My most immediate frustration is with the whole Tiger Woods ridiculosity.  As soon as the story starts to lose a little traction, we’re given a new set of pundits trying to deconstruct all the religious implications: would he have fallen to this level of licentiousness if he were a Christian?  [Answer: Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker, Thomas Weeks, Michael Reid, Jimmy Swaggert, Tony Alamo, Father James Porter and his merry band of pedophiles; it’s a long, illustrious list, people.] We all know Woods’ philandering has nothing to do with Buddha or even some ersatz sex addiction for Dr. Drew to fix up. It’s all thanks to our own over-indulgent star-maker machinery chugging out trash by the bucketful.  When someone makes it, we’ll give him anything in the hope of winning His beneficence and getting a little piece of his starlight. Sure the guy can hit, carry, or throw a ball.  But then we turn him into a god and start licking his $300 sneakers to curry favor.  Except, these aren’t gods.  Most of them are stupid, selfish little boys being led around by their wieners.  Eventually their ego and immaturity win out and they start believing their own press.  We build the brand and the temples and the absurd pedestals.  Then when they fall off, we all start circling and pointing fingers and licking our chops.  It’s revolting.

While the incessant boy worship thing bothers me, I’m a lot more concerned about women and how we’re allowing ourselves to be portrayed in this weird construct.  Sadly, all the Tiger chicks are only drops in the proverbial slut bucket.

Clicking through the early evening cable nausea, we have the emotionally crippled socialites of [pick a city: Orange CA, Newark NJ, Atlanta GA, New York NY, Aspen CO], and all the caustic reunion shows that seem to have found their own blood supply.  Then there’s a family whose only real claim to fame rides on the unusually large ass of one of its daughters.  Oh, look!  It’s a spin-off in Miami for the Lesser Kardashians.  Queue up the DVR!  They’re apparently going down there to save their failing clothing store.  You can bet we’ll not be sitting in on their marketing strategy sessions.  Oh, silly me!  The strategy is to position E! camera crews in/outside the store so we can watch the girls who are so famous for …being famous.  Who needs advertising?  I’ve got a hundred bucks that says they’ll hire some fiery loud-mouthed Latina to help run the place and make their lives a living hell.  Yep, taking up residence in reigning queen of skank towns is bound to create lots of spicy new drama for our mascara’d marvelettes.

Here’s the tragedy: the vapid Kardashians are as close as we get to admirable. They sort of have jobs; they seem to care about their family.  Then you have The Bad Girls Club.  Real World [insert city].  For the Love of… some RayJay person.  Jersey Shore.  Even the notorious man bashing sessions at The Tool Academy include some female monsters this season.  With every click of the remote we’re served another gaggle of maladjusted women, all shot up with cow piss and plastic, preoccupied with criticizing one another and yanking each other’s $5,000 hair extensions.  And if they aren’t already dripping in unwarranted fame and excess, they’re obsessed with getting it at any cost.  My favorite part is between the main events when we’re entertained with infomercials for exercise programs built around stripper poles and lap dancing.  What the hell is going on?  Why are we shocked when men are caught acting like pigs and our 12 year old daughters are coming home with belly rings and tongue studs?

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not for one minute saying that women should be ashamed of being sexual and that we should all get back into our gingham aprons where we belong.  But we should most certainly be ashamed of being ignorant, hostile and criminally shallow.   How can we possibly decry the bad examples being set by our heroes and trampy starlets when we gobble down every unsavory scrap of People magazine they put in front of us?  Decent souls doing good in the world don’t make anywhere near the kind of bank being pocketed by the sideshow freaks.  We’re the ones stuffing dollar bills in their g-strings, then we get all mad when they cross some arbitrary line in our moral sand.

Naturally, I’d prefer that we assess our own priorities and start fixing the root causes of all this broke-ass behavior.  But at minimum, we need to stop crying foul when our celebrities, politicians and various clingers-on don’t live up to the bizarre double standard we’ve created for them.

First of all, the nature of yeast is confounding.  Animal?  Vegetable?  Sea monkey?  We didn’t do much real baking at our house, so the yeast packets were written in Aramaic.  This should’ve been the first indicator of death, but who thinks about little grains of stinky sand as being alive in the first place?  Even if the leavening was hale and hearty, I worried about the exact temperature of lukewarm.  FYI, there is no ‘lukewarm’ indicator on a baby thermometer, which was older than me and probably didn’t work anyway.  Proofing?  Strange little verb.  Chances are, I either cooked the rascals before they could start farting into my dough, or froze their non-existent nuts off.

Since the yeast was probably DOA, there was little rising and no real ‘punching down’ to be done.  Kneading was a fun activity but I had no idea what should be happening or what to look for.  No matter what I tried, every attempt came out like a lump of dysmorphic building material.  Even the frozen dumbshit-proof Rhodes bread would break any plate or knife unlucky enough to wander into its gravitational pull.  I was panne morte.  Bread Dead.

And then I was given a new bible: Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day.

My pal Seana promised success.  No matter how clearly I cataloged my failures, she was positive I could do this.  I finally agreed, assuring her that I’d still love her.  Well… once I got over the abject despair, at any rate.

