mean:

I should reject violence and war;

I should love all of God’s children (and not just say I love them while advocating policies that do them great injustice);

that much of the Bible is allegorical and that allegory and metaphor can be just as meaningful, if not more so, than accounts of literal history;

that homosexuals are not sexual deviants who deserve to be disempowered, but an oppressed minority who deserve justice, protection from the majority, and yes, even admiration for their struggle;

that gender roles are products of the fall and thus sinful and to be done away with, rather than prescriptive definitions of who we should be as human beings;

that parents shouldn’t educate their children through violence…

I could go on and on. I have read enough of Dobson to know he would disagree with me on all these claims, but I suspect he (or at least many of his acolytes) would go further and say these beliefs make me something other than Christian. I’m tempted to say, “Fine. When somebody asks about my religious beliefs I’ll just launch into that tirade, because the label has been convenient but now requires so much explanation of what kind of person I’m not that I should just jettison the label altogether.” I used to say to myself, “Self, why should I let fundamentalists take the term away from me?” Now I wonder if, when asked, I should just say, “Well, I love Jesus and I love people, but I’m not sure what that makes me in America anymore.”

But I haven’t broken ties with the label enough to avoid feeling outraged when I read something like the garbage Joel sent me, so, baited, I’ll vent.

The piece starts out by saying it’s not real (thanks for that) but that it’s all based on the case law from liberal judges and quotes from Obama this writer has cherry picked to form his apocalyptic vision of the future. I thought about writing an equally petty piece about 2012 in a McCain administration as a form of satire, but I don’t think McCain is some diabolical agent of evil who would set out to reshape the social fabric of America in some terrible way. I disagree with him on many things, and I think that a McCain presidency would be a bad one, though probably not quite as bad as the office’s current occupant. But then, if McCain realized all my worst fears based on reports of his erratic temper, by 20012 we’d be living in a post-nuclear holocaust world which Cormac McCarthy has already described better than I ever could in his haunting book The Road, so any attempt to make light of the worst case scenario for a McCain presidency would involve making light of the end of humanity, and that’s just not my style. (Well, okay, maybe when I’m in the right mood, but not tonight.) So, rather than parody, let me just tell you about this fictional Christian’s argument, and by then end I think we’ll all agree it says a lot more about Dobson and his ilk than it does about Barack Obama.

First, the organization. The piece lays out the horrors of Obama’s America in big segments under bold headlines. These are, in order:

The Supreme Court
Same-sex marriage
Religious speech in the public square
Abortion
Pornography
Gun ownership
Education
President Obama’s response to the Supreme Court
Military policy
Health care
Taxes, the economy, and the poor
Talk radio
Christian publishers
Prosecution of former Bush administration officials

Predictably, these things all go exactly the opposite of the way Dr. Dobson would want. But take a look at the order! Either these are in ascending order of importance or descending order of importance. If the order is ascending, one would have to believe Dobson (or the writer he publicize without attribution on his site, so let’s just say Dobson) thinks protecting W from a much deserved war crimes prosecution is more important than abortion, gun rights, and gay marriage (unlikely), or they’re in descending order, in which case Dobson thinks the danger of gay marriage is more serious than the terrorist attacks he threatens in the section on “Military Policy”. In fact, either way he kind of buried his lead. Terrorist attacks, a Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, and a complete economic meltdown caused by over-taxation are in the middle, apparently less important than the ability of high schoolers to pray by their school’s flag poles, or less important than the ability of evangelical publishers to sell their books in Barnes and Noble. Yeah, because what’s on the shelves at the local big-box bookstore, or what the kids are doing around the flagpole (and trust me, I work at a high school, and they ain’t prayin’ now) demands an urgent warning sent back from the future, but FOUR terrorist attacks inside the US get tossed into the middle of the letter, almost as an aside? This time traveler is a douchebag. But wait, you say, maybe the whole piece is just a random list of grievances. Do you mean to tell me that four years in the future they don’t have a simple word processor program with Cut and Paste commands so writers can organize their thoughts? Did Obama outlaw that, too? Then that should be added to the random list. Maybe at the beginning. Or the end.

Now to the actual content. As you can guess, two dudes want to enter marital bliss, and that wrecks the country. Kids are told they can’t peer-pressure other kids into standing around listening to readings of Dobson’s sexist, bigoted interpretation of scripture, and that wrecks the country. A woman is allowed to make her own decision about whether she wants to risk her life to bring a tubal pregnancy to term so she can raise her rapist’s baby, and that wrecks the country. Adults are allowed to make their own decisions about what kinds of art they consider indecent, and that wrecks the country. Localities are allowed to take measures to make sure cops are more well-armed than crooks, and that wrecks the country. Obama says he didn’t want any of this to happen, but then he said he wasn’t a Muslim, too, so we all know what that’s worth. The U.S. pulls out of Iraq and so, AS A CONSEQUENCE OF LEAVING, NOT SHOWING UP IN THE FIRST PLACE, terrorist come into the country and people BEGIN to kill one another. (Oh, and, by the way, terrorists attack the U.S. four times.) Doctors and nurses are told they have to put the interests of their patients above the religious beliefs of one Dr. James Dobson, and so they all quit practicing medicine and it wrecks the country. Rich people have to pay the same taxes they paid in the nineties, (remember, back when all the rich people were leaving the U.S. to live in Burkina Faso and Haiti?) so they all leave (again?) and everyone left is poor, and it wrecks the country. Workers can easily join unions so they can have healthcare and safe working conditions, and of course that wrecks the country. People aren’t allowed to spew bigotry on the radio, which causes Americans to not know who to hate anymore, and the ensuing confusion wrecks the country. Christian publishers can’t get their books sold at Barnes and Noble (yep, the time traveler specifically mentions Barnes and Noble and only Barnes and Noble) and that wrecks the country. Bush administration officials are bankrupted by the court costs necessitated to defend themselves from war crimes charges, and though this doesn’t wreck the country it’s just so unbelievably tragic that we all wish we were dead.

The article then goes on to say that the people most responsible for this are the evangelical Christians who supported Obama in this election. Just to be clear, according to this time traveler if you are an evangelical Christian who votes for Obama you are responsible for four terrorist attacks, countless abortions, sodomy on every street corner, the collapse of the economy, the suffering of book publishers and radio talk show hosts, and the legal fees of that lovable Dick Cheney. Oh, wait, but not in that order. Damn you, centrist evangelicals, for taking away my ability to cut and paste that back into the order Dr. Dobson posted on his website!

Joel asked, “Who is the major voice in the Christian community that is rising up in opposition to what Dobson and his people say? Where are they?” It’s a fair question, though it’s also fair to wonder if Dobson himself is still a major voice in the Christian community. This kind of desperation shows his power is waning, at the very least. Maybe “major voices” are just letting him rant himself into oblivion. I have another theory, though. I don’t think there are any “major voices” on the left in the Christian community, not because no one will stand up, but because they have been effectively silenced and marginalized over the last twenty years. I wrote a book (a lot of research, a lot of time, and a lot of passion wasted) and was told it was good enough to publish but too liberal for a Christian publishing house and too Christian for a secular house. If the Christian right has set up it’s own parallel media world, and everybody else has said, “What, you want crazy talk? There’s a separate store for that down the street,” then it’s no surprise that some household name hasn’t stepped forward to repudiate this letter from within the ranks of Christians. Liberal Christians, apparently, can’t sell enough books to become household names.

This article specifically warns against hoping for suffering as a means to strength, but I’ve read a handful of conservatives who’ve pined for some down-time in the political wilderness to get their house in order. As a liberal, I can’t speak for those folks, but I can say I want the same thing for Christianity in America. As a Quaker, I’m a big believer in shutting up and listening for guidance from God. Maybe American Christianity needs to be saddled with this kind of lunacy just long enough that no one takes us seriously anymore, so we can stop making pronouncements about what all Christians think or how all Christians should vote long enough to figure out if that term has any meaning as a single, monolithic label. I think that should take ten or twenty years, but if Dobson is allowed to continue spewing this stuff he hastens the date when no one, including Christians, listens to “Christian Leaders” about anything more consequential than where to find the coffee and donuts between services.

So, God bless Dr. James Dobson, who willingly sacrifices his own dignity in order to embarrass all Christians into the Quaker practice of silence. Thanks.

What's the next hot gadget?

As the economy melts down, I find myself simultaneously wondering if there will be great deals the day after Thanksgiving, and realizing there aren't any hot items I'm jonesing for. This will only magnify the current financial crisis. I think of the jerk who sold me my TV and wonder what he'll be able to do when he loses his job at the electronics chain store. He was far too rude to successfully hold a job in food service, and since he was too dense to figure out that customers should be treated with respect, I doubt he has the savvy or adaptability to make in the competitive world of aluminum-can-collecting-and-recycling. He succeeded at the electronics store job because he had a product I wanted so badly I'd suffer his rudeness, but that won't work behind the counter at Goodwill, which I expect to be the next big growth industry.

