The End is Near!

Friday will be my last day at the temp job. Talk about your basic TGIF.

Now, I've definitely had worse temp assignments. Back in New York, I worked for vindictive psychopaths, a CEO who didn't know how to use email, another CEO who expensed a lap dance to a client, a realtor who dictated memos to his 8 year old son, a broker who advised me to buy a stock that promptly tanked, a loan officer who wanted me to FedEx a document to a company located in the same building, and a guy named Jesus. Not "hay-soos," but "gee-zuss." In my time I've probably asked God for any number of ridiculous things, but I've never felt so awkward as when I queried, "Jesus, may I take my lunch break now?"

I tried to call him "Mr. Garcia," but he said, "You can call me Jesus."

Still, the present gig ranks near the top in terms of boredom. The position has been filled, and I've been "training" the new person for a week and a half now. Umm...I think she's got the hang of it.

Today I received exactly one email, at 8:41 a.m.: I was cc'd on a memo about a phone conference that got moved to later in the afternoon, something that didn't affect me in the slightest.

A few projects came our way today, and to be polite I always said, "Would you like me to do that?" but the new gal would always say, "No, I need the practice, so I prefer to do it now while you're still here and I can ask questions if necessary." An eminently reasonable response, but it still left me with bupkus to do.

I am now openly reading The New York Times there. Go ahead. Make. My. Day.

Some people there have expressed dismay (some of it, I think, genuine) that I am moving on. When pressed for a reason, I have been disciplined enough in the past to respond that I'm looking for an assignment that more closely matches my skills and ambitions. Today somehow what came out of my mouth was, "Well, frankly, I'm tired of sitting around waiting to be handed projects that other people have deemed too boring to bother with."

Larry Craig's No-Alternative Universe

Why do gay men have sex in public restrooms?

It's behavior like that of which Senator Larry Craig of Idaho stands accused (and, significantly, pled guilty) which serves to reinforce the notion among social conservatives that homosexuality is intrinsically deviant and that gay people aim to make a mockery of marriage. What they fail to acknowledge is that they have deliberately created, and seek to maintain, a world where gay people have no alternative.

The longing for intimacy is a powerful one; it is not simply about sex, but sex can be a strong, if temporary, antidote to the anxiety and depression one feels in the absence of a meaningful, emotionally intimate relationship. Sex can also be an antidote to low self-esteem, confirmation that you are worthy enough and attractive enough for another person to want to be sexual with you, to have someone want you, even for just a moment. A validation.

Imagine now -- though, some of us do not have to -- that you have been raised to believe that an emotionally intimate relationship with the people you are physically and romantically attracted to is not just an impossibility, but even a sickness, an unforgivable abomination in the sight of God. Now your depression and frustration that you do not have a relationship is compounded by unsympathetic cultural attitudes that argue you should not have one. You only want what everyone else wants, and what most people appear to have, but for you it is sick, dirty, sinful, shameful. Your life is a desperate veneer of "normality" covering a seething cauldron of self-loathing, disgust, fear and futile desire; you struggle to control and conceal and live in terror of discovery. You worry that you could lose your friends, your family and your career. (As Senator Craig's case points out, these are not idle concerns.)

But the primordial urge to connect intimately with another human being can be overwhelming. Put another way, the person society tells us we should be is often overcome by the person we are. (Society is often wrong; that's why we universally love underdog stories.) Forget homosexuality; celibacy is what is unnatural.

Anonymous sex in public restrooms and other places sounds dangerous; and it is. But for generations of gay men, it was the safest possible option. Think about that.

The self-righteous moral values crowd likes to wrinkle its collective nose in disgust at the thought of men having sex in a bathroom stall, but they also want to leave us no option. They don't want to allow us to live healthy, open, normal lives; they drive gay men to anonymous encounters in parking lots and rest stops for fear of our lives and then blame us for immoral "lifestyles." Of course we tap our feet in bathrooms and wait to see if anyone taps back; necessity is the mother of invention. In many places in the United States and around the world, the simple act of smiling and saying "hello" could result in physical violence, imprisonment or murder.

Forget sex in airport bathrooms; until the Supreme Court ruling in 2003, even sexual intimacy between two consenting adults of the same gender in a private residence was a prosecutable offense. No place was "safe."

The "values" crowd claims we can't form loving, committed, monogamous relationships, but when they see us walking down the street hand in hand they yell at us; they pass laws -- constitutional amendments, no less -- making it illegal for us to commit our lives to one another. They claim we only want promiscuous, hedonistic lives, and then show up to protest our weddings.

They create a world where it's unsafe and illegal to be open and honest and then arrest us for trying to be discrete.

Meh.

So, Senator Craig is claiming entrapment.

Let me get this "straight." A self-proclaimed heterosexual defender of family values was duped into flirting with a male cop in an airport restroom?

Rrrrrrrright.

Craigslust

Jiminy God.

“I should not have pled guilty,” says Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig, of the revelation that he was charged in Minnesota for lewd conduct. “They were misconstruing my actions.”

And what were those actions? After security at the Minneapolis airport received complaints that a man was loitering in the restroom, a plainclothes police officer was dispatched to investigate. Senator Craig moved into the empty stall next to the police officer when it was vacated, then blocked it with his bag to obscure the view inside. He peered through the cracks in the stall, tapped his foot, and repeatedly waved his hand under the partition to get the police officer’s attention.

Senator Craig claims he was stooping down to pick up a piece of paper, which I guess must have been flying around – he was trying to stomp on it with his foot or catch it as it was flying up into the next stall and he blocked the door so it wouldn’t fly out the front. Sure, that’s plausible.

It’s almost as likely as Florida State Representative Bob Allen’s explanation for why he was busted for the same thing last month: he thought he was about to be mugged by the African-American undercover cop, so he offered $20 and a blowjob.

As a gay man who has been harassed in restrooms and locker rooms, I have seen exactly this behavior: the foot-tapping and the reaching under the partition to indicate interest. The policeman certainly has grounds to suspect this is what Craig was after; if the Senator wasn’t pursuing a restroom quickie, he certainly had a spectacular misfortune in coincidentally mimicking the internationally-recognized tea-house tap dance.

Part of me feels pity for the senator, another victim of cultural attitudes that require repression and denial instead of allowing people to live their lives plainly and honestly; it drives them to dangerous furtive encounters in bathrooms and rest stops. But my sympathy is tempered by rage over his hypocrisy: here is yet another closeted conservative politician who has scored political points by demonizing gay people. He panders to folks who think there’s something wrong with me by claiming I’m a corrupting, destabilizing force in American culture. Well, buddy, this tax-paying, church-going registered voter isn’t running around on his wife having anonymous sex in airports. Senator, heal thyself.

