The Whitewashed Tomb That Is Mike Huckabee

There was a noise offstage while Mike Huckabee was speaking to the National Rifle Association this week. "That was Barack Obama," Huckabee said. "He just tripped off a chair. He's getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he — he dove for the floor."

"I'm not sure Senator Obama or Senator Clinton really get it," the Reverend Huckabee said.

Put Not Your Faith in Foley

Yeah, I see him over there: that shivering yellow dog with a hopeful look on his face and the tip of his tail wagging. No matter how many times he's been kicked, he keeps inching forward, hoping that this time he'll get a handout instead of a kick and a cross word.

No, wait-- that's not a kicked dog, that's a Democrat.

I am not optimistic about the coming election. The conventional blather seems to think that the Foley scandal will discourage the Republican base, but I think the press is sniffing its own butt on this one and mistaking consensus for wisdom. A more realistic poll described on NPR this week shows that Christian conservatives have no intention of crossing over to the Democrats. They see Foley as an abberation, not a symptom. Yes, Hastert and the leadership fumbled the ball-- okay, bad choice of words there-- but the Republican Party still holds its own-- another regrettable phrase-- when it comes-- um-- to what the Christian Right really cares about:
Other People's Abortions, Other People's Dicks, and Making a Big Show of What a Good Christian You Are.

If the events of the past SIX YEARS won't make them change their vote, why would this relatively bloodless scandal have any effect? I'm willing to be proved wrong, but polls don't always match the people that actually show up to vote on a rainy day, and who needs votes when you've got Dielbold?

A old Washington joke describes an incumbent as a shoo-in "unless he's caught with a dead girl or a live boy." The media is all over the Foley story like wasps to sugar water, but this scandal is NOT an October gift to Democrats. It is a blessing in disguise for the Republican party, a freakshow distraction from far more substantial problems.

THE HICKERBILLY ANTICHRIST: Bush and His Accidental Religious Dictatorship in America

UPDATE: Kevin Phillips, the Nixon conservative who draws a clear picture of the roots of the poisoned Bush family tree in American Dynasty, has just released American Theocracy, describing the rise of the asforementioned Religious Dictatorship in the United States. Bush as Antichrist, anyone?

I can tell you from my own experience that these emergent "evangelical Christians" are anything but Christ-like. They spend a good deal of time defining who is, and is not, a "Christian". It will amuse my friends to hear that I am not a Christian, and apparently hate Christians. This means that I am not THEIR kind of "Christian", and never will be.

Will there one day be a "Night of the Long Knives", in which they separate the wheat from the chaff and send the Catholics and the Quakers into exile with the pagans and the Buddhists and the homo-sexuals? Unlike the evangelicals, I'm don't pretend to know who's in and who's out, but I do know who gives the best parties.

Suggestion: When someone asks you if you're "born again", tell them you're still in labor. I used that on a childhood friend who had become an evangelical, and it shut him up.

This answer has the unusual virtue of being true; as a sort of Graham Greene Catholic, I'm always going to be wrestling like Jacob, squealing like Job, avoiding responsibility like Jonah and complaining about the Pharisees of the established church, the only Christ-like trait in my repertoire. The spiritual quest is not for sissies who need pat answers and reassurances, and that omits radicals, evangelicals and jihadists. I know there is more divinity in a woman's naked mound of Venus than in Jerry Falwell's smile, more warmth in a Beltaine fire than in George Bush's America, more awe in the revelations of science than in the stupidity of the Kansas school board, more joy in the muscles of a leaping cat than in any of Dr. Mengele Frist's grotesque experiments. Maybe instead of "What Would Jesus Do", we should ask "Who Would Jesus Rather Hang Out With?"