So what technology will save Christmas? Can we even remember back to those halcyon days when we realized that a flat screen TV would free up almost three whole cubic feet in our living rooms? For only around a thousand dollars? What a steal! Plus, the product would have the added bonus of the ego boost that comes from learning our favorite actors have bad skin, just like the rest of us. Of course we needed this product. To think, back then, we couldn't imagine that Cloris Leachman would be dirty dancing on "Dancing with the Stars", and we'd be able to take those images to our graves in Hi Def. That's the kind of technological breakthrough that used to make America strong.

Technological gadgets don't just entertain, of course. They also solve problems. I used to have this terrible problem. In order to listen to MP3s, talk on the phone, and maintain my daily schedule digitally, I had to fill my pockets with three different gadgets. And if I wanted to watch YouTube videos of politicians' speeches clipped and edited to make them particularly embarrassing, and if I wanted to do that while riding public transit or, say, driving, well... Forget about it. Impossible. I'd have to find an actual computer. Now that seems almost as ridiculous as the giant car phones of the early eighties. Computers. Ha. Of course, thanks to the iPhone, for a price only slightly higher than all the devices I used to carry around plus a commitment to allow AT&T to sacrifice my first-born in some pagan ritual, I can now do all those things simultaneously.

(Full disclosure: I don't have an iPhone. I'm not that cool. I only have one child, and I'm kinda' partial to him, so I'm crossing my fingers, knocking on wood, and wishing on stars in the hope that my preferred cell phone provider will offer a similar phone in exchange for a contractually obligated second-born. Of course, my wife and I can't manage one of those by this Christmas, but if my provider announces such a product by Spring '09, I'll be ready for next year. Still, I think you all get my point.)

Tonight I saw an add for the new iPod Nano which comes in a bunch of colors. That's all we have to offer this gift-buying season? That's going to pull us out of the coming global depression? Colors? I know Alan Greenspan told Congress his flawed worldview didn't prepare him for this collapse, but I'm pretty sure the error in judgment wasn't caused by economic analysis that was too monochromatic. Seriously? Just new colors?

I'm not sure what device could save this Christmas season, but I already have my eye on something for next year: Word on the street is that Sony is working on a device that will be the must-have item for 2009. The amazing, human powered, rock-and-flint trash incinerator, the "iFlint-and-Stone", will allow us to burn all the abundant packaging that came with our expensive but now outdated doohickeys, and use that heat to keep ourselves alive next winter.

Thoughts after Canvassing

Today I went canvassing for Obama/Biden. Noah came with me for the first few houses, then got tired of it.


You'll note that my Obama tee hasn't arrived, so I made my own.

I knocked on 64 doors in my neighborhood. These were voters identified by the party as independents, unreliable voters, or new voters. Of those, 29 were strong Obama supporters who said they would be voting, and only 7 told me they were voting for McCain. That's heartening in itself, but I also found that here in the purple-ish, blue-ish state of Oregon, in a small town (would Palin still consider that "real America"?) the Obama supporters seemed a lot more fired up. Sure, I was wearing an Obama/Biden bumper sticker on my chest, but the difference still exceeded what you'd expect. I'm feeling hopeful.

Another observation: I talked with a union guy who was particularly excited. He made a point to show off the Obama/Biden poster he'd received from his electrical workers union. I'm always glad to meet another union member, but as a member of the teacher's union I couldn't help but think his union is better than mine. First of all, if he's representative of his fellow electrical workers (and he may be an outlier, like me) then they are more excited and supportive than we are. Teachers I know tend to be inexplicably split. Also, the house this electrical worker owns is a lot nicer than the house this teacher rents. Yep, his union is better.

Lastly, when I went back to the Independence office of the Polk County Democrats, a guy came in to share that he not only had his Obama sign stolen out of his yard, as did many other people in the community, but he got the punks' license plate number and the police caught the thieves. So, way to go Mr. Ledesma!

Tonight I'm off to a pumpkin carving party where the parents are evenly split, Democrats and Republicans. I made sure to pick up enough Obama stickers to put one on each of the kids.

Democrats are wrong and Republicans are stupid?

In the New York Times Campaign Stops blog, Douglas MacKinnon has a piece where he lays out an argument for why McCain could still win. Ignoring the polling numbers, MacKinnon relies on a sad fact about Democrats, which even Obama is quoted as saying in the piece: “Don’t underestimate the capacity of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”

MacKinnon thinks the Democrats could fail again by underestimating the Republicans. That's a fear I share. But he explains it as follows:

"Republicans think Democrats are wrong, but Democrats think Republicans are stupid, and that’s why Democrats lose."

I've wrestled with this, and felt my share of liberal guilt about dismissing a large swath of the American population as stupid. But this statement is reductive. Republicans don't just think Democrats are wrong. Despite the fact that I live in a small town, because of my political views people like Sarah Palin believe I live somewhere other than the "real America". Because I believe in those words John McCain put in air-quotes as he spat them out, "Women's Health", many Republicans find my beliefs tantamount to infanticide. Because my interpretation of my Christian faith demands that I take a strong position as a pacifist, many Republicans think I'm a coward, or, at the very least, that I don't support people like my brother-in-law, who is currently serving in Iraq. People can respectfully find one another to be wrong. It's hard to respectfully call someone an unpatriotic, cowardly baby-killer.

Meanwhile, I see Joe-Sixpack Republicans who have suffered through years of stagnant wages while the plutocrats have become wealthy beyond imagining holding fast to the illusion that their hard work will make them part of that top one percent of earners. These folks decry socialism not out of some ideological sense of fairness to Paris Hilton, but out of fear left over from the Red Scare, and out of a genuine ignorance about the state of economic inequality in our country. I hear the descendants of immigrants voice the same kind of xenophobic slurs that translate to the mantra of generations of bigoted Americans: "We're the last ones who should get in." I've watched anti-abortion or fiscally conservative single issue voters pull the lever for a party that has a proven track record of increasing the number of abortions during their watch and of increasing the size of government and the federal deficit every time they occupy the oval office. I've watched people who claim to believe in enlightened self-interest vote against their own self interests over and over again. I would love to find a gentler word than "stupid", but nothing comes to mind.

I am willing to acknowledge that the Republicans, until this election, have had a more formidable political machine. If that's the measure of respect, then I respect them more than I do the Democrats. But that's George W. Bush style respect; respect earned through fear. I hope that, after four years of an Obama administration, Americans can rediscover a different definition of respect, wherein people lay out arguments based on facts and well reasoned political philosophy rather than race-baiting, fear-mongering, and reductive labels. When we still disagree, which we will, we recognize each other as informed, thoughtful, patriotic citizens who believe in each other's goodness and shared hope for our country. I want to feel that kind of respect for Republicans, and receive it from them in turn, but I'm not there yet, and the Republicans I know aren't there either.

Eternal Youth

They call me
Emergency
Can I cover for another teacher?
She's stuck in traffic.
I head down to the room
Corner of the school
Most doors and windows
Lots of friendly noise
No volume control
Kids take turns shaking my hand
One guy gently places his hand in mine
Then jumps into the air.
"I like this guy!"
He shouts
Feeling instantly mutual
I talk with another guy
About how we would spend
A quadrillion quadrillian dollars.
I'd feed everybody in the world
I say.
He'd buy everybody shoes,
Finish the book he's writing
Make a movie version
And make video games
For every video game system.
He's got big plans
And writes them down
In the form of a string
Of repeated number nines.
"How much would this be?"
Well, I say, that's a million
And that's a billion
And that's a trillion
What comes next?
Quadrillion?
"Quadrillion," he says.
So you have a....
Quadrillion quadrillion
He forgets the subject
Starts talking about his favorite ice cream
And last night's college football game
And his cat.
His dreams are so large
And he will never grow old
His toddler soul
Young for
A quadrillion quadrillion years.

Rotting on the Vine

They asked me where poems hide.

Standing out on my back porch
(generous name for a slab of concrete
surrounded by the summer's overgrown garden
rotten tomatoes wrapped in weeds)

listening to music
through earbuds that enjoy bungee-jumping out of my ears

smoking the pipe I bought
because it looks like the one Grandpa smoked

and sometimes a fragment of a lyric sticks awkwardly

or some small frustration of the day
an irritant like sand under a contact lens
is coated like a pearl with the bile of a dog-eared thesaurus

and poems come out of the fetid earth.