So I read the first few chapters, invested in some tools (a good baking stone, pizza peel, scraper/cutter thingie, oven thermometer), along with some fresh flour and yeast.  It didn’t all make sense in my head, but I stopped asking questions about how and why and simply followed the steps.  About an hour later, I had a crackly golden orb of deliciousness resting on my cooling rack.  I checked every few minutes until it was cool enough to handle; I couldn’t wait to cut into the damned thing.  Sure enough, the crust had that light cracker-snappy feel.  A little chip even flung up into my eye just like the real baguettes from Grand Central!!  The crumb (inside stuff) was lush — if a bit more dense than I prefer.  This was delicious and sandwich-ready, but I like the big air pockets with a slightly more toothsome feel.  Out of nowhere comes this wise old bread voice saying, “the dough should be wetter next time.”  I felt like the Scarecrow when he finally got that stupid diploma.  ‘As the bread bakes, trapped water turns to steam and generates pockets with volume equal to the square root of an isosceles triangle!’  Eureka!!  Wetter dough!  I learned that from the book!!

I’ve successfully baked up a fresh loaf every couple of days, all from that first batch I made.  And I started a new — wetter — batch that I’ll try out tonight.  I’ll reach into the bucket in my fridge, pull out a gooey handful, make some balloon animal shape, rest it for about 40 minutes, put it in the oven, and will have fresh homemade bread half an hour later.  Yes, it’s ridiculous, but I can’t explain how freakin’ gratifying it is.  I made BREAD!  I conquered my culinary nemesis.  Every day I draw pretty pictures using state-of-the-art software and decode the Internet genome and make technology quiver and cry at my feet, but today I made BREAD.

I am Woman.  Hear me mother-effin roar!

The point is that we don’t have to pay for God, or placate others to intervene with God on our behalf.  It seems to me that God – or the idea of perfect goodness – really does live inside of each of us.  Every time we put someone else’s well being ahead of our own; when we make something beautiful or do something extraordinary; when we’re calm and quiet or thrilled beyond words – THAT’S God.  God is us at our very best.  God is our awe at life and the world around us.  God is our own unmitigated joy.

I think God may also be parading around as James Erb.  Because every time I hear a choir sing his arrangement of “Shenandoah” I break out in head-to-toe goose bumps and sob uncontrollably.  It has little to do with the text.  It’s an unremarkable little wagon trail tune that holds no relevance for me whatsoever.  They could be singing about plumbing or a recipe for bread dough.  My apoplexy is entirely about the sounds being coaxed out of those people on the risers.  There’s a quiet majesty in how the whole piece is constructed and how well it knows the human voice; how it builds one simple idea upon another until you’re drowning in glory.  And when it all winds down and the tenors sail for that beautiful high E, your heart feels like it might burst.

(Turn up your speakers!  The bass/baritone section is particularly rich and chocolatey)

And God being the cagey fellow that He is, it’s not just James Erb.  There’s an arrangement of “Oh, Holy Night” that I heard performed by the Yale Whiffenpoofs (okay, not the most awe-inspiring name ever imagined) that will have me undone for hours afterward.  The thing that really gets me is how prayer-like it is.  We’re used to hearing the command to “FALL ON YOUR KNEES – Oh HEEEEEAR the angel VOOOOOICES!  Oh NIIIIIIIGHT di-VIIIINE…” You get the picture.  But this one is tender and quiet; it’s magical.  It’s something you’d sing while watching a baby sleep.  That’s where God lives for me: Inside those notes and sounds; inside the concept of that song and the inspiration to arrange and perform it in that specific way.  Say what you will about miracles, but the all-you-can-eat fish buffet’s got nothin’ on this one.  And look – it’s right here.  I can play it again.  

Hold on to your wimple because here is where I get really heretical: When Christ said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” and no one gets to heaven “except through me,” we weren’t being told to worship Jesus the man – or even Jesus the son of God.  We were being invited to find God in ourselves.  He was calling up the “I” that is all of us.  I am the way.  It’s MY goodness, my joy, my willingness to share what I have and to do good works that determines my state of grace, and not because it’s written down somewhere.  I am at my happiest when I’ve made someone else’s life a little nicer.  There’s my heaven.  I don’t feel that when I’m sitting with a bunch of other people in a building listening to someone tell me about fearing God, or the four cowboys of the apocalypse, or some impish beast doing a jig in a pit of brimstone.  That’s pure silliness.

But I suppose some folks need to know that they’ve sat through their weekly hour of silliness and paid to have their heaven ticket punched.  If that’s where they find their grace, then I support and encourage it wholeheartedly.  The problem starts when the ticket-punchers expect others to live and die by their arbitrary rules.  I deeply resent the fact that those who pay their hour of silliness consider themselves entitled to impinge upon the rights and free will of others.  I resent the self-righteousness and false piety and the idea that one morning in church will wipe away a week’s worth of meanness.  I think a philosophy is critically flawed when it says a loving and generous Muslim will go to hell while a chronically philandering but sufficiently apologetic Christian gets a hero’s welcome at the pearly gates. That philosophy feeds the weakest, ugliest aspects of our nature: the need to feel exclusive and chosen over others; to be better than.  I want nothing to do with it.     