UPDATE ON AN UPDATE:
This week Bush was speaking in Ohio, and he got that animal-in-the-headlights-look again when a woman asked an unrehearsed question about Kevin Phillips' book, which "makes the point that members of your administration have reached out to prophetic Christians who see the war in Iraq and the rise of terrorism as signs of the apocalypse. Do you believe this? And if not, why not?"
Bush: "Hmmm." [Long pauses; this answer took perhaps 70+ seconds] "Uhh, hah -- ummm -- I, the answer is -- I haven't really thought of it that way, heh, heh. Heh. Here's how I think of it. Ummm -- heh heh. First I've heard of that, by the way, I, ah -- uhh -- the, uhh -- I, I guess I'm more of a practical fella. Uhh. I vowed after September the 11th that I would do everything I could to protect the American people. And, uhh -- my attitude, of course, was affected by the attacks. I knew we were at a war. I knew that the enemy, obviously, had to be sophisticated, and lethal, to fly hijacked airplanes, uhh, into -- facilities that would, we would, killing thousands of people, innocent people, doin' nothing, just sittin' there goin' to work."
One would hope that the President of the United States would immediately assure us that our dear little babies are not going to be swept up to Heaven or cast into Eternal Fire anytime soon. Throw us a bone here, Mr. President Ya Crack-Ass Cracker, Sir! (Respect the office, if not the man). Maybe this isn't Heinlein's theocracy or Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, but Bush as Greg Stillson in Stephen King's Dead Zone.

See also: Remember When? , Christopher Hitchens and "The Case for Mocking Religion", Grateful Children with Missing Arms, Memo from Jesus to Torture Caucus, Cognitive Dissonance, others.

Remember When We Thought the Nuttiest Idea in Heinlein's Science Fiction Was His Loony Prediction of a Religious Dictatorship in the United States?

"Last December Peter Panse was suspended from his teaching job for apparently recommending that some of his advanced students consider taking figure drawing courses that included nude figure drawings.

"In his discussions with students Mr. Panse mentioned several options for advancing their figure drawing skills; the local community college, a nearby frame shop that sponsors art classes, and the prestigious New York Academy of Art. He also described pre-college figure drawing programs at several other New York City art schools, and a highly successful art college prep program called the Mill Street Loft.

"Panse was suspended from his teaching job pending hearings. Depending on the outcome of these hearings, he may be permanently fired, ending a 25-year teaching career. Panse is a National Board Certified Teacher (in Adolescent and Young Adult Art), the highest level of certification that a teacher can achieve in America. He is also one of only two National Board Certified Teachers in his New York District, and “is a trained Facilitator for helping teachers explore and pursue the requirements needed to achieve National Board Certification."

Links, with lots of comments, at Drawn! The Illustration Blog , a detailed account of the facts at Art Renewal, and an online petition HERE

Days of Rage

I was carrying so much anger about ignorant, un-Christian "Christians" and the damage they do that I went to 5:00 Mass. Thought I'd ask the priest afterwards how he dealt with fanatics. Killing kind of rage, the kind that hurts you more than it hurts them and can slide so easily into despair.

First one there. Others drifted in, idle chat about their day as we waited to begin. One of the worshipers was tired, having spent the day working in pediatric intensive care. Another was asked about their latest CAT scan and their own recovery. A toddler, there with mother, father, and baby brother, visited us all in turns, then sat quietly reading something called "My Quiet Book", with all its pages made of cloth. Ken stuck his head in the door and asked us to remember in prayers a parishioner whose son was getting married in two weeks but the future mother-in-law was just killed in a car accident and a four year old with stage four cancer, both parents doctors, which meant they already knew more than was good for them as they worried...

Kind of puts you in perspective, doesn't it, punk?

We were supposed to thank God for something he'd given us. Yeah. right. Thank you for all the anger. Some inherited, a lot more of it earned, and some of it, quoting myself now, a chip put on my shoulder by Spartacus and knocked off by Wat Tyler. I've even been angry with God this year (God can take it; God knows they can dish it out). What am I, a fricking samurai-- the man with nothing to lose can accomplish great things?

The homily was about Mary. Whether you believe or not, metaphor or objective reality, Mary's probably the best of us. A human girl-- no super powers, remember-- given something she never asked to carry. Then a woman who loses a child, the worst thing imaginable, and in a particularly horrible way, yeah she can carry that too.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Have mercy on us. I tend to imagine a literal lamb, lost animals safe from hurt. My little furry angels. The murdered lamb, as blameless as Mary.

My anger went away, or at least settled down to an acceptable simmer. God wasn't there for the self-righteous winners, wasn't a prosecutor like Dobson and Falwell and Robertson and our local mean-spirited pipsqueaks. They were too busy hating with a sanctimonious grin on their face, and driving nice cars. God was down here with the broken ones, getting the shit kicked out of her/him like the rest of us. It's the daily crucifixion. Even if we're lucky enough to avoid the harshness of society-- born in East Grand Rapids, say, instead of the 9th Ward of New Orleans-- we're still crucified by time, wearing us down, breaking and burning us.