Marriage is great.

My wife, Paige, just told me I need to go to the store to pick something up for her. She can't go because

A) She's in her pajamas.

B) She's not wearing make-up.

For the record

A) I am in my pajamas.

B) I am not wearing make-up.

But I am going to change clothes and go to the store.

In the eternal contest of who-loves-whom-more, I just want it noted that I am winning tonight.

(Sure, she bore my child and all, but I am willing to defy my own sense of logical consistency for her benefit, so... um...)

Can Satire Swing an Election?

I hope to see that this video sets a record for the number of hits of a single sketch comedy segment over the next few days.



Ferrell's Bush endorsing McCain with Tina Fey's Palin between them might be the height of satire, and I say that as an ardent admirer of good satire, a die-hard Daily Show fan, a member of the Colbert Nation, and a frequent resident of South Park, Colorado. This is what satire can do: heighten reality to draw out the facts those in power do not want us to see. Satire should focus on the powerful; it should call out the Emperor for his bad taste in new clothes (or the Empress for her $150,000 Hypocrisy Collection from fifth avenue). Like it or not, GWB is still president. He should be the focal point of satire, and here he's used to best effect. I have been developing migraines watching McCain and Palin tell us we can best bring about change in Washington by keeping the same party in power, but they've managed to keep Bush off the radar by talking about how terrible it would be to spread the wealth while simultaneously explaining how they would continue to redistribute wealth to the wealthiest Americans. It's like they've been trying to hide one glaring inconsistency that threatens to cause my head to explode by loudly shouting another. I feel like it's some kind of conspiracy just to kill ME. Well, SNL has weighed in, and all I can say is, "Thank You!" and "God Bless You All!"

Oh, and those folks who take "Bush"'s advice, picture his face, and still pull the lever for McCain... well, I have some phrases I'd like to toss your way, too, but I don't think they're fit to print.

In the name of consistency and post-partisanship, I do expect all my favorite satire shows to really take it to President Obama over the next four years. It may make me cringe, but it's the right thing to do.

And I so hope you all get the chance.

Is Bill Kristol ever right?

Jon Stewart once asked, "Oh Bill Kristol, are you ever right?" I'm reluctant to believe anyone can be consistently wrong; the whole even-a-broken-clock-is-right-twice-a-day theory. But William Kristol might be a clock that's just off by enough to be wrong all the time. Today, in his latest column for the NYTimes (a paper his own conservative friends consistently mock) he tries to take a populist tack, arguing that Americans are not stupid or uninformed. At first, he had me wondering if, for once, he was on to something. Considering Obama's poll numbers, for a moment I thought he might be vying for a position in the conservatives-attacking-conservatism movement we're going to hear a lot from over the next few years. Instead, he tried to make a case for Joe the (well, not really a) Plumber. Seriously, Bill, I think Jon Stewart may have you pegged.

I know the anger over Obama's clumsy "spread the wealth around" comment must have lit a fire under dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, but if Joe the Plumber really is one of the intelligent and informed electorate Kristol is talking about, then he could probably hear the fact that both candidates are talking plenty about spreading wealth around. At the last debate, Joe's debate, McCain, after deriding any spreading of wealth, and after proposing a spending freeze, talked at length about his $5000 tax credit for health coverage. That's spreading the wealth. If Americans are intelligent and informed, they know that. They also know that it won't cover the cost of most of their care now, let alone when they are old, so it amounts to spreading around the wealth, but doing so ineffectively. That's what Americans, the intelligent and educated ones, are sick of. We don't dislike the conservative's line on free market economics, even if we disagree and even when it proves intellectually bankrupt as it has these last few weeks, nearly as much as we dislike their penchant for consistent, ideologically driven mismanagement of government. Of course they think government is bad: they do their best to make it so every chance they get.

Kristol not only threw down with some Latin etymology, tracing the root of "Vulgar to "Vulgaris", but he even quoted Horace. I'm not sure if he was trying to show that conservatives are educated elites, or if he was trying to say the "common people" could appreciate this linguistics lesson, but either way it felt condescending and not particularly illuminating. Then, he put to rest any misconception that a nuanced study of history might inform his politics by writing: "Most of the recent mistakes of American public policy, and most of the contemporary delusions of American public life, haven’t come from an ignorant and excitable public. They’ve been produced by highly educated and sophisticated elites."

No, they've been produced by highly educated and sophisticated elites who were willing to work for George W. Bush, who is neither. But then, the term "Sophisticated" comes from the Greek sophos or sophia, meaning of "wise" or "wisdom", and I'll bet there are a lot of hacks who worked for Dubya who are now reconsidering the wisdom of that career move.

I'm not sure if Kristol was telling conservatives to stop looking down on the common people, or if he was telling us common folks that the elites aren't to be trusted as much as a plumber who isn't a plumber, but one thing is abundantly clear: We can trust the vulgar masses a lot more than we can trust Bill Kristol.

Obama stole my joke!

Barack Obama stole the joke from my last post! (Okay, to be fair, I can't possibly be the first person to make that Obama-fathered-two-African-American-children-in-wedlock joke. But I'm probably in the first million, and I'll bet there will be a couple million more in the next eight years, so I'm still ahead of the curve.) Enjoy this great video, and enjoy McCain's part, also. It's first, chronologically, so I'll put it first, and I have to give him credit, because he's really funny, too. Why can't we see more of this side of both candidates? Probably because we'd be forced to choose between President Dave Chapelle and President Larry the Cable Guy.

Enjoy this tiny taste of civil interaction between these candidates because, if you're like me, by the middle of next week you'll be curled up in front of your television chewing on aspirin and praying for a quick death.



And now, soon-to-be-President Obama stealing an already tired joke from some schmuck out in Oregon:



Maybe there's hope for this country yet.

But probably not.

Script for McCain's Next Ad Leaked!

Though this ad hasn't yet hit the airwaves, the script has been leaked by a senior member of McCain's campaign who, after begging for anonymity, admitted, "Our campaign is such an immoral, hateful, unprincipled mess that I'm voting for Obama because I'm terrified of a John McCain presidency."

Secret, leaked script:

Ominous narrator:
"How much do we really know about Barack Obama? Forget his policies, the twenty months of non-stop coverage, or one of the most impressive political campaigns in recorded history. Every Joe-Sixpack knows the only important factor in a voter's judgment is a politician's associations.

[Horror music rises in the background]

"You may have heard that Barack Obama lives in the same neighborhood as a former Chicago Citizen of the Year award winner who was a member of a radical group when Obama was in elementary school.

"Well, it gets worse!

"Obama has been carrying on a long and very public love affair with... a black woman!

[A picture of Michelle Obama flashes onto the screen, then stretches diagonally to the sound of a zither.]

"And wait, it gets worse! Barack Obama has even fathered two entirely legitamate black children. And he's not even ashamed of them. In fact, he is proud of them!

[A picture of the entire Obama family appears. Then badly drawn fangs grow in their mouths and their eyes glow bright red.]

"Unbelievable, but true!"

"Forget the fact that your retirement plan has just emptied out in the last week. So the federal government has made a succession of moronic, ideologically driven decisions for eight years straight. Who cares? In these uncertain times, shouldn't we make sure the power stays in the hands of the same people who got us into this mess? If you're sick of the way Washington has been operating, you need a 72 year old president who shares George Bush's worldview and whose best selling point is that he's supported a bankrupt governing philosophy slightly less consistently than most members of his party.

"John McCain. He's ten percent better than the nimrod you picked last time!"

[A picture of John McCain appears to the sound of trumpets. Giant, animated wings flap behind him, and one tenth of a halo hovers above his head.]

Voice of John McCain:
"I'm John McCain, and I don't approve this message because it says a couple things that are true, and we all know I gave up on truth some time ago. In fact, now I mostly curl up in a fetal ball in the small bathroom in the back of my bus, where I watch my tears drip into the toilet and swirl away along with the last of my honor and respectability..."

At this point the camera pulls back and McCain wanders away very slowly, talking to himself.


McCain has made ad buys in select markets, targeting the four o'clock daily airings of "Judge Judy", his favorite thing to watch while he eats his dinner. Please pass this on to others involved in the Obama campaign, so we can be prepared to respond to questions from people who are still, amazingly, undecided voters.

Don't Panic?

After sending the following queries to my two best friends, I thought I'd share them with the world, not, Bill, because I think anyone in particular is reading this, but because I want my reaction noted for posterity. If we quickly devolve to hunter/gatherers, just before I get trampled by a giant herd of buffalo, I want to be able to smile and think, "I toldja' so."