When confronted earlier this year with recorded testimony that he’d engaged in gay sex in Washington, D.C.’s train station (such allegations have been dogging him for forty years), Craig responded, "The gay movement, we know it for what it is. It's now aggressive and it's liberal and it's naming people to try to put them in compromising, difficult situations." Then he exclaimed, “Jiminy God!”

If the senator insists on pursuing anonymous, adulterous, meaningless sexual trysts as a hobby, he should find a better place to do it. It’s called the internet. In the meantime, he could stop projecting his own character flaws onto millions of law-abiding gay and lesbian people in order to exploit them for political gain. And let me pee in peace.

Why Gonzales Resigned When He Did

Both Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales resigned while Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were on vacation. Coincidence? I think not!

Sick Vick

After entering his guilty plea on federal charges relating to his illegal dogfighting operation today, Michael Vick apologized for his “immature acts.”

While he conceded that “dogfighting is a terrible thing” and took responsibility for his actions, I hardly think “immature” is the proper adjective, and his decision to characterize his crimes in this way causes me to wonder whether he really comprehends the nature of his actions.

Let’s review: Vick raised dogs and bred them to be aggressive; common tactics used to induce this behavior include starvation and a regular regimen of physical abuse. Vick and his friends enjoyed watching these dogs tear each other apart with their powerful jaws. Fights can last for hours; the losers usually die from loss of blood from a torn throat or virtual disembowelment and the victors hardly escape unscathed. Wounded survivors are not given veterinary care or allowed to “retire”; instead, in their weakened condition, they are simply recycled into the fray until eventually their number is up.

Some dogs, apparently, despite living in abusive care, just don’t display “sufficient” aptitude for the sport: they’re too docile. In Vick’s mind, a gentle dog was a worthless dog. Did he surrender them to a shelter or try to find or provide a loving home for these creatures he deemed too passive? No, he executed them (Vick concedes the death of “at least six”) using such methods as drowning, electrocution or slamming the dogs against the ground.

What a fate awaited these innocent creatures: rip each other to pieces to entertain their human masters or be killed in a heinous, painful manner.

To say someone is “immature” means that they are old enough to have outgrown behaviors we generally attribute to younger, less sophisticated people. But dogfighting isn’t childish or unsophisticated; it isn’t something one “outgrows.”

Fart jokes are immature. Torturing and killing animals for profit and pleasure is sick.

Sunday Photo Blogging: Cats!

Oh, the profundity! When all else fails, post cat pictures.


Rocky has always liked using Starbuck as a pillow.

Get it?


Here's Rocky watching Joan Crawford's last film, the hilariously catastrophic Trog. (Sorry about the crap on the floor; I'm rather desperately in need of a file cabinet.)


Here they are playing tug-of-war with their new favorite toy, Mr. Shoelace. This was pretty funny...I need to learn how to use the video function on my digital camera.

I swear this next photo wasn't staged. The other day I couldn't find Starbuck. I looked everywhere. I had just gotten home from the grocery store, and I started to panic that she had slipped out the door when I wasn't looking. She wasn't in any of her usual places. I was in the kitchen and I called out, "Starbuck?" and then I heard her distinct high-pitched squeak coming from the counter. I turned and she poked her head out of my eco-friendly grocery bag as if to say, "Peek-a-boo!" (She's always had a thing for bags.)

Poof!

Portland is so friendly!

Last night as I was hopping between bars downtown, a car pulled up along side of me and a woman leaned out the window and yelled, "YOU LOOK REALLY GOOD IN THOSE JEANS!!!" (My New York friends know which jeans she's talking about, too.)

Scenes from a Temp Job

The senior admin and I were straightening up the reception area that I am happily surrendering next week, going through the drawer and chucking dead pens. “What the heck is this?” she asked, holding up a small device made of clear plastic, about five inches long.

“It’s a clam clip dispenser,” I said, turning it over and reading the label that said “clam clip dispenser.”

“Well, I guess we’d better hold onto that, in case I need my clam clipped.”

(*awkward silence*)

• * * * *

I was in a stall in the men’s room, erm, minding my own business, when a guy came in and said, “Hey, how goes it today?”

Surprised, embarrassed and unsure how to address this question I just said, “Oh…fine?”

When I came out, he said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

I nodded and said, sadly, “Yes. Me, too.”

• * * *

A suited-up guy (I’m going to guess…salesman!) walked in this morning and said, “Hi, I’m here for my appointment with Mr. ______________.”

“Oh, he’s in Suite _________, around the front of the building,” I said.

The man looked slightly deflated, and I swear, some of his highlights faded almost imperceptibly as he asked, “Is it far?”

“About 100 yards,” I shrugged. Then he went and got in his car and drove to the other side of the parking lot.

• * * * * *

Rocky and Starbuck have been pestering me to start their own blog for them, but I’m not sure I really have time. Their concept would be a political column, Rocky voicing a populist, mainstream view while Starbuck holds down an ultra-leftist anti-corporate, feminist, unite-the-workers activist pose, with a barely suppressed politicrush on Kucinich. They want to call it Liberal Pussies.

• * * * *

A woman at the office was recommending the national tour of Spamalot, which is presently in town. “It’s hilarious!” she declared. “They spoof the gays, the Christians, everybody!”

• * * * *

To: You
From: Andy
Subject: Greetings from the Other Side

Hi there,

Sorry for the mass email, and sorry that I have not been in touch for so long. I’ve just been so busy! But I wanted to take an opportunity to let you know that I died.

Best,
Andy

Seriously…I was reading The New York Times and at the bottom of an article was an advertisement for a service that sends out an email to notify people of your death.

Hitchens Lays an Egg

I confess to a bias against Christopher Hitchens. In his latest column for Slate, "God is Still Dead," he summarizes and reviews Mark Lilla's forthcoming book, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West, with what seems to be general approval, aside from a modest chastisement that Lilla does not give atheists enough credit for the progress they have made in the world. This endorsement was enough to negate any interest I might have had in the book.

Later this afternoon, however, as I was surreptitiously reading The New York Times online (behold the power of sizing your Explorer window to make it look like part of the spreadsheet you're "working" on), I came across an article entitled "The Politics of God," and after a few sentences, I thought to myself, "Wow, this is really interesting, who wrote this?" Answer: Mark Lilla, summarizing his own book. Once again, in the service of his own bizarre agenda, Christopher Hitchens had, as he does with my own faith, selectively reduced someone else's point of view to something unrecognizable.

As is the case with fundamentalists of either stripe, Hitchens ignores (or is blind to) anything that runs counter to his essential argument. In this case, he leaves out that Lilla's ultimate conclusion is that Hitchens' prescription for saving the world -- education and modernization, particularly for the middle east, so that no one is so incredibly stupid as to believe in God anymore -- won't work.

