God Save the Serfs
"This is my fourth royal event... You weren't seeing double. They did do two kisses. That's history made. That's history. Everything else was true to form. It was a fantasy. It was a fairy tale... I think they should keep the kids home from school today because they probably won't see something like this for another 20 years." -Barbara Walters, royal bootlicker"Why don't you up-Chuck and Di?" -Carla Tortelli, Boston barmaid
This morning's television coverage on ABC of the Royal Wedding between Prince William of Wales and British commoner Kate Middleton warranted the on-air participation of journalists Robin Roberts, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, and six other correspondents, each apparently instructed to apply as much Vaseline as possible to the camera lens. Oh, times they do change. Two hundred and thirty-five years ago, Americans fought a war over the entitlement of
ignoring the British monarchy.
Royal titles in England are really just honorary anymore, we're told, yet William, by fortune of being born the eldest son of the likewise-bloodlined "Prince of Wales," will-- perhaps within 10 years-- be elevated to the throne of sixteen "sovereign" states on Earth. In so doing, he will become the head of the British armed forces, one of the largest militaries in the world, as well as the "Supreme Governor," or spiritual head, of the Church of England. The latter designation makes him, by law, "the highest power under God in (his) kingdom," and gives him "supreme authority over all persons in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as civil." This fact is mildly misleading as the church has very little influence in modern life. Of the 44 diocesan archbishops and bishops in the Church, only
26 now are allowed to sit in the House Of Lords, the upper house of the British Parliament that is not democratically-elected but filled instead by inheritance or appointment. A "King William" would hold the right his grandmum now holds to dissolve the Parliament at any time and to choose the Prime Minister of the government.
The wedding ceremony this morning really was lovely-- the recorded bits of it that I saw. William's commoner bride, Kate, is strikingly beautiful, and by fortune not a Catholic either or William would have to renounce the throne to marry her. (No adopted children either, please, not if you want them to inherit the kingdom.) As is the role of the modern monarchy, William and Kate today gave the British people (and many fawning Americans as well) "something to look up to," a new standard of elegance and extravagance, if you will. Of course, not inviting former Prime Minister Tony Blair to the ceremony was rather inelegant, it seems to me. Blair, an
elected official of government during his time, was only responsible for canonizing William's dead mother by memorably dubbing her "the people's princess," but of course his choice of words at the time only served to remind everyone that
the prince was
NOT of the people, and living parents have the most sway over the guest list of any wedding.
The British could have chosen to go the French route of republicanism by salvaging the buildings of monarchy but abolishing everything else. They didn't. The Windsors wheeze on into the 21st century, sapping the country's treasury, royalists forced to constantly mention and promote the "charitable" works of the crown, snowing under the philosophical hypocrisy of having two different levels of citizenship in place for the nation, and somewhat incidentally, wrecking political debate by destroying the quality of British newspapers.
The royal subjects of the U.K. (and that's what they are, they're not "citizens") have been seriously debating the necessity of the monarchy in recent years. The royals behaved so badly so often towards
the last commoner princess that their entire hustle almost collapsed. (Public perceptions have improved considerably over the last decade.) Diana's divorce from Charles was no small matter in respect to their children, Prince William and his brother. The two boys, again by ancient law, were the legal property of the House of Windsor, and the Windsors deeply resented the popularity of the boys' mother. As the first-born, William has been forced to deal with great public-- and presumably private-- pressure to marry and advance the hereditary line with his sovereign sperm. His younger brother, Harry, who is not in line for the throne, after first being spoiled rotten, was assigned to public relations duty, getting to join Grandma's imperial army and shuffling off to Afghanistan. But I'm sure both these boys make life decisions of their own volition.
In recent years, a number of political movements in the United States have attempted to brand for us just what it is that makes one "a real American." The almost-entire lot of these movements are comprised of bubbleheads, and so the results have been lacking, but I think I've actually stumbled upon it: If you still reject the British monarchy, in all of its ridiculous structure, forms, and rituals, 235 years after the Declaration of Independence, you are a real American. If you don't, then you are a deserter.
I wonder how many freedom-loving Americans, loyal to the principle that all men and women are created equal, would actually reject a royal title if one were offered? Ronald Reagan didn't. He accepted a knighthood during the years following his presidency (current U.S. officeholders are forbidden by law to accept such an honor from another government). His was probably offered in return for his unwavering support for the colonial, apartheid government of South Africa. George H.W. Bush doesn't think atheists are real Americans, but in retirement, he morphed into Benedict Arnold in respect to the Revolution. Bob Hope is on the list of betrayers. He was
born in England and obviously preferred to return. There's Ted Kennedy, that's a shame, and Steven Spielberg, and Alan Greenspan (whom I guess is kind of "stateless" now, like a corporation), and there's a who's who of U.S. military generals representing a whole host of U.S. wars other than the first one. An overwhelming majority of
the overall list of Knighthood recipients, though, are other monarchs from around the globe. One hand indeed washes the other, I guess, but of course, none of those recipients are Americans. U-S-A! U-S-A!
Many of your more enlightened Brits (and I intend the use of the word 'enlightened' here with all of its historic meaning and power) have actually
declined the honor, and it's the general mark of that person's worth in my estimation. The physicist Stephen Hawking declined the honor from the officially-sectarian government of his state. Paul (now Sir Paul) accepted a knighthood, but John returned his
MEO, settling that age-old question once and for all, I guess. Mick accepted a knighthood. Then Keith responded: "It's not what the Stones is about, is it?" Paul Scofield, Vanessa Redgrave, and John Cleese all declined, as did the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, and many others in the field of the arts actually. Even two fictional characters, Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, declined knighthoods in literary texts, and their public service to England certainly marked them each as patriots, unqualified.
Of course both William and Kate have the prerogative to accept the titles offered by their state that are legally worthless everywhere outside the United Kingdom, and that are morally-worthless even within, but it's frustrating that so many of our fellow Americans and our media diplomats to the world feel the motivation to panty-sniff the inbred descendants of Henry VIII. Undeniably we have our own special and skewed brand of star worship here, but at least to this point, we're not sticking our own economic and celebrity betters with the senseless and silly labels "prince" and "princess." U-S-A! U-S-A!"
The Wedding of the Century
The following are news stories that
Londoners just might be reading in their local papers six months from now. Time will tell. (Editor's note: reporters from ABC News and the Washington Post, USA, also contributed):
---
From coast to coast, on British and U.S. airlines alike, Britons are heading to the United States in droves.