All but the most hard-boiled of us acknowledge the idea of a higher power, whether it’s Praying The Rosary or Using The Force.  I don’t believe in some grandfatherly being in a big gilded chair throwing thunderbolts or handing out favor like gumdrops.  So I suppose some will say I don’t believe in God.  But I believe in Good.  I believe that each of us is capable of divinity, whether through art or music or words, or simply by being decent to one another.  I believe the only real evil is the hatred, judgment and violence that we have inside of us.  I believe that having a God or Devil nearby gives us permission to attribute or blame our actions on some will other than our own.  I prefer to take full responsibility for my actions and their consequences.  And I prefer to think that heaven is immediately attainable by anyone who chooses a course of kindness, tolerance, and understanding.  And as far as I’m concerned, it’s available to anyone willing to bring on the goose bumps of James Erb and the Whiffenpoofs.

Well I suppose ‘art’ is a little generous, but there was an interesting movie released several years ago starring one of my favorite actors of all time, Samuel L. Jackson.  I can’t think of another actor who can go so seamlessly from badass roughian  (Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction) to gentle sophisticate (The Red Violin).  We got to see the softer Sam in 1993’s “Amos & Andrew” where he played Andrew Sterling, a successful black urbanite writer who buys a vacation home in a small New England resort town.  One night, the local constabulary mistakes him for a burglar.  Fortunately, the cop in the movie had slightly more sense than the one who confronted Professor Gates.  The movie cop knew exactly what kind of mess he’d just made.

We all know what came next in our real-life version.  Subsequent right-wing noisemakers, when not honking the ‘behaved stupidly’ horn, are trying to paint this as a classic case of intellectual snob vs. the working class civil servant, (Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Gates of Political Distraction,” July 29). They would have us believe the only racist in the room was Professor Gates.  In a phantasmagorical role reversal, the neo-cons attempt to convince us it’s not a race issue at all.  The real issue is one of the downtrodden, long-suffering police officer just trying to do his job, which should not include taking verbal abuse from an arrogant, limousine liberal.  Really, now.  Let’s take a quick inventory of reality, shall we?

Professor Gates has:

• A valid driver’s license
• A Harvard ID
• A set of keys that fit the doors
• Dark skin
• A police officer in his house making absurd accusations
• A perfectly good reason for being a little pissed right now

Officer Crowley has

• A gun, handcuffs, pepper spray, and a big stick
• A small army just a radio call away
• A badge giving him the right to arrest and detain anyone he deems troublesome
• The benefit of being white in a notoriously racist nation
• A possible chip on his shoulder and some heightened anxiety due to the fact than an angry black man is yelling at him

America has

• Cops who go on bizarre power trips on routine traffic stops
• Crowd ‘management’ officers in full-blown riot gear who shoot female lawyers in the head with rubber bullets then laugh about it later
• Deputies who beat the crap out of teenaged girls simply for being petulant
• Law enforcement professionals who will shoot a restrained suspect in the back

Who is more likely to have the advantage?  The angry black man, or a white man in a blue uniform with a big stick?  We don’t have to page too far back into our collective consciousness to find the answer. 

If that’s not enough to prove it’s a race issue, what about this: Would the story have landed above the fold in any pissant newspaper if it involved two white guys?  No.  Would we have heard about a black officer questioning a white professor?  No, because it’s not interesting when a white man breaks into his own home.  In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that, upon seeing the homeowners ID, a police officer might even HELP a white man get back into his own house.   

Of course this is a race issue, people.  For pete’s sake.

In a better world, hard-working police officers could protect us without being shot at and killed by crazy people.  In a more perfect union, Professor Gates would have been a bit more rational and understanding.  He would’ve provided his documents and calmly invited the officer to vacate the premises.  First thing in the morning he would have called his attorney, filed a complaint at the Mayor’s office, and composed a letter to the editor of every local news outlet with carbon copies going to the ACLU and NAACP.  Then he would have made big money on the lecture circuit and maybe even been asked to head a new federal commission for improved race relations.  Heaven forbid, a good teacher might turn this into an educational opportunity…

Sadly, having a black man in the white house for a few months is not going to erase more than 200 years of bigotry and ignorance.  We all still have a lot of growing up to do.

Why does this prospect worry me?  Golly, where to start…  Installing the very oldest of Old School Politics is a problem.  McCain can conjure the “C” word [Change] all he wants. Even with the perky new blood provided by his intended VP, no one will convince me he has the slightest notion of what it’s like to live in the 21^st century, let alone what kind of real change will be required if we’re to survive it.  His handlers saw him getting into trouble when he admitted to knowing so little about economic policy.  Seven houses later, all those lively open-forum media sessions got wound up tighter than Cindy’s chignon. He started coughing up all the usual pre-chewed and sanitized-for-your-protection pulp as provided by the pollsters and communications experts.  Now every time his audience gets a little drowsy, he trots out that tired old POW speech.  All of the armchair patriots start hooting and revving their engines and my bowels go a little loose.  The idea of letting a Viet Nam vet with a notorious temper and a big chip on his shoulder make foreign policy decisions should make everyone run for the crapper.

As for his rabid little haus frau Sarah Palin, I’m irked on multiple levels.  First, I resent the fact that the Mac Attackers have the nerve to cry “sexism” every time someone challenges her policies.  (I’m an equal opportunity grumbler – the sexism whine was one of the things that irritated me about the Clinton camp, as well).  I think it’s ridiculous that I should be expected to make any kind of allowances or wave a feminist flag for her simply because we share a plumbing diagram.  She’s a hard-core Christian Rightist who believes our current occupation of Iraq has an explicit mandate from God.  That’s just the biggest, fuzziest cloud of concern I have.  Of course, I know that it’s as easily dismissed as the Reverend Wright doppelganger. Fortunately there is much more available in the way of hard, documentable fact:

• “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” said the Pit Bull in Lipstick, “except that you have actual responsibilities.” During her tenure as Mayor, most of the actual responsibilities of running the small city of Wasilla were turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed by party power-brokers to hire an administrator after she had gotten herself into some hot water over precipitous firings (sound like any recent DOJ problems?) which had given rise to a very vocal recall action.
   