Principally, Lilla compares and contrasts arguments about the nature and role of religion in society and government from Hobbes and Rousseau; like Hitchens, Hobbes saw religion as detrimental superstition, the myths to which man flees when anxieties and unknowns overwhelm him, and the systems through which the powerful and skillful manipulate the dull and trusting. (You won't hear me argue that there's no truth to that.) It is through Hobbes that western democracy derived the notion of a "wall of separation" between church and state: the only way to circumvent the effects of messianism is to insist upon a secular government.

Rousseau, on the other hand, acknowledged -- and Hitchens does, too, though he does so with distinct lament -- that human beings are theotropic, or naturally inclined toward faith. (Here enter questions about religion as a product of evolution, which, to my mind, argue in favor of an Intelligent Designer.) "While Hobbes beat the drums of ignorance and fear," writes Lilla, "Rousseau sang the praises of conscience, of charity, of fellow feeling, of virtue, of pious wonder in the face of God’s creation. Human beings, he thought, have a natural goodness they express in their religion." (And right now I am feeling very angry that the brief overview of philosophy that I was given in school was tied to economics -- the only way they could have disinterested me more was to put an algebra equation in the middle of it.)

What Lilla chronicles, then, in western history from the middle ages to the present, is the way in which these competing ideas cycle to keep each other in balance: that we, as a culture, have a benevolent tendency to attempt to enforce higher ideas through governance which leads inexorably to perverted, and failed, totalitarianism. For a classic example, compare Marx's intent with the Soviet Union.

What he also notes -- and this is the coup de grace for Hitchens, though like the chicken he is he keeps running after his argument has been cut off -- is that scientific modernization does not, in fact, weaken religious belief. If history is any guide, what happens is that the human tendency toward faith is so strong that inevitably a movement will begin and eventually dominate, one that accommodates the new reality. A side effect, however, is that "liberal theology" -- a distinctly 19th century Protestant movement which Hitchens attempts to claim is merely a polite term for "liberation theology," a distinctly Catholic 20th century movement -- gave rise to Zionism and American Christian Fundamentalism; i.e., attempts to harmonize traditional beliefs with modern reality simultaneously created a new countermovement seeking "authenticity" rather than accommodation. Then Lilla points our heads in the direction of the Middle East.

Essentially, Lilla argues that western democracy, and the relative end it brought to centuries of bloody Christian internecine warfare is less the product of the technical and intellectual modernization of the 18th century than it is of a unique set of historical circumstances in which a culture collectively decided the best way to control the excesses of religious totalitarianism was to have a secular, pluralist representative government. We don't have a secular democracy because people stopped believing in God, but rather because people's understanding of God at the time made a secular democracy a virtuous ideal. In conclusion, Lilla strongly cautions us that we can't educate Islam out of its present crisis, again because the human tendency toward faith is so strong that rather than taking new, conflicting, contradictory information as evidence that there is no God, we incorporate it into a deeper, renewed belief.

Says Lilla: "The dynamics of political theology seem to dictate that when liberalizing reformers try to conform to the present, they inspire a countervailing and far more passionate longing for redemption in the messianic future. That is what happened in Weimar Germany and is happening again in contemporary Islam." (I think one can also strongly make a case for the American South and Midwest.)

So what can we do about the threat of radical Islam, according to Lilla? Not much. "What happens on the opposite shore will not be up to us. We have little reason to expect societies in the grip of a powerful political theology to follow our unusual path, which was opened up by a unique crisis within Christian civilization. This does not mean that those societies necessarily lack the wherewithal to create a decent and workable political order; it does mean that they will have to find the theological resources within their own traditions to make it happen."

Sunday Photo Blogging: Coasting to Disaster

Last week I found myself jonesing for an adventure. Realizing that I had not yet made it out to the Coast since my arrival in Oregon in April, I thought that sounded like a good day-trip. On a whim I Googled “Yachats low tide August 12 2007” and it turned out that Sunday was actually going to be the lowest tide of the year, so the state was going to have naturalists posted at the tidepools at Cape Perpetua to show folks around and answer questions about the critters. Being a huge dork, I thought that sounded like fun.

Of course, low tide was from 8-10 a.m., and Yachats is three and a half hours away, so I was up and out before dawn, which had me on one of my favorite drives – OR 34 from Corvallis to Waldport – just as the sun was coming up and the morning fog was starting to lift. Fantastic.

It wasn’t the best weather one could have hoped for on the Oregon Coast in August, but it was fun poking around the tidepools.

The pools are in the cracks and crevices of a massive lava flow, and the rocks are actually pretty difficult to walk on because they are extremely sharp and craggy, and of course the farther out you go, the more encrusted they are with barnacles, anemones and mussels. You don’t have to go very far before there’s no bare rock left, and I waffled about going further because I didn’t want to smush anything, but I saw the naturalists were just standing on the mussel beds. Those shells are amazingly strong – you can walk right over the top of them, and not only do they not pry loose, they don’t crack or crunch under the weight of an adult!

In this pool you can see some of Oregon’s ubiquitous green anemones (occasionally you see some pink or purple ones) and some purple urchins crawling around.

There were tons of ochre sea stars, mostly purple with a few red and orange ones. Oregon also has a few sunflower stars, but I didn’t see any. There was this one guy with six arms, though.


It’s a pretty harsh environment, but it seems to suit these guys just fine.


After a couple hours out on the rocks, I hiked for about a mile back into the old-growth forest on the other side of US 101 to see this 400 year old, 195-foot tall Sitka Spruce. (It used to be 230 feet tall, but a storm snapped off the top a couple decades ago.) The trunk at the base is 15 feet in circumference.

Since I still had some laundry and other domestic tasks to accomplish before the weekend’s end, I decided to head back with the goal of arriving home in the late afternoon. I had a quick bite to eat in Newport, but then found myself in a nightmarish traffic jam of vacationers heading back to town. It took two hours to go the 23 miles from Newport to Lincoln City, where I turned east to head to Portland.

Having spent the last couple of hours rarely getting above 5 mph, I looked at the open expanse of OR-18 with a sigh of relief and stepped on the gas.

KERRRRRRRRGGGXXXXUGUSSFFGGSSSKKKKXXHHH! went my engine, as the RPM needle spiked into the red and my poor old Mercury labored to get above 30. I put on the blinkers and pulled over to the shoulder, and immediately smoke and steam started pouring out from under the hood, and a thick, dark, bubbly, stinky goo boiled out from the engine and spilled onto the asphalt. “Hmm, that isn’t good,” I said, aloud to no one.

Fortunately I was still in an area with cellphone service, so I was able to reach my parents. The car actually belongs to them (once I get, you know, a *job*, I will investigate the possibility of getting my own), and the AAA account is in their name, which means one of them is supposed to be with the car in order to get it towed, but my mother sweetly cajoled them into rescuing me. That process took about half an hour, and then AAA called me to say a driver would pick me up in 30-45 minutes. Precisely at the 45 minute mark, my phone rang again: it was the driver saying he’d just gotten a page and would be to me in...30-45 minutes. Sigh. Altogether I was only by the side of the road for two hours, which wasn’t so bad, I guess. I passed the time by imagining what my tow-truck driver would look like and indulging in fantasies of falling in love and spending the rest of my life living on the Oregon Coast with my hot, hunky tow-truck driving husband.