An estimated 600,000 tourists are expected in Cedar Rapids, Iowa this week because of the wedding of a pair of commoners, and many of them are from Great Britain. The number of Brits visiting Cedar Rapids is up 20 percent this month, thanks to Aaron Moeller and Alexandra Shouse, tourism experts say.
Linda Troy of Bristol is among them.
"I've followed Aaron since he was born," Troy said. "When Joyce died, I really wanted to see him find a woman and fall in love and get married. When this happened, I was like, 'Cheers.'"
Troy's fascination with the Moeller family began 35 years ago when she found herself backpacking across Iowa on the eve of the Moeller twins' birth. The purchase of a few trinkets quickly blossomed into a sizable collection.
For Troy, being in Cedar Rapids during the wedding was something she had to do.
"I want to feel the crowds. It's going to be quite posh," Troy said. "It would be a great honour to come back here and say, 'Oh, we were there."
Also heading to Cedar Rapids are Annie and Simon White of Sheffield. "I think it's going to be a bloody brilliant party," Annie White said. "That's why I'm coming along."
The couple bought their plane tickets for Cedar Rapids soon after the engagement was announced. Now, the self-described Moeller watchers have turned their women's clothing and accessories store called The Blue Door Boutique into one that specializes in Shouse-themed fashions.
"I owe her a big thank you," White said. "Anything we bill as an Alex item instantly sells out."
This will be a pleasure trip for the Whites but a business venture for Julie Campbell of Swansea, who's a wedding planner. "The wedding is going to be the wedding of the century," she said. "It's going to impact our industry for years to come."
Campbell is bringing -- or shall we say dragging -- her husband and two sons along.
"I think my husband would prefer to be in a bar having an ale and watching it on the telly, and we're all very knackered from the trip already. Cheeky wanker quid bollocks," said Campbell, who will use the event as research for work.
For most English tourists, the journey won't come cheap. Round trip tickets start at about 800 pounds and hotel rooms can cost several hundred a night.
But those looking to cut costs can rough it at Ellis Park, Cedar Rapids' official wedding camping area. For 121 pounds, travelers can camp for three nights and have access to hot showers, a clean loo and free tea. They can also glam up that experience by renting luxury tents -- complete with service -- that start at about 3,000 pounds for half a fortnight.
---
"Just wait and see what I got,” says Tiffany Cook. She is standing outside of Lindale Mall in her sundress; she is holding a plastic bag of loot. “I got about 70 pounds of Aaron and Alex merchandise." The wedding coasters, the coffee mugs, the playing cards, the oversize pen. She bought it all at Spencer's Gifts. She found all this stuff, and while the cashier was ringing up the original stuff, she rummaged around on the counter and found more stuff. Hard evidence for the folks back home in Manchester.
Cook knows this is a ridiculous display of excess. She feels it is her duty as a Brit.
---
Halloween ended, and the tourists began. A recent news poll said that only 6 percent of Britons were “very interested” in the wedding. The ones who have bothered to cross an ocean — to watch in person what will probably look better on television - are the top echelon of that small percentage. Not merely British tourists, but Advanced Placement Yankeephiles. The AP Yankeephile can tell you what a corn dog is and where to buy one, and how “circle” means “circus,” and "french fries" means "chips." For the AP Yankeephile, traveling to the wedding is much like returning to the womb.
“Within two hours of seeing the date announced on 'The Morning Show' — ” begins Marcia Anderson.
"Well, you saw it on that programme, I saw it on ‘Good Morning United Kingdom,’" her friend Denise Callegari interjects.
“Right. Within two hours, we had booked four different hotels around different Cedar Rapids neighbourhoods.”
Bases had to be covered. What if Aaron and Alex got married at the Moeller farm? What if they got married at Squaw Creek Park?
When Squaw Creek was announced, they renounced all other options and went with the one in downtown Marion. Anderson and Callegari, from Birmingham, are joined by Anderson’s twin, and two friends. The extra bodies were necessary because the group plans to spend the days preceding the wedding sleeping on the parade route — in shifts, in sleeping bags — to secure a good spot. They have also brought a collapsible table. And chairs. And signs. And hats.
Today, their main objective is to locate the real estate in the downtown parade route along 1st Avenue.
“This used to be Killian's Department Store,” one member of the groups says.
“This is where Aaron II — ” says Anderson.
“Aaron I,” corrects her friend.
“Was beheaded.” The only Moeller to die that way.
Anderson proclaims that she will always be able to say,
I was there. I saw history. I wore a rosette with Aaron and Alex's faces on it.---
Scene:
A man and a woman appear near the bus centre on 2nd Street, consulting a map.
“I think this is the way to Hee-ah-wath-ah,” says a man in the British dad/tourist uniform of a polo shirt and khaki cargo shorts.
“I told you, Franklin, it’s pronounced
Hi-ah-wath-ah. Don’t
embarrass me.”
Franklin sighs. Franklin has been warned about this before.
Brits attack the wedding with such fortitude.
Alexandra Pez dispensers? Aaron bobbleheads? Too much? Not for the British it’s not.
“Here’s what you do,” offers Kim Clark from South London, explaining how to get the most out of an excursion to Cedar Rapids. She has to leave the day before the wedding, but plans to work the city while she can. “You go to Von Maur and Lindale Mall, but go to the food court.” The food court is reasonably priced, she says, “and you still get the Von Maur bag! It’s a travel secret.” Buy one Orange Julius, you get the same bag as if you buy a $200 pair of shoes. “You got to have the bag.”
People say that what enthralls the British about the wedding is the fairy-tale aspect, but they are probably also envious of the spectacle. Even Great Britain, with its extraordinary history and capabilities for pageantry, cannot have a Moeller wedding. Not unless we crown a Moeller.
The British bring to the wedding a sense of wonder. And kitsch. And a willingness to be a little demure and a little bit formal, the way the British do.
In the middle of scouting for the ideal spot to plop, the quintet of women from London pass the Grant Wood Studio and Visitor's Center, where a name-tagged retiree directs foot traffic in and out of the smallish facility.
“Excuse me, was Wood's mother the sitting model for the piece "Woman with Plants"? Anderson asks, referring to one of the artist's most famous paintings.
The volunteer is busy reading the latest issue of Midwest Living and does not answer.