• One of Sarah’s main mayoral campaign planks was that of a “fiscal conservative.” During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years, the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. And during a period of unprecedented low inflation (1996-2002), she reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax that even taxed food. The cuts that she promoted benefited large private and corporate property owners way more than they benefited the everyday residents.
   
• Sadly, the huge increase in tax revenues still weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list, so she borrowed.  She inherited a city with zero debt, but left the office over $22 million in the hole. What did this new debt provide?  Was it the infrastructural improvements promised in her campaign?  Maybe the much-needed sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? New library? No. $1M for a park, and more than $15M for a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to (which is still in litigation 7 yrs later, much to the delight of the lawyers involved!). Anyone in Wasilla AK will tell you that the sports complex is a nice addition to the community, but it’s a huge money pit and is nowhere near the profit-generator Palin promised it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5M in new road projects that could have been completed in 5-7 years using normal budgeting allowances.  No new debt required.
   
• As an oil producer, the state of Alaska has enjoyed a budget surplus thanks to ever-rising prices on crude. Rather than reinvesting this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, or applying it to those road projects, Palin proposed distribution of this surplus back to the taxpayer. Message from this Fiscal Conservative: Why save today when you can borrow tomorrow?
   
• As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t generated by her or her staff. Ideas were evaluated not on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.
   
• Palin tried to fire a highly respected City Librarian for refusing to consider removal of some books Sarah wanted off the shelves. City residents rallied against Palin’s blatant attempt at censorship, so she backed down and withdrew the termination letter. People who fought her on the library mess are on her enemies list to this day.
   
• As both Mayor and Governor she hired/elevated inexperienced and obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their newly-burgeoning careers.  All were grateful and fiercely loyal.  Loyal to the point of using their office to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the State’s top cop (see below).
   
• As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s Police Chief because, she told the press, he “intimidated” her. It’s within every mayor’s purview to hire/fire at will, but this one smacked of retribution.  It’s commonly known that the Chief wouldn’t fire her sister’s ex-husband, a State Trooper. While under investigation for abuse of power, Sarah admitted that more than 2 dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the Chief, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She attempted to replace the Chief with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.
   
• When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best: Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.  It is one of the few jobs not based in Juneau, and definitely one of the best paid. She had no background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this lucrative ($122,400/yr) post, she was complaining in the press about the waste of this high salary. Insiders say that she hated the commute, the structured hours… generally, the work.
   
• Sarah became aware that a member of this Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party) had engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a ballsy move that many cautioned would be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one masterful stroke by formally – and loudly – resigning.  She cited her unwillingness to serve on a commission that was so obviously fraught with corruption.  Win-win!  She got out of the job she hated, and garnered gobs of media attention as the plucky opponent of the “old boys’ club” and new patron saint of ethics.
   
• No one was better than Sarah was at collecting earmarks from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and gone to great lengths to publicly humiliate him. When in reality she only opposed his “bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.
   
• As Governor, she gave the Legislature neither direction nor budgetary guidelines, but then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects and branding them bacon fat. A huge public outcry demanded legislative action to restore most of these projects.  Project that had been vetoed simply because Palin was not aware of their importance and repercussions.  But for the unobservant, she successfully gained a reputation as “anti-pork.”
   
• While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once.  How much more of a superficial female archetype can she be?

CLAIMS v. FACTS

• Hockey mom: True for a few years
• PTA mom: True years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since
• NRA supporter: Absolutely true; and favors the slaughter of pesky old endangered wildlife from the convenience and safety of low-flying aircraft
• Social conservative: Mixed. Opposes gay marriage, but vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconstitutional).
• Pro-creationism: Mixed. Verbally supports it, but did nothing as Governor to promote it.
• Pro-life: Mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down’s Syndrome baby, but declined to call a special legislative session on some anti-abortion legislation
• Experienced: Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the entire state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000 people.
• Political maverick: Not remotely. Her policies are taken right from the GOP play book, but she does have a knack for biting hands that had fed her.  The State party leaders hate her because she gladly accepts favors but is unlikely to return them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.
• Gutsy: absolutely! They call her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became such a public figure, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team.
• Open & transparent: No. Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.
• Has a fully developed philosophy of public policy: Hardly.  Unless it’s a philosophy of knowing which way the wind is blowing.
• A ‘Greenie’ and land use specialist: Absolutely not. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling offshore and in ANWR.
• Fiscal conservative: Not by any traditional definition.
• Pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. New roadways were developed to early 20th century standards.
• Pro tax relief: Sure. Relief for businesses, increased tax burden on residents
• Pro small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla’s history.
• Pro labor/pro union. Her husband is in a union.  She loves her husband.  Therefore, she loves unions.  No, there’s nothing in her policies or legislation that suggest she’s pro labor.

So am I being unnecessarily hard on her simply because I want her to be a true feminist voice: One that represents the all the diverse points of view, depth of compassion, spirit, and sense of reason that I believe are unique to womanhood?  Maybe.  But if that’s asking too much, I could at least celebrate the accomplishments of someone who wasn’t a self-aggrandizing, faith-healin, pistol-packin, nature-killin, well-drillin, lying sack of excrement in Jimmy Choos and a sassy up-do.