It was not to be.

Exploring Oregon’s pristine tidepools? Priceless. Having your car towed to Beaverton? $280.

We abandoned the car at the mechanic’s front door, who just had it in a couple weeks ago for a tune-up. My stepfather spoke to him and reported back to me that, quote, “The problem is with the tranny.” I refrained from commenting.

A week later, the car is still there and we have yet to hear a diagnosis, prognosis, or estimate. My stepfather has been driving me to and from work every day this week, and I remain exceedingly grateful that I found an apartment across the street from a grocery store. My mother is pondering trading it in, so every night before I go to bed I close my eyes, rub my temples and try to establish subliminal mind-contact while I chant, “Prius, Prius, Prius…”

Judge for Yourself

I had to include two photos so you could see both the "front" and the "back," since the miniature plastic pumpkins were on one side and the plastic, unripe raspberries (mottled yellow, green and red) were on the other.

A Perfect[ly Hideous] Gift

Things at my temp job are a little better. I had a tactful talk with my supervisor and managed to politely convey that the problem is that I don't have enough work to fill my day. Er...that has been remedied. It's not particularly interesting, but it keeps me busy. I don't even know why some of it is coming my way (I'm doing budget reconciliation for a different office -- literally, a building in a different city -- shouldn't someone there be fixing their own budget? Or, at least someone in the finance department? Why is the temp receptionist in an office park 20 miles away doing budget reconciliation?) but at least it fills my time. And at least I know my efforts are appreciated.

When I came back from lunch today, there were flowers on my desk with a note that said, "To Andy, thank you for all you do, [my supervisors]."

I would have been touched, except...well, how to put this? It was the butt-ugliest flower arrangement I had ever seen.

Picture this: a small copper bucket filled with dandelions, pink carnations, orange silk oak leaves, miniature plastic pumpkins, plastic yellow raspberries, bracken fern and cedar fronds. I've never previously beheld a flower arrangement that contained a mix of fake fruit and tree leaves with live evergreens and honest-to-God weeds. In a bucket. With carnations.

Having stared at the thing for a couple of hours this afternoon, pondering my options, I realized I had no course other than to feign graciousness and thank them for the gift, calling upon every Stanislavskian technique I could recall to summon sincere gratitude. So at the end of the day, as they were heading out the door, I said, as best I could, "Hey, thank you so much for the flowers." (Note, I did not add the standard, "they are lovely.")

"Isn't that the fucking ugliest thing you've ever seen?" said one of them.

I nearly cried, I was so relieved.

It turns out they had gone to a nearby conference center to tour the facilities as a possible location for an upcoming meeting, which included a lunch to sample the catering, and at the end they were invited to take the centerpiece home with them. "Let's give it to Andy!" they decided.

Now that I know we all hate it, I love it.

My New Favorite Song

Rehab

Kool Kitty

I meant to get the photos from this weekend edited and selected for publication on the blog, along with the thrilling tale, but...well, I just had too much to do today. Hopefully a picture of Rocky will suffice for the moment.

Riddle

Q: What do you get when you cross starfish with a tow truck and cat poo in a Ziploc bag?

A: My weekend. Details and photos to come soon.

I Recant

Maybe Hal Lindsey is on to something.

On Reading the Bible "Literally"

Here is a quote from the August 5th edition of The Hal Lindsey Report on how to reconcile the fantastic, image-laden language of the book of Revelation with end-times theology that says we are on the brink of Armageddon:

"How could a man of the 1st century AD, who has never seen a machine, describe the technical marvels of the 21st century? With his experience and language limited to the materials and objects of the 1st century, how would he describe a helicopter or an intercontinental ballistic missile with multiple nuclear warheads? This is how he described what he saw: And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. Now, that’s a pretty good description of an attack helicopter."

Blog Alert

Gentle Readers, I have been put on notice by the benevolent overlords at my fabulous temp job that even so much as glancing at such risque websites as CNN or The New York Times is an express violation of their internet usage policy. So, I am afraid that over the next few weeks, until my replacement is able to take over for me and my joyful, spiritually rewarding time there will be but a fond, fond memory, my exposure to any form of intellectual stimulation that might inspire a blogpost of any quality at all will be severely limited. I apologize in advance for any inadvertent dry spells or utter mundanity.

Yours truly,
Andy

The Bible on Gay Marriage

In recent years, American moderates and progressives have banded together to reclaim Christianity’s public image from the religious right. Infuriated and embarrassed by the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and George W. Bush, a grass-roots campaign has emerged to shift the focus away from narrow views of sexual morality and broaden the conversation to include poverty, climate change, civil rights and foreign policy issues like Darfur and the wars in the middle east.

In his 2005 runaway best-seller, God’s Politics, evangelical minister Jim Wallis successfully demonstrated that if Christians were to determine priorities based on how frequently a subject is mentioned in the Bible, aiding and defending the poor and the oppressed, those to whom Jesus refers as “the least among us,” is the clear winner. Unfortunately, some progressives have adopted this strategy to claim that the pet passions of the religious right – abortion and homosexuality – aren’t even mentioned in the Bible. This disingenuous and Biblically illiterate argument will only serve to undermine the worthy agendas they hope to advance.

Bob Edgar, the General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA (an interdenominational Protestant organization encompassing 45 million American Christians) and a former six-term Congressman, writes in the opening pages of his book Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority from the Religious Right, “The Bible mentions…homosexuality only twice, and poverty or peace more than two-thousand times.” Last week, in an appearance on The Colbert Report to promote her new book, Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches Are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend said that the Bible never mentions gay marriage.

Edgar’s right about the Biblical emphasis on poverty, but as a Methodist minister he ought to have known that at a bare minimum, the Bible expressly mentions homosexuality in four places: Leviticus 18 and 20, Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6. (Depending on translation, you can also make a case for Genesis 19.) And what to make of Kennedy Townsend’s cheap point? The Bible never mentions kiddie porn, either. So what?

The Bible doesn’t discuss gay marriage because, in its cultural context, it was literally unthinkable. Biblical writers did not conceive of a biological basis for sexual orientation, which is widely accepted today. They didn’t believe that there was such a thing as a “gay person,” only a straight person who had exchanged “natural” for “unnatural” behaviors purely for the thrill of perverse sexual gratification.

It never would have occurred to Paul or the authors of Leviticus that two people of the same gender could actually fall in love and want to make a committed life together, even perhaps raising children and taking vows of fidelity before God, just as they couldn't have known that the earth rotates around the sun. Many Christian advocates for full inclusion of LGBT people now cite the infamous Romans 1 passage as justification for homosexuality, in light of the vast body of scientific evidence indicating a genetic or otherwise biological basis for sexual orientation. If homosexuality is indeed natural, as the evidence seems to indicate, then one possible reading of Paul’s words is that it is a sin to act contrary to your nature.