“Was Hattie Weaver Wood the model for this piece?” she asks again, sweetly and earnestly. “Excuse me?”
He can see he will not shake her. He looks down at the British woman. And he nods.
State of Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth File #151- 61 10641
President Obama dropped the hammer today. His "long form" birth certificate from Hawaii was released to the media and the public this morning, and combined with
a masterful press conference expressing frustration and impatience ("I've got better stuff to do"), the race-baiters and immoral political opportunists, such as Donald Trump-- the Charlie Sheen of the 2012 presidential race-- now look, collectively, like Charlie Sheen.
Yet if you think this dropping of more definitive truth in regards to the location of the president's birth will bring more sanity and substance to our political debate, you haven't been paying attention. The distractions are there for a reason.
This specific distraction turned into a major victory for Obama, but they're capable of falling both ways, and trivial issues will continue to dominate the national debate because the Democratic and Republican Parties share no disagreement over the
important issues. They support the same wars and imperial ambitions, the same suspensions of Constitutional protections, and the same economic system of privatizing Wall Street's profits and socializing its losses.
On the bright side, though, a group of hate-spewing windbags do look damn foolish today. So there's that.
Additional thought 4/28/11: Even this issue can be seen as an example of the similarities between the two parties. Democratic loyalists have suggested throughout Obama's presidency that the issue of his birthplace is indicative of the sanity of their party's faithful relative to the
insanity of the Republican rank-and-file. But where did the issue of Obama's birthplace originate? Yes,
the Hillary Clinton 2008 presidential campaign. So it was a popular theory among many
Democratic activists too-- when it was politically expedient. The Clintons have devoted their entire political careers to blurring the line between Democrats and Republicans so this information probably doesn't surprise you even if you don't remember it. Obama refers to Trump as a "carnival barker," Hillary is his Secretary of State. They're tribal for electoral purposes, but the policies and playbooks are the same.
A day at the American Atheists National Convention
About midway through Saturday's proceedings at a national gathering of atheists in Des Moines' Embassy Suites Hotel, the emcee announced that a tornado had struck the St. Louis Airport. All inbound and outbound flights out of this nearby "hub" city were postponed indefinitely and so many of the out-of-town conventioneers were going to likely be affected on their way home. It's probably fair to say that none of the 700 people in the convention hall were thinking of the word "miracle" at any point in the day, but that's the one the St. Louis County emergency management director used when he announced that the tornado had caused extensive property damage, but no fatalities, in the disaster that coincided with Easter weekend. (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch hopped on the bandwagon of superstition and show business by reprinting the word "miracle" in
their banner headline this morning without bothering to put quotes around the word.)
And there it is. You can stop staring hard at the colorations of your morning toast and call up the Vatican on your cell phone. We have our Easter miracle for 2011! The person invested with the responsibility for the
human mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery for natural disasters in a municipality of almost a million people is crediting a merciful deity for the physical and biological outcomes of the storm. And people wonder why atheists have to gather together and draw public attention to themselves.
Many of you would probably never go to an atheist convention, but many nevertheless would probably be curious as to what goes on there. The event this weekend stretched from Thursday night until today, but I can only tell you about yesterday, the (full) day I was there. Disclaimer: I missed the ritual sacrifices and the bacchanalia from Friday.
The day started with a panel discussion involving representatives from area atheist groups-- those from the state organization "Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers," from Iowa State University, and from the Sioux City area. The most interesting speaker of the day followed them--
Jamila Bey. She is a freelance journalist formerly of NPR, and at times, a stand-up comedian. She spoke in great detail about the myth of uniform religious belief in the African-American community, and of the very real corrupting influences of the church. The Christian congregations, specifically, are rapidly aging now, fortunately, as young African-Americans are recognizing the hypocrisies.
As Bey explained in her presentation, and then as part of a diversity panel that followed her hour-long speech, our black communities are largely matriarchal. In fact, only 13 percent of African-American children are raised in two-parent households. Yet these young people see that their mothers and grandmothers, who govern their own lives and their children's lives with such great strength and fearlessness, are cast into a position of complete subservience when they're in the church pews on Sunday. It's a group of men only that stand at the front of the church-- the minister, the deacon, the junior minister, the junior deacon, and on down the line. Man after man.
Statistically, black women between the ages of 20 and 60 are the segment of the American population
most likely to tithe, that is, give 10% of their income to their church. That same group has a membership, according to Bey, that has an average net worth per person (assets and debts) of-- no joke--
five dollars. In one American city after another, we see one or more of these enormous churches standing in the middle of predominantly-black neighborhoods, with almost as many ministers driving cars that cost more than the homes of their congregants. It's unconscionable. The church provides a family-safe environment that make it attractive for single mothers, but the mothers are forced to accept cultural and financial subordination as part of the package deal.
Too often, these mega-churches (such as
Eddie Long's 25,000-member New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta) stand in stark contrast to the crumbling city schools in the neighborhoods, and many children of African-American households grow up without ever stepping foot inside a library or a museum. As it is often for whites and Hispanics too, women that would otherwise think about leaving their church would also be leaving behind your entire support network if they depart. When they do, they become ostracized in much the same way that gay men and women have been ostracized by the church because of the bigotry of the scriptures.
The churches aren't doing wonders for black
men either, unless that man happens to be in the hierarchy of the church. The church can't get you a job, as Bey pointed out, and young black men are, statistically, the most unemployed segment of the American population. God's temple is a dead-end resource for men that want something better than the promise for happiness in "the
next life," and that's why young black men have abandoned the church in droves. The man at the
front of the church is "the shepherd of the flock" and that leaves only one role left to play for anybody else-- a sheep, and who the fuck wants to be a sheep?
The atheist tradition in African-American life is long and deep, but it's been suppressed because of the entrenched influence of the church. Bayard Rustin, a noted pacifist and the lead organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, was an atheist (as well as a gay man, incidentally). Julius Hobson was a writer well-known in Washington D.C., an early leader of the D.C. statehood movement, and the one-time head of CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality). The celebrated essayist and poet James Baldwin was an atheist also. With Bey as our instructor, we know that nearly the entirety of the Harlem Renaissance was made up of atheists, including Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and James Weldon Johnson.