Tonight, before heading off to Open House at school, I watched the tail end of the local news, all of the national news, and the beginning of the local news again. I heard/read the words "Don't Panic" at least four times. Just now, it's fully sinking in. How often does one hear that phrase on the news? How often is panic an entirely appropriate response? Could the answers to those two questions be identical?

As a person who owns a whopping zero shares of stock, I will be paying attention to how the Dow does tomorrow.

Is it wrong to fantasize about a complete collapse of the global economy? How often should one participate in such fantasies? Is it the same answer?

The Age for Bad Poetry

"I took a poetry class in college
And the most important thing I learned
Is that I'm no poet."
I've told the story
Wink and smile
So many times
Branding like the soda I drink
The car I drive
The music on my ipod
The ipod
The ipod

ipoet

But here we are.
This is the age for bad poets.
The culture spins down the drain
To the beat of arrhythmic verse
Cliché
Douchebaggery
Holds every office
Levers of power
Pulled into uneven lines.
T.S.Elliot slouches toward the poetry slam.
William Blake dreams apocalyptic visions
Of talking heads debating economic band aids
While we burn and burn
And reach up out of the flames
To tap the keys
Paperless in the heat.
Not protest tunes, but jingles.
Not novels, but fabricated memoirs.
Art produced for uncollateralized credit.
This is not the age for great poetry.
This is the time to widen our eyes
Take in the civilization's decay
Spread it amongst ourselves.
This is not poetry.
This is how the world ends.
Digital chlamydia.

Nice Pants

"Nice pants,"
The fourteen-year-old told me,
And I suddenly found myself
Fixed in my era
Like a mosquito in amber
My belly full of the blueprints for dinosaurs.
My age is divined by a forked branch from some mystical tree
Pointing back to an add campaign
Twenty years ago
The woman stops the car to tell the hitchhiker
"Nice pants,"
But now she's shrunk
Mutated
Diminished
To this two-bit punk kid
Proud gang member
Late to class each day
Facial muscles slack with an affected apathy
Masking a real stupidity
He'd give his soul away for a compliment
From a super model
Or the tougher kid on his street
Or a misinterpreted rap lyric
He's the most cynical advertiser's wet dream.

But I'm also standing in the cement of the global economy
Hot lava meltdown revealing nothing but gas bubbles
Borders as invisible as credit
Cultures pushed into the bedrock
By liquidity, liquidity, liquidity
And I can't help but think,
In England
"Nice pants"
Refers to underwear.

And then I'm back in America
At the tail end of one of the world's least glorious empires
All empty shell casings and disco music
Stuffed with incendiary sarcasm
Made more deadly by it's lack of cleverness
As much beauty and truth as the plaque I brush off my teeth
While I look in the mirror
Too tired to teach tomorrow
But I'll go
Wearing different pants.

A Rant about Taxation

Someone on a list serve sent me the following email, asking how to respond to a Republican friend who preaches lower taxes for the wealthy. The forward got my blood boiling, so I weighed in, and I thought I’d share the original forward and my response here.

Here’s the original forward:


“TAX CUTS EXPLAINED:
Because it's the election season, let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. [Way to start out with condescension from the get-go, eh?]

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth man would pay $1.
The sixth man would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement until one day the owner threw them a curved ball (or is that a curved beer!).
'Because you are all such good customers,' he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.'

Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men ??[sic] the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to
drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill b y roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth man now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
The seventh man now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant the men began to compare their savings.

'I only got a dollar out of the $20,' declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, 'but he got $10!'

'Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than me!'

'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man.

'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!'

'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The
system exploits the poor!'


The nine men surrounded the tenth man and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something
important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our Tax System works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy and they just may not sho w up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia
[and, because the intro wasn’t insulting enough, it ends with this flourish]

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.”


This first thing I did when I read this was to google the Ph.D. who is credited with this deceptive story. It seems there is a David R Kamerschen, Ph.D. who teaches econ at the U. of G., but, of course, he may not have written this. For his sake, and for the sake of the institution where he teaches, I sincerely hope not.

The story shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what taxes are and what they pay for.
It's true that the poor pay less, but they receive less. Taxes don't go to beer. They go to things like police and firefighters and public schools. A policeman defends all homes from, for example, theft, so the wealthy person is receiving protection for far more valuable goods than the poor person. Likewise the firefighter, who is protecting a lot more property when he/she puts out the fire in the wealthy person's home than when putting out a fire in a poor person's home. The same even goes for public schools: the education may be the same for the child of a wealthy person or a poor person (or, at least, it would be if we had a more equitable system) but the wealthy person not only receives an education for his/her child, but a more educated workforce at his or her company, a benefit which the poor person doesn't experience. Also, the values of the expensive property of the wealthy person are related to the quality of the schools, just like the crime rate. Any of you who have crummy schools and have seen a decline in the value of homes in the area know this to be true. So, an economic professor might think we get beer for our tax money, but I'm not sure what country has such a system. I expect services, and the wealthy do benefit more, so they should pay more.

People like Bill Gates Sr. have said as much when they advocate for keeping the estate tax: they know how they've benefited, and that a more equitable system, even one that costs them more in taxes, benefits them even more in services. Bill Gates Sr. wrote: "The estate tax — our nation’s only levy on accumulated wealth — is the fairest and most important tax we have.

"It puts a brake on the concentration of wealth and power, generates substantial revenue from those most able to pay and encourages billions of dollars in charitable giving each year. The estate tax is not only fair but an essential component of our nation’s economic dynamism.

"Without our society’s substantial investments in taxpayer-funded research, technology, education and infrastructure, the wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans would not be so robust."

And as to the spurious argument that the ultra-wealthy will leave the U.S. for a country where high taxes and a strong government do not protect their wealth: show me the wealthy person who has decided to invest all his money in countries with low taxes and no stable banking system or protections of personal property, and I'll show you someone who may become very poor very quickly then they government falls or decides to seize his assets without cause. There's a reason a country like the U.S., which taxes the wealthy more than the poor, has the largest GDP in the world, and there's a reason why the economy slips when McCain, Bush, and the other acolytes of anti-tax activists gain power and try to do away with the very regulations that protect us all, wealthy and poor alike.

[I wrote that last bit on September 16th. This is not to say that I have some unusual powers of prognostication when it comes to the markets, but I think any economics professor worth his/her salt would concede that deregulation has shown its darker side quite vividly in the five days since.]

The next day I thought of another example as I fumed about the guy's perverted parable: Imagine that you have a hundred dollars in a bank, and somebody comes along with a hundred million and wants to open an account. The bank decides it will have to build a new, two million dollar high-tech vault to keep all that money safe. A conservative tax scheme would dictate that the most fair way to divide that cost would be for both you and the multi-millionaire to pay an even million each for that protection.

I think, when reduced to that oversimplification, it's easy for anybody to see that fair isn't always equal and equal isn't always fair.

Two Book Recommendations

I know I haven't posted in a while, which means I'm breaking the two cardinal rules of blogging: Posts should be frequent and short. Well, I'll try to manage one of those by keeping this brief (I know. Too late.)

I would love to say I've been slaving away at my lesson plans for this next school year all summer, but that would be a lie. I've been camping a lot. And napping a lot. Everything else has fallen by the wayside. I have been trying to catch up on some reading, and I've just finished two very good books. Normally, a book recommendation is the worst kind of advice to give me. I write down the title, say I'll get to it one day, and promptly forget where I put the name. If you, dear reader, have the same proclivity, this might help. These book recommendations have time limits, because both these novels are being made into films, and after reading both, I fear the movies will be monumentally awful. They will either be overlayed with voice-over narration because anyone with any sense wants to make them into movies because of the beauty of their prose, or they will be vapid chronicles of the events in the books which really aren't the point of either novel.

Read The Lovely Bones. I am not a crier, but I teared up more than once. The writing is very good, and the picture of a family dealing with grief is so spot-on that you forget your first reaction, which is that the idea of a murder victim narrating her observations of the living is at best clever and probably lame, and instead decide it was brilliant. This isn't true, but the quality of the writing almost makes it so.

Time Limit: Read by 3/13/2009
(Peter Jackson is attached, but I'm worried this will be far more King Kong than The Lord of the Rings. At least it won't possibly be Meet The Feebles.)

Read The Road. Imagine Mad Max meets No County For Old Men (a novel also by Cormac McCarthy) but with a father and son set-up that rips your heart out over and over without ever getting schmaltzy. Not even once, and that's saying something. McCarthy could teach Hemingway a thing or two about the economy of language. It was the first time I ever felt a physical pain in my chest caused by words the writer didn't include. McCarthy plays with your ears, so you hear things the characters don't say on the page, and sometimes you're deafened by their silences, too. The text itself is scant, but the thick subtext (midtext?) makes you read the book more slowly, like a great basketball player who knows how to control the tempo on both sides of the court. When I finished I was so full of feeling it reminded me of the kind of passion I could manage as a teenager, only the book indulges (and even exhorts) an adult recognition of nuance so that I can't understand, let alone articulate, exactly which direction these feelings are pulling. When you finish it, please post a description of your emotional reaction here, so I can use your road map to navigate my own.