Comparatively, homosexuality may not be mentioned very much in the Bible; but to frame the issue as merely incidental and even trivial is to close your eyes to the reality of the church today. Yes, it would be nice if we could all unite around poverty, but the truth is that issues of sexuality are literally tearing our churches apart. This is a serious argument that deserves sophisticated, honest treatment as a path toward understanding and reconciliation, not a blithe dismissal. If our charge has been that the religious right has only been selectively reading scripture, we can’t respond in kind. We must be honest about what the Bible says, and engage those arguments with the integrity they require.

10 Things I Hate About Commandments

Too funny.

Quote for the Day

"You can't cite your enemy's delusional hopes as a basis for a rational strategy."

- Kung Fu Monkey, on the theory of Crazification

Seeding Armageddon

What should we do about the centuries-old bloody sectarian tensions that are ripping Iraq apart and destroying what hopes remain for a stable, democratic society?

President Bush thinks we should exploit them. The best way to counter Shiite Iran’s regional (and nuclear) ambitions? Arm the Sunnis! (And the Israelis!) Because it should be clear to everyone by now that what’s really wrong with the Middle East is a dearth of weaponry.

Yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice confirmed that the United States is in the process of negotiating a $20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as “part of an American strategy to contain the growing power of Iran in the region.”

So while making nice to Saddam Hussein (including turning a blind eye to his use of chemical weapons on his own people) during his war with Iran in the 1980s didn’t work out for us, and while supporting Osama bin Laden’s mujahedeen against the Soviets and giving millions of dollars to the Taliban came back to bite us in the ass, apparently plying Saudi Arabia’s fundamentalist monarchy with satellite-guided bombs, even as they work to undermine our pro-democracy efforts in Iraq by funneling weapons and support to the insurgency, is a really great idea.

We’re “bribing the Saudis to make them more cooperative in Iraq,” says Shmuel Rosner, but “[t]he problem with the Saudis, though, is that time and again they have proved to be unbribable and unmaneuverable.”

While we may be selling $20 billion worth of stuff to the gulf countries, we’re giving Israel $30 billion in “military assistance” during the next decade, a 43% increase over the previous ten years. Robert Baer, writing for Time, says, “the Israelis make no bones about how we got here: the Bush Administration completely botched the Iraq invasion, allowing Iran to effectively annex Basra and a large part of southern Iraq.”

It’s not nearly as simple as saying Shi’a = bad, Sunni = good. Encouraging sectarian warfare across the Middle East is a messy proposition. True, in the Shiite camp we find Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah and the Syrian government. But Sunni groups include Hamas, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and the fledgling democracy we’re desperately nurturing in Baghdad is mostly Shiite with ties to…Iran. Do we really want to stir this pot?

The Washington Post’s William Arkin says this will backfire: “the army of contractors and U.S. servicemembers that will have to go to Saudi Arabia to support the deal…will just fuel more Arab anger and more terrorism….We will once again renew the cycle of American penetration into the heart of Islam, one of Osama bin Laden’s original and most compelling rallying points.”

The arms deal speaks volumes about whether the President and his advisers think we can achieve our original goals in Iraq and whether they believe their own rhetoric about freedom and democracy on the march in the region. Clearly, they do not. They are anticipating greater conflict and, indeed, provoking it by selectively arming the likely participants.

One of the original rationales for removing Saddam Hussein was that he was a threat to regional stability. Now that we’ve solved that problem, what do we do about George W. Bush?

Open Mike Mondays

Fuck this present state of affairs and the horse on which it hobbled in.

- the inimitable DJRaindog

Hear, hear.

So, I wrote this long post today about what's wrong with our proposed $20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia. I got to the end of it and I thought, "Ugh. Who cares?"

*****

Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure this afternoon. I guess he's okay. The doctor was quoted as saying it was a "benign idiopathic" event. Kind of like American Idol.

Open Thread: Are We Ruled By Our Government?

Hi. I'm too busy to blog anything substantive. But there are some interesting ideas floating around in the comments on this post that's about to roll off the screen, so I thought we could continue the discussion here.

Here's my two cents, to keep the ball rolling. The Declaration of Independence clearly says that a just government derives its power from the consent of the governed. Little Cicero seems to think this means that we consent to be ruled by whomever is in power. (I'm interested to see if his argument moderates itself under President Clinton in 2009.)

I am, not surprisingly, disinclined to agree with that particular interpretation. As Americans, our allegiance is to the Constitution, not to the President. The nation's chief executive was intended by the Framers to bound by the Constitution and accountable to the other two co-equal branches of government, as well as to the people. I am trying to impress upon him that I think there is a significant difference between governing and ruling. Thoughts?

Also, feel free to continue along the thrust of the thesis of the original post: Is our President insane?

Book Review: The Case for Christ

A few weeks ago I picked up a copy of Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus. Though I found his other book, The Case for Faith, inconsistently persuasive (both because of the difficulty of making a rational case for super-rational beliefs and also because of the weakness of some of the arguments), I figured a study of the textual, historical and archaeological evidence from the time of Jesus was a worthier, more interesting goal.

Alas, Strobel’s “case” is porous and badly argued. He makes much of his decades-long career as a reporter for The Chicago Tribune, which lends a veneer of objectivity and academic rigor to transparently agenda-driven and poorly supported claims masquerading as “research.”

Much of the problem lies with the book’s format. As with Case for Faith, Strobel selects a series of questions or objections skeptics raise about Christianity, and then assigns an expert of his choosing (always male, always an Evangelical) to form an argument in rebuttal; one question, one expert. For example, he queries a coroner to determine if Jesus could possibly have survived the crucifixion. (The answer is, “No.”)

Strobel pretends doubters have only inane questions (“Could Jesus have faked his death?”), not well-formed arguments. He fails to note that they aren’t just ill-informed atheist strawmen, but intellectuals who have been alienated from faith by patronizing, simplistic “answers” such as these.

Chapter 1 is, “Can the Biographies of Jesus Be Trusted?” Whole books have been written on the chronological and geographical inconsistencies of the Gospels, as well as the inherent difficulties created by translation, concerns that are not easily dismissed by merely insisting on the their general agreement. His argument misrepresents the aims of the Gospel authors; these are not “biographies,” in the modern sense. The concept of writing down a purely fact-based, “this happened, then this happened” summary of a historical personage’s existence was unknown in the ancient world. Each individual Gospel is a portrait of Christ that grew out of the traditions of a specific community in a specific time and place in the first decades after the crucifixion, and it is those historical and literary variations that best account for what read like inconsistencies when you try to line each Gospel up side by side for comparison.