We should recognize Charles Darwin's contributions to the cause of racial equality also, and I'm glad that Bey took the time to reference his contribution. Despite later distortions of his work by religious groups trying to combat the teaching of evolutionary biology in schools (that is, the invention of the once-popular and racist concept of "Social Darwinism"), Darwin opposed slavery while it was still the law of the land in America and the conclusions of his research confirmed that there was actually
no biological difference in the races, as had long been argued. (It is the pigmentation of the skin only that differs.)
Other enjoyable speakers on the stage Saturday included comedian, actor, and filmmaker Paul Provenza. I've been a fan of Provenza since his regular television roles on "Empty Nest" and "Northern Exposure" in the 1990s. As a film director, he partnered with Penn Jillette to create the hilarious and wildly-inventive comedy/documentary movie "The Aristocrats" in 2005. (Provenza credits the comic magician Jillette with introducing him to the organized atheist/skeptic community.) On Saturday, Provenza read passages from his new book, "Satiristas," a collection of interviews he conducted in recent years with dozens of famous "subversive" and "contrarian" comics, and to whom he referred as our most fearless and enlightened social critics.
The audience heard passages from the book that mostly equated to religion and religious culture, from the likes of Dave Attell, Lizz Winstead, Jillette, Eddie Ifft, Doug Stanhope, Rick Shapiro, Terry Jones, Lily Tomlin, Marc Maron, Dana Gould, Janeane Garafalo, Trey Parker, and Matt Stone. His book is dedicated to the great George Carlin, who is profiled as well. (I would venture the guess that you hear a more liberal use of Carlin's 7 dirty words on stage at an atheist convention than you do at any other that has religion as one of its themes.)
After Provenza came Dr. Hector Avalos. Dr. Avalos is a professor of religion at Iowa State, where I attended as an undergrad. He's an academic of course, and an author, as well as a former Pentecostal preacher, and an atheist. I didn't take any of his classes in school, but he was a willing and friendly contributor to a spirited campus television show that I hosted for a time in the late '90s called "Wake Up ISU." His topic of discussion at the convention was the religious theory of Intelligent Design, and he used part of his allotted hour to describe the 2007 controversy at Iowa State during which a proponent of ID was denied tenure by the university. Avalos had led the authorship of a written statement against Intelligent Design in 2005 that was signed by 130 members of the institution's faculty. The school had become the target of a neo-creationist think tank called the Discovery Institute dedicated to landing creationists in the science departments of the country's colleges and high schools. From this standpoint, Avalos is responsible, in large part, for nothing less than the preservation of the prestigious scientific reputation of my alma mater, and so for that, I'm eternally grateful to him.
After a comedian (Troy Conrad) dressed as White Jesus came out and gave a computer-aided presentation about the quest to save this particular planet, Heavenly Father deflected some spontaneous and equally-hilarious questions from the audience, ranging from the more-nuanced "Could you still walk on water after you had holes in your feet?" to the very-simple "Why me, Lord?" (The answer to the second question, incidentally, was "Because you asked.") My favorite exchange, paraphrased here and ideal for Easter Sunday, was this: "Did you find it difficult to roll the stone away after being dead for three days?" Jesus: "Your arms and legs start to atrophy after that amount of time of inactivity." (one beat) "That's just science."
We heard from a biologist in Minnesota named P.Z. Myers, whom Conservapedia
describes as having "excess weight in his abdominal area" and suggesting the partial impairment of his brain function as a result (he seemed otherwise coherent); and following him on stage were a pair of experts in the area of psychology, Dr. Elizabeth Cornwell and J. Anderson Thompson, talking about their clinical research into why women, in particular, are drawn to religion.
The highlight of my day personally, though-- and remember, this is a day that included all of these marvelous speakers and getting to tell Paul Provenza how much I liked his "Dr. Phil Capra" character on "Northern Exposure," was meeting the couple that sat down next to me during our lunch break. They were probably in their 60s, or late 50s, and visiting from a small town in northern Iowa. They were attending the conference, like me, for just the one day only. I'll keep their identities private, except to tell you that
his surname is a common one of German origin in the area that I grew up, Benton County, Iowa, but that his clan pronounces the name differently than the ours. He had grown up in a town close to my home in which my uncle had once been the pastor of the Lutheran Church. They said that they prefer small-town life, but that it can be stifling also. They must own a small business of some kind now because
she suggested that they weren't sure they would come to this event until she finally got annoyed of her customers reflexively and presumptuously wishing her a happy Easter all week long. (For me, the last straw was seeing the ridiculous bunny rabbit image attached to Sunday on the 7-day weather forecast on television.)
There we were, sitting in a hotel dining area-- them on a day trip, me only several blocks from home-- certain blood relatives from not so long ago at all, at least in evolutionary terms, and relating virtually identical stories involving closeted identity, discovery, enlightenment, and the complexity of our extended family social dynamics. For all we know,
he and I share a grandparent from only five or six generations ago in Germany, yet in a larger, even more dynamic sense, we
know that we share a grandparent from millions of years ago, who lived in a tree on all fours, a tail swinging her from branch to branch. If I didn't know better, I would be tempted to take that FACT of our existence and call it a "miracle."
The outing of a non-believer
After much soul-searching, I've decided to share something personal about myself with all of you. It's been hinted at to such a degree that I'm not even sure how big a surprise it will be for many of you: I'm an atheist. For years I've considered myself an agnostic, but this label has grown to seem incomplete to me in the spirit of both the definition and the facts. To me, the absence of evidence for a deity is the absence of evidence. I stand entirely unconvinced.
Nobody becomes an atheist because it will make their life easier. Atheists are one of the most unpopular groups in America.
A University of Minnesota study in 2006 found that 47.6% of Americans would disapprove of their child marrying an atheist, that's compared to 33.5% for marrying a Muslim and 27.2% for an African-American. (Try online dating for a while as an advertised atheist.) Thirty-nine percent of those questioned in the survey agreed with the statement that atheists "do not share (their) vision of American society," and that percentage is significantly larger than even the other marginalized groups appearing in the same survey-- 26.3% for Muslims and 22.6% for gays and lesbians. The head researcher for the project said at the time of the release that atheists represent "a glaring exception to the rule of increasing tolerance (in America) over the last 30 years."