Sooner or later, of course, reality, life will find a way to snap your self-perceptions like a twig. An old hippie in Stephen King's "Firestarter" says "life is short, pain's long, and we're here to help each other through". Some of us know that by instinct, and it makes us kinder to others, more tolerant not less, and some haven't learned it yet.

PERVERTS HAVE TAKEN OVER THE REPUBLICAN PARTY: Please Stop Worrying About Other Men's Penises!

I am waiting for a politician who will ask, "Who are these anti-gay marriage busybodies to be so concerned with other people's penises?" Most of us go through entire days, sometimes weeks, without thinking about other people's genitalia unless we want to have sex with them.

Let's start describing this obsession of the Republican Party, this penis fixation of Wildmon and Falwell and Dobson and crew as what it is: a fetish. Some fetishists obsess about high heel shoes, some about women's breasts (exclusively I mean), some about French maid costumes--
and Rick Santorum worries about other men's penises and what they might be doing with them RIGHT NOW and what that might be doing to America. Whatever crime, greed, cronyism, illiteracy, job loss, environmental neglect and "Growing Up Gotti" might be doing to America, it pales compared to the destructive power of same-sex marriage and genital contact between members of the same sex! (Does Santorum remind anyone else of Paul Lynde? Or Tony Nelson, with Jeannie running around the house and all he wants to do is spend time with Roger?)

In the small but diverse town where I grew up, surrounded by blue-collar heterosexualists, there was none of this perverse gay bashing. It was a truism of my boyhood, learned from my fathers and uncles and the old men in the truck stops and barber shops: heterosexual men who were secure in their own identity simply did not worry so much about homosexual men.

The few openly gay men in the community were no more eccentric than the Sunday painters or photography club. K. and E. were like eccentric uncles whose difference added to the community; their homosexuality was no more irksome than the peculiarities of the camera club or the Jaycees, and I remember hearing more complaints about the Jaycees. If small town gays gravitated to the local arts scene, theatre and architecture and interior design, that was simply because those worlds were more live and let live about their inhabitants.

Men who exhibited homosexual panic, who talked about “goddamn queers tried to rape me” and such, were sniffed at by the rest of the truck drivers as being worried for a reason. When my turn came at 19 to be propositioned by a gay man (I was young and pretty then), I politely declined with no one’s feelings or noses being hurt.

My uncle’s concern baffled me. It would have seemed silly to have someone worry about me being seduced by our local gay theatre director. It seems silly now. How could a homosexual take my penis in his mouth unless I wanted to put it there? That would have been a poor substitute for the girls and women I had crushes on, who swirled around my adolescent brain in an unattainable hareem.

In panicky times like these, we must speak calm truth to hysterics. Anne M. Gobi, a Representative of Massachusetts, says,
"I haven't talked to any married heterosexual couples that have felt threatened by same-sex marriages."

Simply put, there aren’t enough hours in the day, what will all the other things I have to worry about. When clouds of the day part, when the demands of art and commerce are met, I selfishly start worrying about my own sex life. I'm not a patriot like Rick Santorum. Indeed, I hardly ever worry about other people's sex lives, excepting them as might intersect with mine.

It is time to confront public figures who espouse this kind of hatred against gay men and lesbians. The men and women who are born with an attraction to the same or rarely, both sexes, deserve to be left alone so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses. It is the Republican party and the so called Christian church that has been overrun by perverts.

Only three groups are so curious about unfamiliar genitals:

* Researchers and physicians, who have legitimate research questions;

* Pornographers, who entertain Americans to the hypocritical tune of $500 million to $1.8 billion dollars a year (the “$10 billion” often cited by crusaders and producers has been shown to be impossible);

* And Republican politicians and evangelical clergymen, who in a world of corruption, pain and ignorance can find nothing better to do their time.

WHO IS PAT ROBERTSON, THAT THOU ARE MINDFUL OF HIM? Mavens of Immoral Morality

It's a funny thing, the moral arbiter business. Chuck Colson was, by all reports, as rapacious a shitheel as any you could find in Washington today, but then he fell from on high, went to jail, found Jesus. I wish him luck. Funny, for all my sins of the flesh, I guess I knew even as a little kid that subverting the Constitution was a bad thing; Colson didn't know that until he was a grown man, and they had to whisk his sorry ass off to jail before he learned his civics lesson. Well, never mind, better late to the party than never arrive at all.