I suppose the thing that bothers me the most is that the Grand Old Party was foaming at the mouth to paint Obama as nothing more than a cult of personality.  Then the quickly prop up their own razor-wit glamour goddess and start crowing about her star power.  For Pete’s sake, I can’t be the only one noticing the extreme level of desperation, here.  Hopefully I won’t have to start practicing a new song.

“Oooh, Canada… Our home and native laaaand…”

It was an intricately die-cut door hanger sporting a crazy cartoon test tube with goony glasses and a jet pack inexplicably spewing pink bubbles all over saying, “Calling All Funologists!” I immediately licked my mental thumb and started working through the calendar wondering if one of my nephews was having some party or event I’d forgotten about.  Nope.  Then I noticed what looked like a logo tucked in the lower right corner.  This event was being put on by something called Group’s Power Lab.  There, in 10-point Comic Sans nestled below the company name and inside a Jimmy Neutron-style cartoon molecule, was the real meat of the thing: “Discovering Jesus’ Miraculous Power.”  Did our favorite Jewish carpenter load all of his magic into a pink cartoon jet pack?  I would have been less surprised to see Him as Felix the Cat, (“…Whenever He gets in a fix He reaches into His bag of tricks!”).

We turn over the giddy piece of paper thrill to find that we’re being told to “Plug into Jesus’ power at Power Lab!”  [Huh?]  Are we somehow trying to equate Jesus with science?  The invitation goes on to tell me where the adventure is, when the fun takes place, the time the excitement will begin, and who I can call if I want to join my new friends!  I fully expect to find Mr. Wizard in a cassock and collar changing a beaker of water into wine while climbing a rock wall at Gymboree. 

We graphic artists, typically being a most unwilling sidecar to the marketing world, understand the manipulation factor of good advertising.  I’m disgusted that this outfit and the sponsoring church might feel justified in disguising their indoctrination sessions as some kind of metaphysical adventure.  And it’s not only because I don’t espouse their belief system.  They’re clearly desperate to engage today’s youth and feel they can’t do it by honest means.  Hey, let’s ensnare overwrought mothers with this promise of an exciting week at camp for their little carpet monkeys.  By the time they realize it’s a religion thing, the kids will already have a cup of the Kool-aid in their sticky fists.  Perfect!  Let’s turn Jesus’ completely legitimate and beautiful message of love and compassion into a chocolaty river to be sucked down by all the little Augustus Gloops in the neighborhood.  It’s reprehensible.

All but the most hard-boiled of us acknowledge some sense of a larger/higher power.  I don’t necessarily believe in God, but I believe in Good.  If being made ‘in God’s image’ is true, then it seems we all have the ultimate power for goodness in us.  I believe that the only real evil is the hatred, malice and violence of which we are all capable.  I believe that having a God or a Devil nearby gives us permission to attribute or blame our actions on some will other than our own. 

Oddly, my beliefs along these lines are considered heresy by most Western standards of religion.  But this strange piece of chicanery hanging on my doorknob and portraying God as a wacky bubbling jet pack is perfectly okay.

Post Script:  A little extra sleuthing turned up this super-peppy audio companion piece: “Power In The Blood!” – yep, really.  “There is power-POWER, power-POWER, wonder-working power in the bloooood of the laaaamb!”  If I didn’t know better, I’d be thinking this outfit might be working for the Other Guy.

Because I have a life, a career, and a social calendar… Because I see no particular need to set my clock to that of a major entertainment distributorship… Because there are so many more important choices to make every day when I roll out of bed, the very last thing on my mind is to tell Columbia House not to send me their absurd “Director’s Selection” every month.

First of all, the Director of WHAT? Director in Charge of Perpetuating Banal and Utterly Mindless Pop Culture? Director of Lobotomies with a Hand Shovel? The Director of Half-Eaten Twinkies Floating in Bong Water? The Director of FEMA Who Used to Raise Thoroughbred Horses but Decided It Would Be Fun to Manage Federal Emergencies Instead? Frankly, any of them would be an improvement over the current selection tsar.

Oddly enough, they have only themselves to blame for my gas. They set the bar too high. I recall a time when the aforementioned purveyor of mediocrity would at least let you assign yourself to a category. When I got my 13 free CDs, they at least let me tell them “I’m kind of a jazz girl.” I knew there were idiots at the switch whenever the current spit bubble from Kenny G arrived at my door, but the rest of the time I could generally count on something tolerable showing up if I’d happened to have missed my No Thanks window. Let me tell you, friend: No such categorization buffer exists in the DVD department.

Some brilliant MBA obviously walked into Columbia House and said, “Hey, options are bad and they cost you money!” Or maybe it was “consumers don’t really know what they like, so we need to tell them!” Well, I know precisely what I like, and it’s the opposite of Spiderman. The movies I enjoy wouldn’t even share a theater zip code with American Wedding (the desperate attempt at a follow-up to the absurd American Pie). Other shit stains include that crazed monkey boy Tom Cruise in Collateral, Tom again in The Last Samurai, and the even bigger monkey boy Keanu Reeves in a weird thing called Constantine. I couldn’t even get beyond the menu screen on that one. The arrival of each was about as welcome as salmonella poisoning on Christmas.