There is only one member of either house of the U.S. Congress, California Rep. Pete Stark, who has said openly that he does not believe in a supreme being. That makes exactly half as many open atheists in the Congress as there are
Muslims,
largely considered otherwise perhaps to be the most marginalized group in America these days. At this point in history, it's a pretty absurd notion that an atheist could be elected president, a longer shot in probability than a woman, I would argue, or a second African-American. In 1987, incumbent vice president and presidential candidate George Bush (the "moderate" one) told a reporter, "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura has said that he was formally saying goodbye to his political career a few years ago when he made the public announcement that
he was an atheist. Additionally, atheists are the only minority group that are boldly excepted in the U.S. pledge of allegiance. The words "under God" were added in the 1950s for the express purpose of excluding atheists and making them to feel uncomfortable.
Of course it's a long-popular notion that atheists are less moral than are god-fearing persons, but this is silly, as polls arguably confirm. For example, atheists more than almost any individual religious denomination are more likely to be opposed to tactics of torture, to war, or even to religious intolerance in general. There are few, if any, recorded incidents of atheist suicide bombers anywhere in the world.
It's important now that closet atheists like me come out into the open. In England last fall, the visiting head of the Roman Catholic church likened that country's growing legion of godless individuals to
potential Nazis; and one of his cardinals, Walter Kasper, described his boss' arrival in multicultural London as landing in a "Third World country." The dynamic hypocrisy of these comments in regards to human morality recall, of course, that the first individual referenced, Pope Joseph Ratzinger, was himself a member of the Hitler Youth as a teen, and that he, first as a cardinal, and now as pope, obstructed and continues to harbor at the Vatican fugitives from a secular justice system that were wanted in connection with serial child molestations.
Earlier this year, Ratzinger also
declared that the clerical ordination of women a sin equal to male priests of his church forcing children and young adults to suck their penises. These are extreme examples perhaps of institutional religious immorality (although never forget that Ratzinger is the head of a church of 1.1 billion people) and certainly not exclusive to one faith, but nevertheless, I would not hesitate to put the morality of American atheist leaders (whomever they are) up against the leadership of any religious sect that one could name, and I venture to guess that if there were notable moral failures on the part of these leaders, there would be less blind allegiance to those persons by atheists (and less group-think in general) when it came to protecting their public leadership. Atheists don't even recognize a leadership hierarchy behind their beliefs.
Last summer, as I was perusing the Des Moines Farmers Market with a friend and fellow atheist, it warmed our hearts to come upon an information table for the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. The group evidently had staffed a table at the popular weekend event all summer long, and Central Iowa atheists have clearly been working hard towards a more visible public presence.
The American Atheists' 37th Annual National Convention will be held in downtown Des Moines this coming weekend (at the Embassy Suites, Thursday through Sunday). The Iowa Caucuses, held early in 2012, clearly had a lot to do with the timing of the group's decision to hold this year's event in Iowa's capital city (many presidential candidates have been genuflecting in our state recently), but it would also seem that the organization of our local group has been doing a formidable job of getting the word out and warranting such a high-profile event for 2011's Easter weekend. Paid advertisements and billboards displayed last summer caused quite a public reaction, with a shot of media attention, and those ads have returned this spring along with the arrival of the convention. The Embassy Suites has graciously agreed to remove the Gideon Bibles from the guests' rooms for the weekend, and 500 to 700 participants are expected for the event, including me.
Attendance at the convention is one way that local atheists can be more visible, but activities to promote the cause come in all shapes and sizes. Coming out to your friends and family is very important. You can refuse to stand for that Irving Berlin schlock "God Bless America" at the ballgame. (What, the national anthem's just not enough anymore, Commissioner Selig?) In his book "I Drink For a Reason," comic David Cross suggests you can have subversive fun with that hotel Bible: "Next time (and every time) you are in a hotel/motel/Holiday Inn (say what?!), take the Bible and inscribe, 'Best Wishes, [Your Name here].' Then make notes randomly throughout the book, circling passages and writing things like, 'WTF?! Is this for reals? Bullshit!' etc."
I recommend the writings of
Richard Dawkins and
Christopher Hitchens for thought-provoking material, and I want to thank my atheist friends for their insights and for our many probing discussions. People of faith, by definition, can't easily be swayed by arguments of logic or reason, but, in my opinion, Dawkins, the author of "The God Delusion," came up with the best analogy in the support of evolution and in support of critical thinking.
To paraphrase a question posed by Dawkins, a British biologist, if one sees a skyscraper standing tall in the urban landscape, do we ascribe to it the opinion that it was placed there by a crane, or rather by an invisible hook dropping from out of the sky? In other words, is it more probable that the building was the product of various materials and building blocks, of gradual construction involving increasing levels of complexity, or an inexplicable hand, of sorts, reaching down from the clouds? This analogy speaks to the often-heard argument from theists that the complexity of our life is too great for it to all be accidental. It's easy to be deceived by our eyes and by our limited comprehension of all the elements. Yet it's not accidental when we understand how that complexity has evolved through the theory of natural selection. Darwin's famous theory is really just "chance plus time," and there's great peace and tranquility for me in contemplating that indifference of our universe.
When atheists boldly express their opinion of a godless universe, they're often accused of being as arrogant, intolerant, or even dangerous in their absolutism as religious fundamentalists. This is a false parallel through and through. I don't know of a single atheist who believes that he or she wouldn't be swayed by evidence. This is the complete absence of prejudice. To be absolute in your religion is to dismiss all of the others and to close your mind to any number of different ideas. Every Christian I know, for example, dismisses the concepts of Greek gods, of wizards and witches and warlocks and spells and potions, but many will readily admit simultaneously that the source of their faith is likewise unprovable. They've made a random selection of belief that-- unsurprisingly-- often has almost everything to do with the cultural influences that have surrounded them throughout their lives.
To the contrary, being absolute in your atheism is to not discriminate against any theories until they can be safely dismissed according to the evidence, as so many
have been over the years, such as the idea that the world is only five thousand years old. This concept of free-thinking, and even some of the terminology that's used, causes confusion for people of faith. Evolution will always be only a "theory" despite all of the existing evidence supporting it because to meet the rigorous standards applied by science, we must always be able to
attempt to prove
or disprove it. This is the same standard applied to the "theory of gravity," which has not been nearly as politicized as the theory of evolution in the United States. Yet evolution has been examined in connection with virtually every living and non-living entity in our studied existence, and has
never been disproved. Just one animal or plant or microorganism on Earth, out of millions and millions that exist, has the potential to disprove Darwin's brilliant theory, yet none has. Scientists would throw out the theory immediately if contradictory evidence was discovered. Indeed some of Darwin's original theory
has been discarded over the last century and a half for discovery of conflicting evidence, while other elements still have been improved upon from the time of his published hypotheses on "The Origin of Species."