Time Limit: Read by 11/26/08
(The cast looks amazing. Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pierce, Viggo Mortensen. At the height of their powers, these folks might be able to convey a lot of what's going on inside these characters. But then we miss out on the prose. Plus, they'll need someone with Robert Duvall's skill and resume to play the four or five-year-old boy. Macaulay Culkin will not do.)

Okay, well, now I've managed Infrequent and Long. If you still have any free time left, read both these books.

Favorite Novels to Assign for Creative Writing Class

Okay, world, I have another favor to ask:
This next year, for my Creative Writing Class, I'm going to assign some independent novel projects to students. I need some titles that I can put on my list. Here's what I'm looking for:

1. First and foremost, the book must be an example of truly exceptional writing; not just a great story and an important book in its historical context, but something so well written that students can learn from the style and quality of the prose.

2. The novel has to be appropriate for high school students (and something that won't freak their parents out). I think Nabakov's Lolita is one of the best examples of English prose ever, but I'm not going to fight that battle with the parents or the school board. Also, I really enjoy Umberto Eco, but I'm not going to assign him to a sixteen-year-old. So don't try to show off by recommending Joyce' Ulysses.

3. The novel can't be a part of any other class' curriculum. Give me lots of suggestions so I can eliminate some and still have plenty to work with.

4. Ideally, it's something I've read. Of course, I can always pick it up if it sounds like a winner.

So far, I'm thinking about
For Whom the Bell Tolls
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Catch-22
Lord of the Flies
and maybe, maybe The God of Small Things (think kids could handle that one? Think their parents would agree?)
It's been a long time since I've read I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. I remember being deeply affected by the book, but without a copy handy I can't remember the quality of the prose. Anybody have a take on that one?

Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks, world.

Question for Agents, Writers and Publishers

I've hit a snag in the process of trying to get a novel published. The situation leaves me quite frustrated. What is a person to do when filled with angst and bitterness? To whom should one vent complaints in the modern era? To the internet, post haste!

Here's the deal: I've finished a book and am some twelve chapters into the sequel. As people regularly say when hitting a snag, "Everything seemed to be going so well." Here's the problem: The book is some 167,000 words long. That's long. Like average Harry Potter novel long. It doesn't set any records, but it does pose a challenge for an agent. Publishers are hesitant to risk the added cost associated with all that paper on a previously unpublished author (read: nobody), so agents are reluctant to sign them.

So cut it down, right? But here's the quandary: I can split the book in half, but it really works well as a whole, and though I envision it as part of a longer series, it could stand alone. That's important, because publishers are reluctant to take on books from a series that isn't finished yet. Hence, agents are reluctant to take them on. Now, I have no doubt I'll finish the whole thing. I love the characters, the setting, and have a clear idea of how it all ends. But I understand why a publisher would be reticent. After all, I could get hit by a bus and leave them holding the bag (to mix metaphors that, together, paint an interesting visual picture. I can just envision some stodgy old publisher standing on a curb holding what appears to be a grocery bag [but which actually contains manuscripts] while I lie in a bloody pool in the street in front of the offending public transit conveyance.) So agents won't try to sell it. So I'm sitting here. But if I split it, it becomes a finished two-parter. How many series of two books do you see at your local bookstore? That just makes its unfinished nature all the more apparent. Of course the third part is on its way, and in this case a fourth, fifth, and probably sixth would follow.

A writer friend has convinced me that the hook needs some work. He's right. Modern audiences have no patience for a slow introduction, especially from a writer they've never heard of. But I can't decide which way to punch it up until I decide whether or not to split it in half. I would really like to have an agent or publisher help me make this choice, because they are the ones who have to sell the finished product, but at this point in my writing career I have to make it on my own (or with the input of strangers online).

Maybe I've answered my own question. I suppose the solution is to cut it, but make the first half into a cohesive, shorter book that can stand alone. Sounds easy, right? Ha! It will be a huge pain in the ass, and I still may fail. Writing a good book isn't easy but I think I've accomplished it. Taking the first half and making it into a separate, sell-able book? Ugh.

Well, I'm a teacher, and I have some time this summer, so I guess I have a project now. Hopefully the final product will be even better than it was before, and I'll be glad for the delay.

So, agents, publishers, and published authors, I guess the questions is this: when and if I finish this re-write, will I be right back here complaining that no one wants to publish the book because it's too short, or part of an unfinished series, or because I am right handed or too old or too bald or simply unlucky? Or, as Miss Snark might say, it just "sux"? What will the reason be? Your prognostications (or, more seriously, your advice) would be greatly appreciated.

Red Wings Beard 3: Freakin' Finally!

Well folks, the Stanley Cup has officially changed hands for another year, and my face has been liberated from the indignity of a bad beard. Here I am celebrating:




We're number one! Who? Me and the team I arbitrarily chose to root for!


In your face! Who? People who rooted for the other team I was only remotely aware of before this beard contest!


And now the obligatory credit to the divine for this inevitable end to a sporting event.


And the beard is doomed!

But before I remove the beard entirely, first... The Fu Manchu!


Awesome.


Sexy.


Okay, so I look like I'm auditioning for the Village People.


But Noah likes it.

Then, before ultimate freedom, I thought I'd try the handlebars. My mom really wanted to see just how much I'd look like my uncle, Dave.


Well, I can't do the cool handlebar mustache, obviously.


Do I look like a bald Uncle Dave?

Okay, that's enough silliness. Now, freedom!


I'm immediately struck by just how pasty I am. The beard absorbed a bit of the blinding light that reflects off my paler-than-white skin.


But it feels so good!

And now, the only faces that really matter:


If they're happy, I'm happy.

One last note; Noah, while I shaved, said I looked like Wolverine. Not a wolverine, the animal....



...but the Marvel Super Hero.

I don't really see it. I think I am now returning to my normal look, which unfortunately, is more like these Super Villains:


Lex Luthor (of Superman fame)


...and the faceless Chameleon from Spider-Man.

It seems the Red Wings have brought me back to super-villainy. So ends the saga of the beard. And now, on to my plotting of world domination!

Red Wings Beard Part 2: Pittsburgh Penguins Postpone Emancipation from Beardistan

So close! I turned on Game 5 of the NHL playoffs to see the Red Wings down by two, and started to lose hope that I would finally get to shave tonight. Then they scored three in a row, and with less than a minute left it looked like I would soon be rid of this itchy, scraggly growth.

Paige said my last pics made me look mean, so I had her take some more while we watched, then took a celebratory shot with the Red Wings in the background.

First, here are some I took with Noah:





And one with Noah and my nephew, Colin:



And one taken BY my nephew:


(He wasn't as frightened as you might expect. In fact, he thought it was pretty funny.)

Here's one of the pictures Paige took tonight:



And here's the one I took with the Red Wings as background:




Then Pittsburgh scored and sent it to overtime.

And another overtime.

And another.

And then they scored.

I think Colin captured my feelings right now:

Another post on LOST

Today I read an article about the fourth season of LOST on Slate. I recommend it because it generally agrees with my take that the newest mechanism of flashes forward and back add something cool to the show, though I disagree with the author's assertion that the shows haven't been planned out, at least to some degree, from the get-go. But then, maybe my inclination to believe there is a larger plan drawn up in advance speaks directly to the very reason I like the show: maybe I like figuring out a deeper, hidden story arc, even when none exists. This hints at some uncomfortable doubts regarding religious and philosophical choices I've made, but...

I think the best evidence of the tendency toward the conspiracy theory is evidenced by my reaction to the author's name. Check out who wrote this piece:

"We Don't Know Jack: The clever narrative trick that has made this season of Lost the best one yet."

Notice her name?

By Juliet Lapidos

Anybody else out there pathetic enough to see a connection to two Lost characters; Juliet of the Others, and Lupidus, the helicopter pilot? So she spells her name differently by one letter. So she's written 83 other pieces for Slate and a host of subjects unrelated to the show LOST. Still, she could be part of a conspiracy that extends beyond the fictional world of the show and even influences the pseudonyms of the show's critics! Or maybe it's not a pseudonym. Maybe the show reached through time and affected her parents' choice of names for her!

Seriously, I think I have a problem.

One last fix of LOST before some apparently warranted detox.