Strobel notes that there is no comparable literary work from the ancient world in which modern scholars have so much confidence in the accuracy of their translations. There is significant evidence (in the form of thousands of corroborating manuscripts from different parts of the Levant in different languages) that modern renderings are faithful to the lost originals. But this testifies only to textual, not historical, reliability.

He points out that much of what researchers have pieced together about ancient history comes from single, often fragmentary sources, whereas we have an enormous body of contemporary literature concerning the existence of Jesus; for example, much of what is known about Alexander the Great is single-sourced. What Strobel chooses to leave out, however, is that historians tend to discount the sources that are implausible or fantastical: notably, one of the pervasive, contemporary legends about Alexander was that his was a virgin birth. The ruins of Troy don’t point to the existence of Zeus.

Similarly, it does not seem particularly controversial among historians to assume that there really was a radical Jewish preacher in first-century Palestine who hailed from Nazareth and was crucified by the Romans, whose teachings inspired a cult that grew into the world’s largest religion. It’s not even controversial to attribute many of the sayings in the Gospels to this man. Making the leap, however, to saying that what seems unlikely or impossible (immaculate conception, miracles, resurrection) must be true because portions of the Gospels are plausible is specious. One could well argue that based on the astonishingly accurate depictions of real locations and the proven existence of antimatter technology and some guy called “the Pope” that Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons is a true story.

Strobel is preaching to the choir; there is nothing in this book to help a Christian seriously engaged with his doubts, let alone anything an atheist would find satisfactorily conclusive. The truth is, there is only a smattering of circumstantial evidence that Jesus actually lived, and it would take a genuine historian and researcher to even begin to make that case. Strobel is too easily won over by infuriatingly facile dismissals of difficult questions to take on that job.

*****

The promised new Richard Dawkins post is on hiatus for re-tooling. I think I want to take it in a different direction.

Salute to a Patriot

Today I want to give a shout-out to the one and only Trickish Knave, on the occasion of his retirement from the U.S. Navy.

"TK," as I affectionately call him, has been hanging around my blog longer than anyone except my mother. (Hey, mom!) Despite our differences (he supports the War on Terror, I support Reality), we have more common ground than you might think. For example, we can agree on...umm...ermm...well, we agree on what day of the week it is, apple pie is delicious, horses have four legs, and Thomas Jefferson is dead. See all that common ground? (I think we both also enjoy Cher's "If I Could Turn Back Time" video, but for different reasons.)

Seriously, though, I want to extend my congratulations to TK on this momentous day. I have nothing but respect and admiration for the fine people who volunteer to put their lives on the line to defend this great nation. I mean that. TK: thank you for your service. I wish you and your family always and only the very best. Best of luck to you as you embark on this new chapter in your life.

PS: Obama '08.

Thanks For Playing

Wow, I've never been turned down during a job interview before.

Actually, it's okay. I was really unsure I wanted this position; great job, great company, I just wondered if I'd really be especially interested in the work. What killed me/saved me was the question, "Where do you see yourself in three to five years?" and I said I was still kind of unsure, but that I was thinking about arts administration. She was very nice, but she said she was looking for an assistant who really wanted THIS job and was going to stick around for a few years, and she wasn't sure that would be me. And I agreed. So, while it may sound harsh, actually, I'm completely relieved.

My current temp job drags on. They finally wised up and blocked all domains with ".blogspot" in them, so no more blogging or even blogreading while I sit there collecting dust at $17 an hour. I am so bored! (I can write this because now no one at the company can access my blog, anyway!) They've also blocked all internet mail and all job search websites, so I can't even keep up with the job search. This may put a major dent in the frequency and quality of my blogging for a while.

I spend my days filling out a few check requests, delivering the mail, making occasional copies, and answering the phones about once every three hours. Other than that, I toggle back and forth between CNN and The New York Times about every 30 seconds looking for something interesting to read. I knew about the steam pipe explosion before most New Yorkers did.

You can help me out by posting internet reading suggestions here or emailing them to me. I'm looking for SAFE FOR WORK news sites or political or religious things. I read Kevin Drum's blog and Andrew Sullivan (he's only half-right, all the time) and The Nation and occasionally Alternet. I just need something to keep my brain alive.

Bonus: Monday Photo Blogging!

Tonight we had another beautiful sunset. I ran outside to snap a couple of photos, but when I turned around, it seemed a couple of cats were also enjoying the view.



In other news, Rocky is a fruitcake.

Sunday Photo Blogging: [Redacted]

Last weekend, a new friend and I went hiking up near Mt. St. Helens. This trail instantly became one of my all-time favorite places on earth. It follows an unbelievably clear brook along a series of spectacular waterfalls and deep, calm pools. I'm not publishing the location here because I don't want my secret to get out!

This is the first of two big waterfalls you encounter on the trail. This one's about 40 feet high (according to my guidebook -- I can't estimate height/distance for crap) and splashes down in this cool S-shape into an amazingly deep, calm emerald-green pool. When we passed it again on our way back to the car, there was a hot, hunky guy going for a swim. (WHY didn't I take a picture of THAT?)





Look how clear the water is! We both assumed it would be FREEZING (freshly melted snow, after all), otherwise I'm sure we would have attempted a dip. This little pool in the small, rocky gorge looked pretty deep -- I'd say 15 feet, or so. The best adjective I can come up with is inviting.

After about four miles, you finally come to a small gully with this beautiful 50-foot waterfall that splashes down into yet another deep green pool. Most of the trail is easy, but getting to this spot requires scrambling over some rocks and a giant fallen log. It's worth it, though -- my friend and I both said "Wow!" about a million times and then we sat down on some of the boulders at the foot of the falls to rest and eat. We talked for a bit, but eventually our conversation subsided and we just sat in silence and listened to the roar of the water and watched the dragonflies buzz around. We both agreed that we could happily have stayed much longer.

Random Friday Cat Blogging

I'm stealing an idea from Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly: Friday Cat Blogging. (Inkblot and Rocky look a lot alike, don't they?)

Here's Rocky sitting in the living room window, enjoying a warm sunny afternoon. I'm biased, of course, but...isn't that a nice view? Okay, sure, the gas meter isn't super pretty. At least they thought to put a bush in front of it. I still think it's an overall improvement.

I have taken to having dinner on my little patio. The days of late have been really hot, but around 9:00 the temperature drops down to about 70 and, since we have no humidity to speak of, it becomes incredibly pleasant just to sit outside. I can't emphasize how QUIET it is here. Right now it's 9:15 on a Friday night (still light out), and the only thing I can hear is the occasional peep of a bird and some meows from the cats on the window sill behind me who say they would really like to come out and join me.

I bring my laptop out and check email and look at job listings, and then relax in the twilight with a glass of wine or two before retiring to bed. Last night I was sitting here when a summer rainstorm came up out of nowhere, and I just sat and listened to the rain, and it wasn't long before the most incredibly wonderful smell came wafting up out of my lawn. The sky lit up with silent summer lightning, and I just sat and sat in the stillness and breathed the nice clean, damp air, and sighed some big sighs.