... But then this presumptuous ninny has the audacity to go on the radio and call other people immoral, while making great noises about his own virtue and love for the Lord? Like the Cheech and Chong Jesus Freak who "used to be messed up on drugs; now I'm all messed up on the Lord", Colson is the same nasty little shit he ever was. Once it was his duty to savage anyone who didn't love Richard Nixon; now the same energy is devoted to lashing at the enemies of the Lord. Who are the enemies of the Lord? Chuck Colson's gonna tell you. (Don't bother asking Jesus: just another Jewish liberal.)

Now we have William Bennett, compulsive gambler, verbal bully, education maven and again, a self-proclaimed moral arbiter and "editor" of "The Book of Virtues". My goodness these men are virtuous! They tell us so at every turn! Or rather, they tell us how much more sinful everyone else is. ... (Funny how he tells us what's wrong with our teachers but never actually gets down in the trenches with the foot soldiers trying to teach crack babies to read or telling a popular kid he still has to read the Constitution.)

Ah, Wild Bill: "But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."

To say the least; the paperwork must be horrendous. Let me simply ask that Bill do some homework: he can total up how much crime was committed by blacks over the last hundred years, and estimate the dollar cost in property loss, earning power of murder victims, and etc. Then he can total up the damages caused by the white power structure he belongs to: world wars, foreign assasinations, property damage, etc. Don't forget the cost of bottled water and the fish in Lake Michigan that can't be eaten by pregnant women anymore.

And Bill will whine: but those are not street crimes, but acts of policy in the name of the state, for Virtue, for Right, for Kate Smith and the Grand Old Flag. For Business, for General Motors for Henry Kissinger, for General Pinochet, in the name of whatever's good for the USA.

The moral audacity of these men! I stand in awe. Anne Coulter must have been binding the sores of lepers day and night in her college years, in order to attain the high moral ground where now she stands. Bill Frist, Tom DeLay, I tell you we are moral midgets next to them. And George W. Bush, a business wrecking alcoholic asshole for forty something years, yes, but a saint for twenty...?

"Heaven for climate, but Hell for society."

Hate, Hate, Hating the French

This is being posted from the south of France, and the annoyance some of you feel for that nation only underlines my point: that we have become a nation that hates instead of thinking, and shoots before it thinks. The knee jerks up before the doctor has even tapped his hammer. “The sleep of Reason produces monsters”, Goya said, and we’d best remember— but no, that’s already way too much metaphor for most.

We might tell our children that hatred is immoral, and yet the hatred of foreigners, and the hatred of Americans who happen to agree with those foreigners, that hatred is now a source of strength for the political Right. Witness the career of Ann Coulter, who has almost nothing to say without her hatred. The political world has always been full of men who hate, but when we make best selling authors out of women who hate, it might be time to look for cover.

This is no puff piece for the French, though I’m having a wonderful time. They have their national quirks and flaws as do all human beings, and if I were French I would probably be hollering about those. As an American my primary concern is with my own country being turned to garbage by its appetite for hate.

People like being given an excuse for hating, especially when Hatred masks itself as Virtue. How else explain the rise of Falwell, Dobson, Robertson and now Ratzinger, all of whom spend more time talking about what they hate than what they love.

Another fine hater is the representative who so hated “the French” that he changed the name of pomme frites to “freedom fries”. (They seem to keep electing these folks in the South, where they admire men who play at soldiering and shoot off their mouths as carelessly as their granddaddies shot off their guns. When Northerners starts to catch the same disease…)

This extraordinary fellow has become one of the first right wingers to call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. This puts me in the uncomfortable position of someone who demonstrated against the invasion of Iraq, but who now objects to withdrawing the troops. If you break it, you bought it—and what kind of monsters are we, to bomb hell out of a country and then say “Gee, we’re sorry we trashed your house, but those insurgency guys keep trying to blow us up, and if you’re still pissed off ‘cause we shot your grandma, so I guess we better go now. You clean it up.”

George W. Bush gave Al Quaeda a second front in Iraq, but he won’t be the one accused of treason, of aiding and abetting our enemies. And why isn’t the beetled brow of Bob Novak in jail?

How about we all Shut the Fuck Up about things like fighting for “freedom’? Those who hate are calling for a world of "freedom" in which people will be free only to agree with them.