Our belief in something that cannot be proved or disproved may or may not have a value or currency for ourselves or for our collective existence, and that question about the
merits of religion can be debated, but whether it has that value or it doesn't, it still doesn't make those individual unsubstantiated beliefs any more true. Under the inherent guidelines of that irrational thought, if the evidence doesn't match what's written in the ancient text, it's the
evidence that must be thrown out, not the ancient text. As the writer, actor, and now-public atheist, Ricky Gervais,
eloquently wrote last year in the Wall Street Journal, "You can have your own opinions. But you can't have your own facts."
When half or more of an ancient text has been discredited for logic's sake, at one point to do we discontinue the desperate clinging to the remaining part and just throw the whole thing out entirely, filing it under the category of human fallibility and error? Throughout history, science has disproved many, many suppositions that were presented as fact in ancient religious texts, and today, basically as a result of this, we have "liberal/reformed" and "conservative/fundamentalist" sects found within almost each different faith. Many religious people try to find ways to reconcile the newer conflicting evidence with the beliefs of old, for the good of mawkish sentiment, I guess (this is your "liberal/reformed" category), or they simply choose to go "full-cocoon" and attack the science. The religion stubbornly survives in either case and more children than not are still being raised with the idea that unquestioned faith is a virtue when it
isn't.
I believe atheists are unpopular because their presence in the world forces people to think critically about our most culturally-ingrained beliefs. It's considered a social faux pas-- in fact, an act of outright hostility-- to challenge somebody's religious beliefs in a public setting. The brilliant attorney Clarence Darrow famously put William Jennings Bryan's religious beliefs on trial during
the Scopes court proceedings in Tennessee in 1925. Darrow's cross-examination of the witness wound up serving essentially as the end to the elderly Bryan's long career as a politician and moral leader. This frowning-upon of confrontation by society is what causes many atheists and rationalists to stay silent, yet we see the troubling results all across our cultural and political landscape when non-rational and non-proven assertions (about subjects even beyond religion) take hold. Oh, do we ever!
That's why I find it important now to speak out and to encourage others to do the same. Our beliefs about our cause in life and our existence should be forced to withstand public challenge and scrutiny. Persons in power, as well as our own fellow citizens, should know that atheists and humanists are tuned in to the world, that we're engaging ourselves in it, and that we're prepared to hold each of
them to the same rigorous standards of logic and rationality that we hold our own most cherished personal beliefs.
Tina Fey being awesome some more
The 100th-- and 101st-- episodes of "30 Rock" air Thursday, Tina Fey is pregnant, her new book is in stores, and I own a copy. Here's more unsolicited Tina:
On NPR Wednesday.
On Letterman Friday night.
Winning the Mark Twain Prize.
Stars
talking about her (featuring Jon Hamm in a Cardinals cap)
And
Alec Baldwin as Mark Twain.
The actor's actor
One of the most poignant scenes ever filmed appears very near the end of "The Godfather, Part II." The middle Corleone brother, Fredo, who we've gotten to know over the course of six hours and two films, is about to be fatally sanctioned as part of his younger brother's peregrination in losing his soul. As a child, his mother used to tease him that he was left at the front door by gypsies, and he's been passed over as head of the family crime business after never gaining the respect of his father and his peers.
It's not the famous film's most famous scene, but it's one of my favorites. Fredo is fishing with his nephew, and he confides that, as a boy, he once went fishing with his father and brothers and was the only angler in the boat to catch any fish. His secret of success, he tells the boy, was saying a Hail Mary every time he cast his line. It's a tender, final moment for a vulnerable and deeply-wounded character of such weak temperament and constitution that he's really been quite unlikeable throughout despite being presented to us opposite much more barbarous family members. For that one fleeting day on a fishing expedition years before, we're told, Fredo Corleone stood tallest in his family, and he never forgot it.
It's a grand testament to the actor that portrayed Fredo Corleone that few people today know who he is even as his character has become iconic. The actor was John Cazale and he was one in that epic generation of New York stage actors that exploded in films in the 1970s, a group that included, of course, Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Robert DeNiro, each of whom would be Cazale's co-stars in at least one film. Cazale died of cancer in 1978 at the age of just 42.
I just finished watching a 2009 documentary on Netflix entitled "I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale." It's not deeply revelatory as to the man's life, as I had expected. It's really just about his work on film. Even his more extensive experience on the New York stage gets little attention, probably because the nature of the theater medium is that there aren't any clips to present. Like his life, the documentary is all-too-brief-- only 40 minutes, but highly-recommendable. I kind of like that we don't find out much more about him actually, other than his approach to his art. He was an actor who seemingly took great pride in giving us only the characters that he projected on the screen.
Cazale survived to work in only five films over a span of seven years, but they are five films of almost-ridiculous superiority. Chronologically, they were "The Godfather" (1972), "The Conversation" (1973), "The Godfather, Part II" (1974), "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975), and "The Deer Hunter" (1978). The five films were each nominated for Best Picture and they garnered a combined
40 Academy Award nominations, surely a record
percentage for any actor in the history of Hollywood, yet none of the nominations went for Cazale. "I Knew It Was You" enlists the contributions of virtually every living, high profile collaborator Cazale ever had on film. Pacino, Streep, DeNiro, Gene Hackman, Francis Ford Coppola, (now the late) Sidney Lumet, Carol Kane, and John Savage, as well as the playwright Israel Horovitz, all offer their insights into Cazale. Clearly every person he worked with felt it important to participate in a project that would bring his work back to public attention.
The Founders' Flubs
Many Americans fall into a trap of treating our founding fathers like deities. (Whereas, I don't even capitalize 'founding fathers.') This is certainly an increasingly common mistake as our Declaration of Independence fades deeper and deeper into history, and into a legend of sorts.