Go Red Wings Beard!

Well, as some of you folks know, I've been participating in this somewhat perverse version of a fantasy league, where, instead of some kind of reward for choosing a winning hockey team in the Stanley cup playoffs, winners must continue to grow out their beards. I thought I would choose based on my birthplace, and when the guys told me the team would probably go to the finals I didn't balk, on the grounds that I needed an outside force to keep me from shaving, and this was my chance to see if I could actually grow a decent beard. Now the Detroit Red Wings have made it to the finals, so I'll be continuing for a couple more weeks, but I thought I'd finally get around to sending off some pictures. I did finally trim it this weekend. It wasn't so much looking burly as mangy. Now, after a trimming, I told Paige, "You know, it's starting to grow on me."

"No," she said flatly, "it isn't."

Noah echoed this sentiment at the Obama rally on Sunday. "Daddy, why does your face have to be pokey?"

Now, looking at these pics, I get where they're coming from.

But the Red Wings keep winning, so it will have to go at the end. Now that it won't change the shaving date whether they win or lose (see? More fantasy perversion!) I might as well root for "my" team. So, Go Red Wings!









With a hat on, it almost creates the illusion that I have hair on my head! Oh, and as one of my younger colleagues pointed out, this was a necessary way to find out that I am going gray.

Unapologetically Pro-Obama

Today Paige and I took our son Noah to see the next president of the United States, Barack Obama, at a rally in Portland, Oregon. Here are Noah and Paige in a line that snaked its way through a dozen city blocks:



It was a hot day. The weather report said it would be 82 degrees, but it felt a lot hotter. Still, 75,000 people came out, according to the local news. 75,000 people! There are only about 3.5 mil in the whole state of Oregon, and about 568,000 in Portland. Paige and I attended a Peace March in Portland back in '03 that had about 30,000 show up, and that felt huge, but the people were distributed across the city in a long march. In this case, all the folks were right down at the riverfront. Here's a shot of the crowd ahead of us, between us and the stage. We were pretty close, because we showed up two hours before they started letting people in, and four hours before Obama spoke. We lost our great spot because Noah had to go to the bathroom and we didn't want to get separated. Still, from this spot we could still see him clearly and hear him very well through the nearby loudspeakers. Here's the crowd:



Before Obama came out, we got to hear the Decemberists, a band I really like. They only played five or six songs, but they sounded great and had us all singing by the end. I was particularly pleased because they played a bunch of my favorites, beginning with "Crane Wife 3" and ending with "Sons and Daughters". Paige was impressed that they sounded so much like their studio stuff (in a good way). Noah just enjoyed sitting on Daddy's shoulders and dancing. At the end of "Sons and Daughters" thousands of us sang, "Here all the bombs/ They fade away." That was a neat moment in itself.

Then Barack came out, and the crowd went crazy. It was hard to get a shot through the signs.



I caught this one in a moment when people were simply rapt:



The speech was moving. Near the end, I found myself almost in tears. In an email to a friend, I dismissed this as heat-induced delirium, but that was just machismo. When Barack spoke about all the benefits his family had received from the government, from his grandfather's G.I.Bill which bought their home, to the loans his mother received to go to college, to the food stamps which fed them when his single mom had trouble making ends meet, he essentially created a list of the kinds of big-government programs conservatives hate. But, he explained, despite the fact that we are a fiercely independent people as Americans, when we are at our best we lift one another up. I can't find a transcript of the speech online yet, and I'm sure it won't read as well as it sounded. There were no earth-shattering new ideas, though he didn't shy away from some specific policy issues. More than anything, I was struck by just how unabashedly liberal he is. He believes government can actually be a vehicle by which we help one another, if we have the passion to get involved and the compassion to care enough to make the government work for us instead of against us. For so much of my life the conservatives have pounded their plutocratic ideas about "welfare queens" into our heads, and moderate Democrats have tried to run as shadow Republicans, it was so refreshing to see a candidate who actually talks about government assistance without ridiculing poor, disempowered people for our lack of personal responsibility. Also, it's exhilarating to see someone who can talk about service to this country and not limit that to only military service. Finally, it's wonderful to have an option on the ballot who openly talks about avoiding quick fixes, and who is willing to spend political capital looking for long-term solutions. I don't know if he can deliver long-term solutions, but I do think he already has a huge head start on all the other politicians who aim only for the easiest pander and the most cosmetic policy changes. I'm sold. Fired up and ready to go. And dreading another crushing disappointment if this country fails another national IQ test yet again. But couldn't we start making good choices as a nation? Could we stop hating our own poor and treating the rest of the world like smaller children on a playground? Couldn't we make our country, if not the kind of place our kids deserve, at least a little better than the hellish Ann Rand theo-fascist dystopia ultra-conservatives fantasize about? Can't we believe in the possible, instead of settling? Please say, "Yes We Can!" Please?

Free Rice

While I'm promoting free online quizzes, please check out http://www.freerice.com/ . On this site, you answer multiple choice questions about the definitions of words. If you're a word lover (or "logophile") like me, this is just fun, but here's the really cool part: For every word you identify correctly, someone in the third world gets twenty grains of rice. I racked up 3800 with the help of my Creative Writing class today. (We had some down-time between units and someone recommended the site.) It's addictive, educational, and philanthropic. Who could imagine anything better?

http://www.freerice.com/

Again, feel free to brag about your best scores in the comments section here.

McCain Vs. Bush: The Fun Quiz Every American Should Take

Everyone in this country (well, those who are voting age, at least) should take this quiz! Not only is it fun, but I learned some valuable information. Feel free to post your score in the comments section here when you're done.

http://www.bush-mccainchallenge.com/

Tom Hanks Endorses Obama

Besides the content of the video, I enjoy the way Hanks plays with the notion that celebrity endorsements are meaningless. He claims they are, sarcastically teases that his words have convinced everyone, and then proceeds to lay out a thoughtful explanation for his endorsement which may actually persuade people. Lastly, he makes a reference to his career as an actor which seems to imply that his portrayal of historical figures and his research into history both give him some authority on the subject of our next choice of president. This may actually be true, but it flies in the face of his earlier assertions that his endorsement doesn't matter. Well done, Mr. Hanks. Kudos for your rhetorical skills, as well as your excellent taste in political leaders.

Beware: Celebrity Endorsement

Greatest movie of the year?

I loved There Will Be Blood, and I thought No Country for Old Men was genius, but this video may be the best movie of the year. Some yahoo hack from Bill O'Really's show tries to play gotcha with a priest from Chicago, and the priest takes it to him hardcore. It's almost enough to make you feel sorry or BillO's goon; he's outmatched on every level. Do I smell an Oscar performance?

On seeing "No Country For Old Men"

No Spoilers here, but I just saw No Country For Old Men, and I wonder if other folks out there in the ether had the same reaction I did. The film was amazing. The Coen brothers not only make beautiful movies (as far as cinematography)but they have an uncanny knack for pacing a story to match its theme. My one question is this: While other films have played with nihilism, depicting a conflict between a kind of heroically apathetic absudrist confronting nihilistic maniacs(The Big Lebowski), and showed an antihero striving against absurdity and nihilism out of force of will (O Brother Where Art Thou), and even shown curios exploration of nihilistic tone (Fargo), this film seemed to express a kind of evangelical nihilism. It felt persuasive. Maybe that's more Cormac McCarthy's doing than theirs, but if he preached it, they didn't shy away from mimicking the tone (I haven't read his novel, so I don't know if that tone was his, but I think it was theirs). Did anyone else feel like this was an argument for embracing nihilism? I'm not knocking that. I found it a brilliant argument. But I'm wondering if other people had the same reaction.

Great New Lost Video

The essence of our debate in the comments regarding the show Lost has been whether or not it's okay/tolerable/laudable that the show is so demanding of its audience. I think this video will serve as something of a Rorschach test. People like me, who love the demanding quality, will probably enjoy it. People who think the show is just too weird/mysterious/confusing will find this a perfect summation of their feelings about the show. Enjoy!

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

Dangerous Unselfishness

Here's a piece I wrote for my church's Listening Life group.