I know, you're thinking, "Loser, why are you just sitting at home on a summer Friday night?" Well, because it's nice. It's so relaxing. And I'm trying to get people together for a dinner/movie/cocktail excursion tomorrow, so don't worry, I'm not turning into some kind of hermit. Right now I'm debating whether I want to go on another hike tomorrow. It's tempting. (Such hard decisions I face, I know.)

Madman

We are in so much trouble.

President Bush is a lunatic. There’s really no other way to put it. Our president is a man so arrogant, so completely assured of his own wisdom, that to this day he continues to define the situation in Iraq in ways that are wholly at odds with reality. A president who cannot accurately recall his own steps in leading the nation into war and who repeatedly demonstrates he does not understand the goals of the players involved will never be able to lead us to the triumph he asserts is necessary. How do you win a war if you fail to understand who your opponents are and what motivates them?

His press conference this morning was ghastly. After trying to spin the Iraqi government’s failure to achieve “satisfactory” progress on a majority of the 18 mandated benchmarks as a cause for optimism, he then completely re-wrote history in response to a question about whether the authority to end this war rests with him.

“Actually, I was hoping to solve the Iraqi issue diplomatically,” he said. “That’s why I went to the United Nations.” That’s just a flat-out lie. He tried everything he could to avoid the U.N., and for a while the White House talking point was how we should not let our policies be dictated by foreign diplomats. He only went to the U.N. when the political pressure made it necessary. And then, when he could not get his resolution approved by the Security Council, he withdrew it and invaded anyway.

Today, he tried to gloss over that appalling diplomatic failure by confusing it with resolution 1441, which passed unanimously and, in the president’s words, required Saddam to “disclose, disarm or face serious consequences.” But as tragic events demonstrated, Saddam did disclose. He had disarmed. He had none of the weapons or weapons programs of which he was accused. To claim now that Saddam was in violation of 1441 as a justification for the war is insanity.

And then he argued the decision to go to war was Saddam’s, anyway.

He repeated the bogus idea that “we ought to defeat them there so we don’t have to face them here,” as if the conflict in Iraq were some kind of all-powerful terrorist magnet that prevents radical Islamists from staging attacks elsewhere in the world, or that our victory in Iraq could ever be so complete that the planet would be forever free of terrorism.

“The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th,” he said. If he is serious in making this statement, then we truly have a president who is profoundly confused about matters of terrifying importance. It doesn’t even allow for the reality that both sides in the sectarian fracas are bombing each other. He just thinks there’s Al Qaeda and the Good Guys.

He also mischaracterized the discussions going on in this country about the war, and in the process, insulted the American people. It is no longer a question of whether we can win, as the president seems to believe. (His answer is, “We must.”) The question before us now is, how do we get out? The reality we find ourselves in is that the president has left us no good options. Yes, there could be a bloodbath if we leave. Yes, radical Islam might gain a secure foothold in Iraq. The country could fragment. But no one believes that there remains anything for the United States to do about it. The president now has a six and a half year record of being wrong about everything. He asks for patience and recommends that we continue throwing away American lives for an unachievable objective. Noble as his vision might be, it’s a fantasy.

He said he understood that the American people are “tired” of the war. I have an incredible urge to insert an expletive here. We are not “tired” of the war, like it’s a once-promising TV show that has lost its edge and we’re looking for something else. We’re dismayed. We’re horrified. We are clamoring for justice, honesty and accountability. We are begging to end the loss of life and the hemorrhaging of dollars that could be better spent. We are despondent that the people responsible for leading us into an illegal, unjust, futile war will never pay a real price for having done so.

Starbuck is a Star! (But She Already Knew That)

I knew back when she was still a wee bitty kitty that she had model potential.

And now it's official. Remember that picture about three weeks ago of Starbuck reading The New Yorker? It's going to be published in a book! You know, a real one, that's like, for sale and stuff.

What Pets Do While You're At Work, by my uberfabulous New York friends (and newlyweds) Jason Bergund and Bev West, is now available for pre-order, and is due out in October. It's a humorous photo book, along the lines of their previous work Fat Daisy: Inner Beauty Secrets from a Real Dog and PugTherapy.

Here's me at their wicked cool Upper West Side home a few years ago for a Halloween Party (I came as a Republican tourist). The lovely pooch in my lap is the famous Fat Daisy. Daisy the chihuahua had a torrid romance a while back with a pug named Elvis, and she came down with a case of pregnancy -- 4 pughuahua pups inside that tiny little body! And...how do I put this delicately? She never quite recovered the figure of her youth. But she's beautiful all the same.

Hillary

I don't know what's wrong with Blogger. It won't let me enter a blog title on the previous post.

So, I DVR'd CNN's "Faith and Politics" special from...oh, weeks ago...with Soledad O'Brien facilitating a discussion with Barack Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, and only tonight did I finally get around to watching it.

There's much I could say, but I'll focus on Senator Clinton.

Regular readers of my blog know I'm not a fan. I'll say this, though, about a potential Clinton presidency: we could do worse.

Watching her speak, even on topics where I'd take issue with some of her positions, I can't help but notice that she is smart. It's not even worth discussing potential Republican opponents; there isn't a one that can hold an intellectual candle to Hillary Clinton. Comparing her to the current president is practically unfair, like betting on who'd do better on the SAT, an MIT grad or a homeschooled kindergartner. And yes, I think she's even sharper and more eloquent than any of her Democratic rivals.

I'm pulling for someone else (Obama), for a variety of reasons, but I felt obliged to state: we could do worse.

Last night I had this really disturbing dream where my tongue was growing longer and longer, and I could no longer contain it in my mouth. It was starting to pop my teeth out from behind.

So, I did what anyone else with a previously unheard of medical condition would do, and I sought out the advice of an Indian sage. (In my dream it was unclear if I actually went to India somehow, or whether I managed to find one in Beaverton.) He was sitting on a rock with a loincloth and a yellow turban, and he talked like Apu.

I explained what was happening to me and he tilted his head to one side and said, "Silly boy, it is immediately apparent to me the reasons for your discomfort. Your present occupation allows you no outlet for self-expression."

The Roll of a Lifetime

From CNN, "the most trusted name in news," the folks who brought us an hour of Paris Hilton on Larry King:

Britney Spears Makes Bizarre Apology

Apparently in February she attacked a paparazzo's car with an umbrella. On Wednesday she finally apologized, saying she was "preparing my character for a roll [sic] in a movie" and "got a little carried away."

I can't believe someone finally optioned Mary Poppins 2: The Revenge.