They were nothing of the kind, of course. They were deeply-flawed men who wrote a revolutionary, beautiful, far-thinking, imperfect document—the U.S. Constitution-- that would have monumental implications for good around the globe. Their hubris and the prejudices of their era force us to always view our Constitution with an eye towards reinterpretation and change. It’s in honor of some our earliest national missteps that I offer up my list of the ten biggest imperfections found in our nation’s founding document and the early Amendments. Think of them as “the bloopers, errors, and goof-‘em-ups” of the men who had the boldness and foresight to declare, in 1776, that all white male property-owners are created equal and endowed by their imaginary best friend with certain inalienable rights, among them, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Just a couple notes first: The mistakes are listed in order of their appearance in the document, not in order of egregiousness. Also, I passed over some particular defects because they haven’t had major implications over the years. Someday, we may come to fear and resent again the idea of government soldiers being quartered in our homes without our consent, perhaps even to an extent worthy of it being only the Third Amendment to the Constitution, but for now, the existing Amendment has not been really applicable for much of the first 235 years of the Republic. (No disputes. Well done, I guess.) The age restrictions on serving as President (35) or in the Congress (25) seem rather unfair to me also, but nobody, young or old, seems to care. And young people will continue not to care as long as there are Kardashians on TV to distract them.
And now, the whoppers. I spent all day at work on this, so enjoy:
Article I, Section 1 & 3:
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall exist of a Senate and a House of Representatives... The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof... Yes indeed. We’re off the rails right there from the beginning—the creation of one house of the legislative branch that’s entirely unrepresentative. In 1913, part of this Section 3 was corrected to allow for the direct election of Senators by the people, but that doesn’t make up for the initial error of the rest of it. The monied and well-bred “noblemen” of the first Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 believed they were more qualified to choose representatives than were the common people of the land so the “upper house” of the bicameral legislature was reserved just for them. This started the heinous and
enduring trend of our Washington political class suspending democratic elements any time they felt their power and authority was being threatened. We’re still stuck with the absurd system of each state having the exact same representation in the Senate regardless of population. In the 2010 Census, the population of Wyoming was 563,626. The population of California was 37,253,956. That’s two Senators each. Under no definition of democracy should this be considered fair.
Article I, Section 2:
Three-fifths of all other persons (that is, African-American slaves) are excluded from representation in the government and in the calculation of taxation, establishing for the first time on official parchment that these individuals would be recognized by the newly-formed government as less than human. This particular “three-fifths” percentage was arrived at the old-fashioned way, a method that modern Democrats and Republicans can appreciate-- they compromised on it. I’m happy to report, though, that this element of the Constitution has been null and void since 1865.
Article I, Section 8 (17th Clause):
Congress shall have power... To exercise exclusive Legislation in all cases whatsoever over such District (not to exceed ten Miles square) as may... become the Seat of Government of the United States... And with that, the people of Washington D.C., whose numbers today exceed that of the state of Wyoming, have no representation in either legislative chamber. Do you think this example of taxation without representation is trivial? I steer you to a news report from just this week. In the budget compromise between Republicans and President Obama Friday, family planning services were shut down
in Washington D.C. only. Should District of Columbia residents register complaints with their Congressperson about Obama selling them out? Tough shit.
Article I, Section 9:
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight... The Human Slave Trade is formally granted its first 20 years of existence in the new “republic.”
Article I, Section 9 (again):
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it... Yuck. First of all, this one is written with horrendously vague and overreaching authority on behalf of the Executive Branch, and as a result, it’s no surprise that it’s been abused during nearly every instance of violent national conflict at home or abroad. Calling it a “privilege” to petition the court for a charge of unlawful detention shouldn’t distract from the fact that this should be considered a Right, by human law. To argue against it is to make the argument that some accused persons are simply too dangerous to warrant a fair trial. More absurdity.
Article II, Section 1:
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States. He shall... be elected, as follows: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the Whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative yada, yada, yada... The Electoral College was a product of the same mindset of monied arrogance that gave us the “upper chamber” of the legislature. Some day we might actually scrap this one, though. I’m cautiously optimistic. The election of Senators ultimately converted to a direct popular vote. Why not for the President?
Article II, Section 1 (again):
No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of the President... In all the to-do over President Obama’s birth certificate, nobody ever talks of the fact that this was a dumb provision from the start. The last governor of California, for example, wasn’t born in America, and he would have certainly been a legitimate candidate for the presidential position otherwise. In a country that derives its blood flow from the imprint of immigrants (now I'm mixing metaphors), and especially in a country in which so many immigrants arrive as children, what’s wrong with the idea of one ascending all the way to the Oval Office? The founders betrayed this one themselves with some added wording you'll find above that allowed
each of them to be eligible for the office. Remember, neither George Washington nor John Adams nor Thomas Jefferson nor James Madison nor James Monroe nor John Quincy Adams nor Andrew Jackson-- any of our first seven Presidents-- was born a citizen of the United States. Nobody questioned
their allegiance to the office.
Article IV, Section 2:
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall... be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour maybe due... First of all, they spelled "labor" like a dirty Canadian, but maybe we should be grateful for this one, despite all of its naked hideousness. This section was calling on Northern states to return fugitive slaves to their Southern owners, and in a strange way, it helped lead to the situation in which slavery was finally unsustainable “politically.” As if a shared government, Constitution and Bill of Rights wasn’t enough, the forced return of fugitive slaves made the citizens of the North actively complicit in the institution of slavery. The Underground Railroad caused resentment among Southern whites, and the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, denying freedom to an escaped slave, provoked outrage in the North. Isn’t it funny that none of these Constitutional elements that reference slavery actually used the word “slave” or “slavery”? They’re just persons being “held to Service or Labour,” don’t you know?
Amendment II (1791):
A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed... What a sloppy mess. The right to own a gun, or many guns even, is clear enough, but there’s a comma in there that has caused a mountain of debate and a world of pain. Well-financed lobbyists have trained us to believe that this amendment speaks specifically to the
individual's right to bear arms, yet the framers didn’t bother to start a new sentence after the “well-regulated Militia” part. I’m willing to concede that we each have a right to bear arms, but nobody ever references that “well-regulated” part. That phrase invites, nay,
demands strong regulation of firearms, if you're asking me—common sense criminal background checks, waiting periods, restrictions on armor-piercing bullets and semi-automatic weapons, all that good stuff
and more!