To paraphrase Gregg Koskela (our head pastor), I’m not really going to think about poverty… am I? Not today of all days. It’s April 4th, 2008, the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the man who, in my opinion, deserves the title of “Greatest American”. King’s critics like to point out his flaws. He was human, after all. But I think many of his supporters also do him a disservice by describing him only as a civil rights leader. Dr. King was so much more than that. He was a pastor, a child, a husband, a father. He was a great leader who led in the struggle for social justice on many fronts. He opposed the Vietnam War and advocated the use of nonviolent resistance here at home. He spoke out against not only racial injustice, but against misogyny and other forms of social injustice. In the days before he was killed, he traveled to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers, men (black and white) who faced such awful working conditions that two had recently been killed in one of the city’s own trash compactors. Not only were the conditions brutal, but the pay hardly allowed them to feed themselves and their families. King went to Memphis to strike with these men, but at the time he was planning a much larger march on Washington D.C. This was not a civil rights march, as we have come to think of them, though the struggle against income inequality is an essential part of the struggle for civil rights for all people. No, at the time of his death, King was working on the Poor People’s Campaign. You see, at his core, Dr. King was a Christian. His faith motivated every aspect of his life. And King recognized that poverty was the greatest threat to our nation’s soul.

Since King’s death, we’ve come far as a nation on the issue of race relations. Now we can indulge in the debate about whether we’ve come far enough. Personally, I think we still have a long way to go, but I agree with Dr. King: our greatest challenge, and our greatest moral obligation, is in the struggle to end poverty. Over the last forty years we’ve made such great strides on the front of race that we’ve lost sight of this even more daunting challenge. Since that time, income inequality has grown. In fact, every quintile of the American population has seen its income drop when adjusted for inflation, except the top quintile, which has seen a dramatic increase in wealth. When comparing our national wealth to world averages, this income inequality becomes even more dramatic; while our rich are getting richer and our poor are getting poorer, our poor are still outpacing the poor of the third world. In other words, we are so wealthy that our poor are rich, relative to the world’s poor, at the same time that all of us lose ground to our super-rich.

Paul, in his first letter to Timothy, instructs his pupil to “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share." This command takes a kind of moral courage that is, in our world, very difficult to find. Even though Jesus clearly tells us that wealth makes it harder to get into the Kingdom, we all seek security in our wealth. We need this sense of security because of a very justified fear of the consequences of poverty. And yet, it’s our fear for our own economic insecurity which drives us to hoard at the expense of others. We create the poverty we fear.

Where can we look for the kind of courage we need? Jesus makes this abundantly clear, as well. We need only look to the birds of the air and the flowers in our gardens, and see how God provides for them. Jesus tells us that God loves us more, and will provide for us just as richly.

But that’s easier said than done. Sure, I want to put my trust in God. I know He will care for me. But what if God has plans for me that are different from my own? What if God’s not so keen on that new computer I’ve been coveting? What if God thinks I don’t need another car? If I trust in Him, I know I’ll have everything I need, but I may not get all the junk I want.

Wouldn’t it be easier to believe in a god who just wants to give me that junk? It would certainly be easier to sell such a god. The other night my wife, Paige, and I were idly flipping through the channels on T.V. and came across a pastor preacher the “Prosperity Gospel”. God, he told people, would pay down their credit card debt. God would make them wealthy. I was incensed. I couldn’t stand hearing the Gospel cheapened so. Did God send his only Son so that whoever believes in Him would not suffer the indignity of walking down the street in off-the-rack clothes, but enjoy Armani suits in that new Lexus SUV? That’s not quite the wording in my Bible. But I can’t deny this fact: that mega-church was full to the gills.

And why not? Of all the parts of the Gospel to dismiss, this is most tempting. It was such a long time ago. Jesus couldn’t possibly have predicted my economic circumstances all those years ago, right? The disciples didn’t have computers and cars to covet, after all. I know I should be spending my time researching how best to give to my brothers and sisters in need, perhaps through some mechanism like the micro-loans Josh Reed (our youth pastor) was telling me about, but I have so much online shopping to get to. I’ll give when I am wealthier, when I feel more secure in what I have, when I no longer need to depend on God.

But I know the kind of courage Jesus calls me to isn’t outdated. It’s just hard. If only I had some modern example of courage to look to. If only someone facing much more dire circumstances could show me what that kind of faith looks like.

Forty years ago, the night before he would be killed, King preached a sermon that provides that kind of example. Facing more immediate and severe threats than any I’ll ever face, he said, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will… I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

When I think about poverty, I should remember that King said something else in that speech. The night before his assassination, King told that congregation in Memphis, and reminded all of us, “Be concerned about your brother. Either we go up together or we go down together. Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness."

The Purpose of Art: Where I Stand Today

Tonight I saw a movie (Gone Baby Gone) that does a wonderful job of posing an unanswerable question. I thought I’d recommend it to a friend. In the email to my friend, I said I didn’t want to restart a debate we’d had in college. That debate was about whether art should preach or ask questions. I said I didn’t want to restart the debate because my views on the subject have changed over the years. That got me thinking: Where do I stand now? What is art for?

So, in case he asks, and before I forget, I thought I’d jot down some current thoughts on the subject.

Back in college, if I remember correctly, I took the position that art should preach. I didn’t say it that way, but really, that’s where I stood. In large part, I think I took that position to justify a failing in my own writing. I’m prone to produce moralizing, pedantic stories, and rather than do the hard work to overcome this flaw, I wanted to explain why all artistic theory should support my own bad habit.

As I’ve grown as an artist, mostly through teaching, I’ve come to doubt my previous pronouncements. Having read hundreds of students’ stories that fell into the same traps of my own juvenile writing, I now make a point to teach my students that a theme is not a moral, and that a story which can be summed up in a single “Thou Shalt” statement isn’t much of a story. But what is the alternative? Should art seek only to entertain? Is “art for art’s sake” enough? Should art pose questions, the way this film did?

I still don’t accept that art should exist for its own sake. This, to me, denies the fact that an exchange is taking place between the artist and the audience; it implies that the means is the end in itself. If artists are honest, we have to believe that something real is going on, a genuine transaction between two parties. Otherwise, we are best served to journal, to dance in the dark, to paint pictures to hang in our own bedrooms. If we really don’t care about the audience, why burden them with work that wasn’t designed with them in mind? I believe a denial of the value of the audience will show in the quality of any artwork. So if the behavior of creating art is valuable; if we want to get better as artists, we have to think about the audience. The work can’t be the end in itself.

This is especially true in the context of narrative art. Something magical goes on in the minds of the audience, the willing suspension of disbelief. In order to achieve this, something far less magical goes on in the mind of the artist: artificially designed believability. While the audience chooses to accept that a story is real during the telling, the artist must design an experience which facilitates this process. But here’s the rub: life isn’t believable. It doesn’t follow a neat plot ark. We don’t experience happy endings or tragic ones; we go on living. The over-eager attempt to recreate reality just produces bad art: stories that don’t conclude (or lack intentionally provocative inconclusive endings), characters who make irrelevant choices, the recreation of the banality the audience sought to avoid in the first place. Good art is unreal, but believable. Since that’s the case, it can’t be the end in itself, or it’s just a lie told for no reason. An artist has to believe he or she communicates with an audience: we tell a lie to make a buck, to get a laugh or a tear, to tell a greater truth, something. We can’t lie just to lie.

So, if the art is a means to communicate with the audience, how should this transaction occur? Should the artist try to teach the audience something? There may be cases where this is justified, but it implies a kind of authority most of us don’t deserve. When Jesus uses parables to teach his disciples, he gets to be preachy. He has that authority. I would argue that Martin Luther King Jr.’s sermons achieve the level of art, but as a pastor in a pulpit, he’s been given the authority to speak from on high by anyone who chooses to sit below him in a pew. I don’t think the same deference is owed to actors on a stage, or in front of a camera, to painters in a studio, or to writers banging away at their computers. I certainly haven’t earned the right to preach at anyone. (In fact, most people would consider it pretty vain that I would even speak about myself using the term “artist”. I would say they are assuming the term implies quality, an assumption I don’t share. I refuse to play the “Is it art” game when it comes to questions of quality. Bad art is still art. “Art” is determined by the artist’s intent, while quality is determined by her/his talent, skill, and hard work. When I write fiction I am an artist. I just may be a bad artist.)

So, if art shouldn’t preach, should it, instead, be morally neutral? Merely a commodity to exchange? My first impulse is to say, “No.” I want to deny this craven, capitalist part of the exchange between artist and audience. But, when I think about it, I must admit that I do believe art should entertain. I’ve experienced (and, I admit, created) art which sought to be Great Art at the expense of entertaining, and it’s awful. It benefits the narcissism of the artist and the narcissism of the audience, but any “greatness” is sacrificed on the shrine of pride. Entertainment is what makes art do its work. It facilitates the transaction between the artist and the audience. Artist who deny the value of entertainment are really saying, “Ignore the art. Look at me. See what I can do?” And audiences who choose such art are saying, “Ignore the art. Look at me. See what ‘Great Art’ I can appreciate?” Two people, both gazing at their own navels, hardly generate something that can be considered communication.