For as bad as they were, I’m afraid none of them prepared me for the half-plucked turkey I found rotting in my mailbox today: Talladega Nights. Don’t get me wrong! Nobody does Big, Stupid, Hairy White Guy like Will Ferrell. But it’s clinically proven impossible to endure 121 minutes of it. A ten-minute comedy sketch with Will in a cheerleader outfit is the most normal humans can take. Getting beyond that qualifies you for any number of jobs at the White House, because your tolerance for idiocy is clearly unnatural.

Considering a possible run for office, I decided to watch. It’s hard to pinpoint what was so gut-wrenchingly bad. The flavor of awfulness was pervasive, and had an oscillating quality to it much like sitting next to your smelliest uncle on a hot day with his Wal-Mart fan wafting toxic body odor into your nose and eyes with its perky little plastic flags a-fluttering, all impervious to the stench that’s slowly removing your facial flesh. In fact, it was probably much like the smell to be found on any summer day in Talladega.

Now don’t fool yourself for one minute into thinking that this bleeding heart liberal simply resents the chronic stereotyping of lower-middle class America as stupid, shallow, and feckless. On the contrary! I LOVE it. Especially when they’re all polling republican. I’m going to start getting legislation in place to move elections to mid July, and all my problems are over! Nope. I say, “Gentlemen, start your engines and bring out the Girls Gone Wild,” because it’s the best way to keep all y’all in one place for when Iran finally sends that nuke over here. I don’t think bin Laden will target us wine-slurpers in Sonoma. He wants you red, white, and blue-blooded screaming assholes getting a chubby watching cars drive around in circles real fast burning up all of his oil. But I digress…

Ricky Bobby is a carbon copy of every other Will Farrell character we’ve ever seen. John C. Reilly does what he does best, which is to play the hapless second fiddle. Unfortunately for Farrell, the second fiddle frequently upstaged the top banana. There were only two factors that saved this DVD from the doom of my microwave: The goofy quotes on the box praising the movie (“America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.” — Eleanor Roosevelt), and Sacha Baron Cohen as the Euro-trash Formula One driver bent on proving his alternative view of superiority. I admit to being disappointed at finding my hero in this retched movie, but then it began to make sense… in a sick, witty, and entirely Sacha B. Cohen way, it all made sense. But I doubt it’s what the producers had in mind.

So I hate Columbia House because it propagates the lowest common denominator of taste. It kicks the witty, intellectual kid in the balls while clumsily fingering the cheerleader’s panties. Columbia House takes the absolute worst aspects of American “culture” and splashes it in your lap with some salsa and chips.

But what the hell do you expect from people who give you stuff for FREE? Shut up and eat your Fritos.

Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.

In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. War requires a physical force is to be created and it is the executive will which is to direct that force. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors and compensations is multiplied, and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people.

The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals engendered in both.

No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast ­ ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame ­ are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.

­ James Madison, excerpted from “Political Observations”
April 20, 1795 in Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, Volume IV, page 491.

An enemy that operates in the shadows and views the entire world as a battlefield is not one we can fight with strategies used in other wars. An enemy with fantasies of martyrdom is not going to sit down at a table for negotiations. Nor can we fight to a standoff — (applause). Nor can we fight to a standoff, hoping that some form of containment or deterrence will protect our people. The only option for our security and survival is to go on the offensive, facing the threat directly, patiently and systematically, until the enemy is destroyed. (Applause.)

Cheney, of course, is not merely speaking there about Al Qaeda, but about the whole range of Evil Enemies against whom we must seek merciless and final destruction, including those about whom his audience cares most — Iran, Syria, the Palestinians, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Just compare Cheney’s mentality as he himself described it to the core description offered 43 years ago in Harper’s by Richard Hofstadter of the defining attributes of The Paranoid Style in American Politics:

The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. . . .

As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish.

Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated — if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.

What Hofstadter described almost five decades ago as the mental hallmark of the right-wing paranoid is exactly what came out of Cheney’s mouth yesterday almost verbatim. That is to be expected, as Hofstadter noted at the end of his essay:

The paranoid style is not confined to our own country and time; it is an international phenomenon. . . .

Studying the millennial sects of Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, Norman Cohn believed he found a persistent psychic complex that corresponds broadly with what I have been considering a style made up of certain preoccupations and fantasies: “the megalomaniac view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted, yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers to the adversary; the refusal to accept the ineluctable limitations and imperfections of human existence, such as transience, dissention, conflict, fallibility whether intellectual or moral; the obsession with inerrable prophecies . . . systematized misinterpretations, always gross and often grotesque.”

We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.

That describes not only Dick Cheney and his followers, but Osama bin Laden and his followers as well. As noted a couple of weeks ago, if you read Cheney’s speeches, they sound conceptually almost exactly like those of Osama bin Laden’s (or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s) — we are in an apocalyptic struggle of Good versus Evil; we must obliterate the Evil Enemy mercilessly and without limits; and the Other Side wants to dominate the world with superior force and the only priority that matters is to crush them. This is how Dick Cheney described the cave-dwelling religious radicals yesterday:

We are the prime targets of a terror movement that is global in nature and, yes, global in its ambitions. The leaders of this movement speak openly and specifically of building a totalitarian empire covering the Middle East, extending into Europe and reaching across to the islands of Indonesia, one that would impose a narrow, radical vision of Islam that rejects tolerance, suppresses dissent, brutalizes women and has one of its foremost objectives the destruction of Israel. . . .