Amendment VIII (1791):
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted... No, I'm not against any of that, but we’ve failed on this social issue of criminal punishment so badly that something’s obviously wrong with this. The United States is a police state. What else would you call the country that incarcerates a larger percentage of its citizens than any other on the planet? If one exists, this must be it. We have 5% of the world’s population, yet we lock up almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. We imprison a wildly disproportionate number of African-Americans among them. In 2004, 14% of the entire African-American male population age 15 to 29 was incarcerated, that is, 4.5 million souls, and we’ve found a way to privatize much of the prison industry for corporate profit at the same time. A bold person might make the argument that we’ve found a way to actually legalize slavery again. This Amendment simply failed to go far enough to account for a truly enlightened society. Our dehumanization of our citizens has its roots in the framers’ failure to outlaw state-sanctioned murder when it left the punishment language (“cruel and unusual”) open to judicial interpretation.
Ok, that's it. Let me know what I missed. I’m off now to begin my new career as an unlicensed attorney specializing in Constitutional Law. You can do your part for the cause by lobbying your Congressional representatives for a Constitutional Convention to revisit these and other possible issues for potential amendment. If you live in Washington D.C., contact somebody else’s Congressional representative.
Television fashions
I feel as though I'm right on top of the latest thing when it comes to television. The Emmy Awards pit my favorites against my other favorites nearly every year. We're living now in a golden age for the medium, and I count myself a fan of so many shows: 30 Rock, Community, Parks and Recreation, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Big Bang Theory, Boardwalk Empire, Treme, Curb Your Enthusiasm, True Blood, Eastbound & Down, Modern Family, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Hot in Cleveland, and Dynasty (no, that one's wrong). Someday I'll catch up with The Office and How I Met Your Mother, and I want to investigate Mr. Sunshine and Justified. Late night TV is so good that I can watch roughly
half of the talk shows I want to watch
on a good night. Now, having said that, here is a list of the Nielsen Top 25 ratings from a recent week (March 7-13)...
1) American Idol (Wed)
2) American Idol (Thu)
3) The Mentalist
4) NCIS: Los Angeles
5) CSI
NCIS
7) The Big Bang Theory
8) Glee
9) CSI: Miami
10) Undercover Boss
11) Blue Bloods
12) Secret Millionaire
13) House
14) Survivor: Redemption Island
15) CSI: NY
16) Bones
60 Minutes
18) Two and a Half Men
19) The Bachelor
20) Harry's Law
21) The Amazing Race
Rules of Engagement
23) Mike & Molly
24) Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior
25) The Defenders
Do you see where I'm going with this? I'm certainly out of step with mainstream audiences, but mainstream audiences are also out of step with television critics and TV academy award voters. It wasn't always this way. I pulled the Nielsen Top 25 list for the 1987-88 season, when I was in the 7th grade (Jesus, I'm old). It looked like this for the year. The shows I watched are in caps...
1) THE COSBY SHOW
2) FAMILY TIES
3) CHEERS
4) Murder, She Wrote
5) THE GOLDEN GIRLS
6) 60 MINUTES
7) NIGHT COURT
8) GROWING PAINS
9) MOONLIGHTING
10) WHO'S THE BOSS?
11) DALLAS
12) NEWHART
13) AMEN
14) 227 (that's caps, in case you were wondering)
15) Matlock
16) CBS Sunday Night Movie
17) NBC Monday Night Movie
18) Monday Night Football
19) KATE & ALLIE
20) NBC Sunday Night Movie
21) L.A. LAW
22) MY SISTER SAM
23) FALCON CREST
24) Highway to Heaven
25) Dynasty
It's amazing I did any homework at all.
I suppose one would argue that the big difference now is cable television. Audiences have splintered, and for the most part, I have wandered off with many of them into cable's gated community
. It's not just that I'm out of the mainstream. The mainstream is going dry. The #3 show on the 2011 list, The Mentalist, had 14.3 million viewers on the measured night of March 10th. That number, as an average for the season, wouldn't have even placed it in the top 30 in 1988.
We've also changed the way we watch television. It was a very real thing at school in the 1980s to talk about TV shows we had watched the next day. This happened all the time. Now, still associating with men and women my own age and general demographics at work, I find that this never, ever happens. We all have our favorites, and if you do happen to share a program or two in common with someone else, chances are that one of you still plans to watch it online or on TiVO in the coming days or weeks, or will watch it 6 to 12 months from now on DVD. I've seen every episode of the six-year run of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," alternately on DVD or online, yet to this day I could not tell you what night of the week the original episodes air on FX.
There's still a breadth of marvelous, engaging programming out there. Better than ever, like I said earlier. But we're losing the communal experience-- the 'water cooler'-type event-- almost entirely, except for the Super Bowl, the occasional big series finale, such as "Lost" most recently, or a true television programming phenomenon, such as "American Idol," which sucks. I don't miss the uniformity of programming of the old days. There's more diversity on television than ever, and truly something out there for everyone. Yet that shared "event television" thing was pretty great too, and I often find myself missing it. My general melancholy is probably best epitomized by the difference between a Johnny Carson-hosted Tonight Show and a Jay Leno-hosted Tonight Show. It's been a slow fade dating all the way back to Milton Berle.
Jesse the Body and American Secrecy
We should all be grateful to former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura for being a high-profile figure asking important questions about our corrupt government. Ventura is absolutely correct, for example, that our government has even
admitted to fabricating us into war in Vietnam (through the staging of the Gulf of Tonkin incident), yet the discovery and admission of that deceit a few years ago caused nary a raised eyebrow among the watchdogs in our traditional news media.
Jesse's new book "63 Documents the Government Doesn't Want You to Read" has been filled with indisputable tidbits of information-- full declassified documents-- available to all in the public domain. It's an indictment of a government that has seemingly made secrecy, or lack of transparency, its #1 public objective. According to Ventura, our government saw fit to classify as "Top Secret"
16 million documents in 2010 alone. It's an absurdity. On Thursday, he
spoke to Al Jazeera, where they're less committed to protecting the U.S. political class.
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Old-fashioned racism may be coming back in vogue, replacing the veiled racism of the Willie Horton/"welfare queen"/Obama birther variety. A poll finds that 46%(!) of registered Republican voters in Mississippi
support a legal ban on interracial marriage.
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Albert Pujols will be profiled by Bob Simon on Sunday night's "60 Minutes."
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Tina Fey
answers the Proust Questionnaire in the May issue of
Vanity Fair.
Miss Jackson
I'm off to see Janet Jackson live in concert tomorrow night in Omaha. To commemorate, here are clips of Janet
as Penny Woods on "Good Times," as Janet fan
"Escalade" on a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, and as
herself onstage at 30 Rock.