But is entertainment enough? In general, I think it is. If we want art that might do something more than entertain, we have to leave room for a lot more art that does nothing else. Otherwise, there will be no art that welcomes people in through entertainment and then surprises them with something more. Without entertainment, the only art would be the kind audiences experience out of a sense of grudging obligation (“My teacher/friend/social group is making me read/watch/see/listen to this.”), or worse, that egotistical impulse to call attention to one’s self (“I read/watched/saw/listened to this, and I got it. Aren’t I great?”). To prevent this, the vast majority of art should do nothing more than entertain. Does this commoditize the experience? Certainly, but that doesn’t have to be bad. Service is not, in itself, greed. If the audience needs the experience of entertainment, the artist is providing a service. If the artist needs an audience in order to exist as anything but a navel gazer, the audience is also providing a service. If money changes hands to lubricate this exchange, that’s fine, but one could argue that the artist is just as obligated to pay the audience as they are to pay the artist. Determining who gets paid is based on economic principles of scarcity, not on principles of art. If it’s really a conversation, the benefits go both ways, with or without cash.

So, if all art should entertain in order that some can do more than entertain, what might that “more” consist of? If it consists of education for the audience, that can be a happy accident, but as soon as it becomes the driving force the artist has fallen back into the preaching trap, taking on underserved authority and forcing an unequal power dynamic into what should be, as much as possible, the kind egalitarian relationship necessary for real conversation. The artist says, “Look what I’ve made for you”, and the audience must feel free to say, “Thank you. I think it sucks.” Moralizing leaves the audience feeling that they can’t deny the work without denying the moral. This would be an unfair rhetorical ploy that would end conversation, so if art is conversation, it shouldn’t be employed there either. Artists naturally take on power within this conversation; the power of the byline, the power to choose what they reveal, the power to frame the debate. But all this power should be balanced by the power of the audience; the power to choose to engage, the power to maintain the experience, the power to judge. Moralizing attempts to take away some of the audience’ power. People generally go to hear sermons out of a sense of religious duty, stay through them when they don’t enjoy them out of a fear that they would be judged harshly if they stood up and walked out, and reign in their harshest judgments because they don’t want to deny the authority of the pastor, the scripture, or God. These same people don’t, and shouldn’t, feel the same compulsion to pick up a book, to finish it, or to pretend they liked it.

But if it’s a conversation, the artist can do more than just entertain. To argue the inverse would be to demand a world where our interpersonal conversations consist solely of jokes and sob stories. Artists, like any conversationalist, should reserve the right to ask questions of the audience. They should be able to make a point, as long as it’s done respectfully and not from a position of authority. And they should be able to admit they don’t know the answers.

That, I think, is why I’ve always tended toward preachy stories: laziness and fear. Moralizing gave me confidence when I didn’t think my stories would stand up to scrutiny. After all, if the story failed, the audience would at least have to concede the moral, right? That, I think, explained my impulse to preachy-ness in college, and compelled me to make my argument with my friend. But now, when I succumb to that same temptation, I think it’s due more to laziness than fear. Now I do it because admitting to what I don’t know is not only difficult on the ego, but it’s particularly hard work for the storyteller. After all, a storyteller must know the story, right? So how can I tell the story I know while admitting to a deeper ignorance regarding the story’s meaning in an uncertain world? The very act of telling a story implies a moral imperative: if I’ve got a story to tell you, I believe you should hear it. How can I respect my audience enough to try to think of the story they will want to hear, without coming up with the meaning they should hear embedded within it? I’m trying to find that story my audience will want to hear, while still admitting I don’t quite know why we need to hear it, or what it all means. And that’s very hard work. Moralizing is just easier.

My understanding of art has evolved significantly from my days in college. I can’t be certain the evolution is a move toward a more accurate conception, though, of course, I have to believe it is. But I do know the process of contemplating the purpose of art has tracked well with my own improvement as an artist. This is because a better conception of the purpose of art still might not tell me when I succeed, but it frequently reminds me when I’m failing.

Lost Theory II: Charactonym Theory

Well, I posted a reference to this list last week, so I thought I'd publish all my notes this week, and see if someone has an insight/comment.

Someone cleverly recognized a connection between the name of one of the new characters on Lost, Charlotte Staples Lewis, and the writer Clive Staples Lewis (known to most of us as C.S.Lewis. This reminded me of a conversation I once had with a friend about the names of the cast, so I thought I’d see if I could connect the other names of the characters to other people or to their character traits. As another friend recently informed me, this literary phenomenon is called a “charactonym”, defined as “a name given to a literary character that is descriptive of a quality or trait of a character.” [Note: As I researched this, I found a lot of it isn’t new. (Thanks, especially, to John Marcotte at Badmouth.net)]. This week Paige gave me a hard time for writing down names during the show, mocking me for blogging about this, but Faraday, in particular, seems unlikely to be accidental. Of the rest, some could be coincidence, and some of these required more conjecture on my part than others, but I still think there’s something here. Check out the list. I don’t have much of a cohesive theory yet, but I’ve tried to formulate something after the list itself.

Charlotte Staples Lewis – writer C.S. Lewis

John Locke – enlightenment philosopher John Locke

Desmond Hume – enlightenment philosopher David Hume

Kate Austen – novelist Jane Austen
aka Kate Dodd – Martha Dodd, American spy
aka Kate Ryan – the Irish surname Ryan bears the family motto: “Malo More Quam Foedari” Translation: “I would rather die than be disgraced”

Renee Rousseau – philosopher Jean Jacque Rousseau

Jack Shephard, son of Christian Shephard – though this could be a reference to Christ (the “Good Shepherd”), it could also be a reference to “Shephard’s Problem”, a geometric equation relating symmetric convex bodies in n-dimensional Euclidian space (thanks, Wikipedia!)

Michael Dawson – Christopher Dawson, English philosopher, sociologist, and cultural and political critic

Sayid Jarrah – Sayid means “master” in Arabic. Jarrah means “cutter” or “wounder”.
Master Surgeon? Master Butcher? We’ll see.

Charlie Pace - Jordan Scott Pace, English enlightenment philosopher

Shannon Rutherford - Samuel Rutherford, Restoration era critic of English government, preceded enlightenment philosophers like Locke and Hobbes

Juliet Burke – Edmund Burke, Irish political philosopher, critic of “Natural Law”

Henry Gale (Benjamin Linus)- Dorothy’s Uncle Henry in the Wizard of Oz, who might be the Wizard himself.

Ethan Rom – some have speculated this is just an anagram for “Other Man”. I can’t help but see a possible connection to the character Ethan Frome, the protagonist of the book by the same name. He’s “the most striking figure in Starkfield” but comes to a tragic end.

James “Sawyer” Ford – Perhaps this conman is named after a bunch of storytellers, like James Joyce, James Baldwin, Mark Twain (Tom Sawyer reference), and Ford Maddox Ford (that really was his pen name, not a typo)

Hugo “Hurley” Reyes – Frank Hurley was an explorer and photographer/filmmaker who traveled on Shackleton’s expedition to the South Pole. Victor Hugo, French novelist, author of Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Mr. Eko – Eko is the original name for the second largest city in Africa, Lagos, Nigeria, the country where Mr. Eko came from.

Walt Lloyd-Porter - William Sydney Porter was the real name of the American writer O. Henry.

Daniel Faraday – Michael Faraday, English chemist and physicist who contributed to the fields of… wait for it… electromagnetism and electrochemistry

Goodwin – Richard N. Goodwin, writer and speechwriter for JFK, LBJ, and Bobby Kennedy, served as the secretary general of the Peace Corps and named LBJ’s program “The Great Society”

Harper – Harper Lee, writer


So, here’s what I’m thinking: The most significant name is the name of the show. One of the things I’ve enjoyed about this season is that it’s driven home the point that these characters are not only lost on an island in the south Pacific (maybe), but that they were all lost in the world before they ever got onto that Oceanic flight, and that even after they return they are still lost. I wonder if this is further illustrated by the charactonyms. Writers and philosophers, despite their seemingly normal lives, are all people who take on occupations which separate them from their own world, which force them to see human interactions with a measure of detachment, an affected objectivity. Could the references to so many authors and philosophers, beyond pointing to the immediate relationship between character and referenced figure, be a larger commentary on the separation of these characters from the world? Like the writers and philosophers they (might) allude to, all these people share a similar skewed perspective on humanity. They are outsiders, be they survivors or others, to our world.

Again, here’s my call for the assistance of a mathematician. Would Shepard’s Problem relate to a projection from a plane in such a way as to reference an altered perspective from within that projection? Might that relate to this notion of these characters’ (and writers’/philosophers’) distinct perspective on the world which makes them, in a way, lost?