And their aim, ultimately, is to acquire the means to match that hatred and to use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to impose their will by unspeakable violence or blackmail.

Does Dick Cheney really believe that Osama bin Laden is going to rule over a “totalitarian empire” that subsumes all of Europe, the Middle East and even “the islands of Indonesia,” destroy Israel, and impose their will on the world with their stockpiles of nuclear weapons? One can debate what’s really in someone’s mind only with speculation, but I think he probably has come to convince himself of that. There is no doubt that hordes of the hard-core Twenty-Three-Percenter followers have come to believe that. And our foreign policy, and large parts of the domestic behavior of our government, is absolutely predicated on that twisted worldview.

As always, the person whom Cheney quoted most heavily in his speeche yesterday is bin Laden, because they see world events in exactly the same apocolyptic terms. Here is Cheney quoting bin Laden’s thought process which, as is often the case, matches Cheney’s exactly:

Yet the critics conveniently disregard the words of bin Laden himself. The most serious issue today for the whole world, he has said, is this third world war that is raging in Iraq. He calls it a destiny between infidelity and Islam. He said the whole world is watching this war and that it will end in victory and glory or misery and humiliation. And in words directed at the American people, bin Laden declares, “The war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever.”

This leader of al Qaeda has referred to Baghdad as the capital of the Caliphate. He has also said, and I quote, “Success in Baghdad will be success for the United States. Failure in Iraq is the failure of the United States. Their defeat in Iraq will mean defeat in all their wars.”

Obviously, the terrorists have no illusion about the importance of the struggle in Iraq. They have not called it a distraction or a diversion from their war against the United States. They know it is a central front in that war and it’s where they’ve chosen to make a stand.

As always, it is the warped, delusional and paranoid rhetoric of Osama bin Laden which shapes our foreign policy and molds (and mirrors) the thinking of our highest government officials. Osama bin Laden, from the remote Pakistani cave in which we are told he is forced to hide, has proclaimed an apocalyptic theological battle, and therefore, that is how we must approach the world. After all, Bin Laden says so, and — as always — he’s right.

Perhaps most amazingly, Cheney continues to pay lip service to this notion: “The war on terror is more than a contest of arms and more than a test of will, it is also a battle of ideas. We know now to a certainty that when people across the Middle East are denied freedom, that is a direct strategic concern of all free nations.”

But no rational person can dispute that we are losing that “front” of the “war” as completely as is possible. And it is Cheney’s vision for endless obliteration of our “enemies” without negotiation or compromise, which is precisely what is fueling, and will continue to fuel, that defeat.

Jordan’s King Abdullah delivered an extremely important though almost completely ignored address to Congress last week in which he implored the U.S. to stop blindly supporting Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians and instead work towards a resolution, precisely because nothing fuels anti-American hatred and Islamic radicalism as much as Israel’s ongoing occupation. This is what he said:

Nothing impacts this choice more than the future of peace in the Middle East. I come to you today at a rare, and indeed historic, moment of opportunity, when there is a new international will to end the catastrophe. And I believe that America, with its enduring values, its moral responsibility, and yes, its unprecedented power, must play the central role. . . .

The entire international community has vital decisions to make about the path forward, and how to ensure Iraq’s security, unity, and future. But we cannot lose sight of a profound reality. The wellspring of regional division, the source of resentment and frustration far beyond, is the denial of justice and peace in Palestine.

There are those who say, ‘It’s not our business.’ But this Congress knows: there are no bystanders in the 21st Century, there are no curious onlookers, there is no one who is not affected by the division and hatred that is present in our world. Some will say: ‘This is not the core issue in the Middle East.’ I come here today as your friend to tell you that this is the core issue. And this core issue is not only producing severe consequences for our region, it is producing severe consequences for our world.

The security of all nations and the stability of our global economy are directly affected by the Middle East conflict. Across oceans, the conflict has estranged societies that should be friends. I meet Muslims thousands of miles away who have a deep, personal response to the suffering of the Palestinian people. They want to know how it is, that ordinary Palestinians are still without rights and without a country. They ask whether the West really means what it says about equality and respect and universal justice.

Everyone knows that the Bush administration’s explicit abandonment of any pretense of objectivity or broker role in the Israel-Palestinian conflict — replaced by our virtual participation on the side of Israel in that conflict — has done as much, if not more, than any single other factor to fuel the Islamic radicalism which we claim we are so eager to defeat (the only cause which can possibly compete in terms of significance is our ongoing active involvement in the internal affairs of virtually every Middle East country, as symbolized by our military occupation of multiple countries in that region).

King Abdullah’s message was, of course, the same conclusion reached by the bipartisan, super-Establishment Baker-Hamilton Commission — the conclusion which single-handedly provoked the most vicious attacks on Jim Baker as an anti-semite:

The United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts: Lebanon, Syria, and President Bush’s June 2002 commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. This commitment must include direct talks with, by, and between Israel, Lebanon, Palestinians (those who accept Israel’s right to exist), and particularly Syria — which is the principal transit point for shipments of weapons to Hezbollah, and which supports radical Palestinian groups.

The United States does its ally Israel no favors in avoiding direct involvement to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict.