The Hal Lindsey Report Report

I've taken to watching The Hal Lindsey Report on Sunday nights. Mr. Lindsey, if you're unfamiliar with him, is a leading proponent of the pre-millennial dispensationalist wing of American Evangelicalism, and firmly believes that we are living in the "End Times" immediately prior to the second coming of Christ as "foretold" (by ripping various verses out of context and reassembling them to conform to a made-up timeline) by the Bible. He now hosts a weekly cable show in which he points to current political events that purportedly indicate "the Rapture" is close at hand.

While mainstream Christianity defies the binary American political affiliations, Lindsey happily promotes the common misconception that Christianity somehow has something to do with conservative -- and uniquely American -- politics. "Liberals" are regularly blamed for all of society's ills.

He frequently attacks the "liberal bias" of the "mainstream media." In the July 1, 2007, edition of his show, he claimed that records of reporters' political donations are sufficient evidence of bias. After extolling the virtues of "the free market" to explain why conservatives dominate talk radio, he then argued that reporters (at least, liberal reporters) should not be allowed to donate to candidates and movements of their choice, as if giving $250 once to Howard Dean, as The New Yorker's Mark Singer did, renders him incapable of objectivity. He didn't offer an opinion as to whether we can trust the objectivity of a reporter who may have donated to conservative causes.

What's fascinating about Lindsey is the frequency with which he displays the most appallingly unconscious hypocrisy and astonishing hyperbole; he is self-unaware in the extreme. After criticizing Singer for obliquely comparing Bush to Hitler, he excoriates The New York Times' "The Ethicist" columnist Randy Cohen: "His journalistic ethics didn’t prevent him from donating to MoveOn.org. Cohen said that ethically speaking he didn’t think donating to MoveOn.org was any less ethical than donating to the Boy Scouts. Now, that’s about like arguing that donating to Al Qaeda is the ethical equivalent of donating to the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.”

Stay tuned. I plan to keep posting on the terrifying hilarity that is Hal Lindsey.

Happy 4th!

I'm at the beach. Leave a message. Beep.

Beverly Sills, 1929 - 2007

One of the greatest singers of the 20th century, Beverly Sills has passed away from cancer. Born Belle Silverman in Brooklyn, she grew up to be the great American Diva of the 1970s. She dominated the New York City Opera and sang on the great stages of the world, specializing in bel canto and romantic French repertoire.

In addition to possessing a distinct, strong, silvery lyric-coloratura soprano voice and a formidable technique that allowed her to dispatch florid passages with ease, she was a gifted, intuitive actress and a major personality. Far from cultivating the stereotype of a "diva," she aimed to be a populist, and appeared on The Carol Burnett Show and The Muppets.

Yet she knew how to be a diva when called for. One of the famous stories about "Bubbles," as she was known, came from her debut at Milan's Teatro alla Scala, the pinnacle of any opera singer's career. She was replacing Renata Scotto in a planned production of Rossini's L'Assedio di Corinto, and had requested that the costume, originally designed in flattering gold for Signora Scotto, be re-made in silver. "No problem," she was told. Still, the gold gown hung in her dressing room. She kept asking the costumer about it, but was told, "Si, si, not to worry." When the dress rehearsal arrived and she was still without a silver version of the costume, she took the gold dress on stage with her and cut it in half.

As she retired from the stage in 1980, I never had the chance to hear her live. (I am happy to recommend recordings to anyone interested.) I did, however, get to meet her in March of 1994. At that time, she was the newly appointed chairwoman of Lincoln Center, and I had just begun working as a sales associate in the gift shop at the Metropolitan Opera -- in fact, it was my first day and I'd only been there about 20 minutes when she came in, walked straight up to me and said, "Do you have the new autobiography of John Dexter?" "Why, yes, of course!" I gushed, hoping to God we actually did. (We did.) Afterward, one of my co-workers said, "You know who that was, right?" "Duh," I replied.

La Sills was a hero and role model of mine: that rare singer who managed to combine impeccable musicianship, flawless technique, genuine acting ability and, above all, a miraculous voice. May she rest in peace.

And now, in tribute to her amazing career, I am pleased to share with you video footage of one of her greatest triumphs, Pigoletto.

Pay Attention to Those Who Pay Attention

Ah, public opinion polls.

Today the media is reporting the shocking news (meaning, they are shocked, since they are so enamored of their own conventional wisdom) that Barack Obama mopped the floor with Hillary Clinton in the last quarter's fundraising for his presidential campaign.

How can this be, they want to know, since Hillary is still ahead in the polls?

Remember the Iraq war? Back in 2003, when we started this disgraceful enterprise, public opinion was solidly in favor of it, with a distinct minority (something less than 30%, I recall) opposed. This minority was assaulted with a broad range of calumnies, accused of desiring to appease terrorists, engaging in partisan obstructionism and even actively supporting Saddam Hussein. But the objections of those of us who opposed invading Iraq proved sadly Cassandraesque: we weren't convinced that the U.S. had an actual plan for occupation and reconstruction, we weren't convinced of the evidence for WMD's or a link to Al Qaeda, and we worried that Iraq's long-simmering sectarian enmities, held in check for so long under the iron fist of Hussein, would boil over into civil war. Everything that is now playing out in what Jon Stewart dubs "Mess O' Potamia" was accurately foreseen by those of us who were pragmatic and sincerely interested enough not to blithely assume a functioning western-style government could be established overnight, or that centuries of deep mutual hatred would melt away under Bush's naive calls for "freedom" and "democracy."

So where did the American public get the idea that our disastrous Iraq venture was a good idea? From our complacent, cowardly Congress (hardly anyone, including Candidate Clinton, read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq before authorizing Bush to invade) and our credulous media, which largely reported unchallenged the Bush administration's assertions and justifications for war.

The same media machine which finds it appropriate to grant Paris Hilton an hour-long interview on a channel which dubs itself "the most trusted name in news" has virtually manufactured the Clinton campaign out of whole cloth. The only reason people support her is because the media thought she had it sewn up. She's ahead simply because of name recognition.

But Senator Clinton's negative poll ratings are higher than Kerry's or Gore's during any point in their campaigns. That's highly significant: she's so unpopular that as a candidate, she would be a major inspiration for rallying the Republican base. She's a walking campaign issue.

Those Who Pay Attention know this, and have for some time. Those Who Pay Attention are interested in the junior senator from Illinois. Those of us who were right on Iraq want a candidate who was also right on Iraq, not some triangulatress who argues that knowing everything she knows now she would still invade a non-WMD-possessing nation with no ties to Al Qaeda, she'd just do it differently.

Hillary is the "front-runner" because the media just decided she was, and that's good enough for the average American who doesn't have time or the inclination to closely follow politics. Let's hope Obama's fundraising success causes them to re-evaluate this entire race, before their smug conventional wisdom saddles us with another sure-fire loser candidate.

Once the media starts accurately and meaningfully reporting on the candidates and not just granting default "front-runner" status, we'll see those polls turn around, just as they did on Iraq.

[Full disclosure: I'm rooting for a Gore/Obama '08 ticket.]