But Cheney goes before AIPAC and sets conditions on our negotiating — as opposed to waging endless war — that are, by design, never going to happen, and as a result, this is how we are faring in the “war of ideas”:

Israel, Iran and the United States were the countries with the most negative image in a globe-spanning survey of attitudes toward 12 major nations. Canada and Japan came out best in the poll, released Tuesday. . . 

Israel was viewed negatively by 56 percent of respondents and positively by 17 percent; for Iran, the figures were 54 percent and 18 percent. The United States had the third-highest negative ranking, with 51 percent citing it as a bad influence and 30 percent as a good one. Next was North Korea, which was viewed negatively by 48 percent and positively by 19 percent.

We’re sandwiched between Iran and North Korea in terms of how the world perceives us. And there should be no debating whether that collapse of our credibility in the world matters, given that George Bush and Dick Cheney themselves define this “war” as a “war of ideas,” with the goal the winning of “hearts and minds” of people around the world as the key to our national security. It is hardly possible for us to lose that “war” more devastatingly than we are losing it, and the obvious cause is the twisted, bloodthirsty and sociopathic mentality — shared by Osama bin Laden and the Bush movement alike — which was laid out with such ugly nakedness by the Vice President yesterday.

Far more than haggling over Iraq bills that are not going anywhere or picking apart the various proposals of each candidate, the critical priority is to demand that these fundamental premises guiding our behavior in the world be meaningfully examined and debated. The Baker-Hamilton Report actually tried to provoke such an examination, which is why it was so viciously demonized and instantaneously discarded. But until those premises are candidly discussed, we are going to remain on the incomparably dangerous path that the Bush presidency has so fervently embraced.

UPDATE: Speaking of endless war, Dick Cheney and AIPAC, Congressional Quarterly reported last week that AIPAC and its Congressional allies were “pushing to strike a provision slated for the war spending bill that would, with some exceptions, require the president to seek congressional approval before using military force in Iran.” As BooMan documents today, they succeeded: “key language mandating that Bush get Congressional approval before going to war with Iran has been taken out.”

For awhile, many people were resisting the notion that right-wing Israeli-centric groups like AIPAC (as absolutely distinct from the majority of American Jews generally) were “agitating for a U.S. war with Iran,” but the evidence proving that becomes clearer all the time (one commenter here, Gator90, was insistent that there was no evidence of such a connection, but to his great credit, acknowledged that there was in the wake of the CQ story). The AIPAC-type agitators combine with the Cheney-type paranoid militaristic hysterics to ensure that the U.S. continues with its warmonger posture in the world.

It’s important to note that this progressive – even downright feminist – idea wasn’t coming from a highly educated or advantaged woman. My mom was the youngest of four children. She might have been fourth of five, but her baby sister Mary died very young. Her mother, whom we quietly suspect suffered from some form of emotional disorder, committed suicide soon after Mary’s death. The Great Depression was winding down, but things were still difficult for my mother’s family. Her stoic Irish father worked hard to keep them afloat, but there was little time or patience left for the littlest one at the end of the day. The saddest picture I’ve ever seen was of my mother’s first communion: All the other little girls were so happy and proud of their pretty white gloves and new bibles. Mom was the freckled acorn in the front row with the scuffed shoes looking like she was about to shatter into a million insignificant bits.

Whether through convenience or compassion, she was finally sent to away to live with relatives in a tiny town in northern Wisconsin. Her aunt and uncle worshipped my mother and freely lavished on her as much love as any little girl could want.

***

Of course, I didn’t see any of her hard knocks until much later in my own life. She downplayed the more Dickensian aspects of her childhood, and always focused instead on how lucky she was today. She had a flawed, complicated, and wonderful husband, two headstrong and slightly crazy daughters, a comfy home with two cars in the garage, and a neurotic wiener dog. In her eyes, life simply couldn’t be more gratifying than that.

Being so gratified allowed her and my dad the luxury of pride in everything they’d created. When faced with the notion of their child being a musician or artist, a lot of parents might attempt a course correction. Mine showed up at every concert, play, or performance and always clapped the loudest – even when I stunk up the joint. When I decided at age 37 to quit a decent cubicle job and start my own graphic design firm, they clapped even louder.

Naturally, I would never accuse our family of being perfect. My parents made many mistakes over the years, as we all do. Our predominantly sunny core seemed to resent the interference of conflict. Every problem suffered death by suffocation, especially those that might be seen as shameful or embarrassing.

But with all of their faults, and despite deep furrows of pain and loss and fear in both my mother and father, they made a conscious decision that their children’s lives would be better. They instilled in us a kind of light and inner strength. It’s a confidence that has nothing to do with being superior. It only comes with knowing that we are profoundly loved. We are loved even in the face of a tremendous flop or bungled effort or unbelievably stupid choice. We are loved at our best and our most awful. It is a ferocious love for another that asserts itself before any love for one’s self, and there is no substitute.

So, armed with this unique brand of cockeyed optimism I’ve sky dived through the world. I’ve never asked what comes next, or “what if I fail?” With all my heart, I know that the only failure is not trying.

The moral of the story sounds simple enough: Be good to your kids. You brought them here, and you’re utterly responsible for who they are to become. Tell them how marvelous they are, and don’t shrink away from being tough on them when necessary. Arm them with everything they need to be good humans by setting a good example. Perhaps most importantly, don’t flaunt your own pains for the sake of arguing theirs away. Show them that even the worst history can’t stop a beautiful future, if that is what you put your mind to.