I’ve been thinking a lot about religion lately. Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church recently protested the funeral of a woman and her four kids who were killed by a drunk driver. The reason? She lived in Maryland, a state where an $11 million judgment was recently won against the WBC for protesting a funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq.
Somebody’s going to hell because they lived in the same state where you just lost a lawsuit. Makes perfect sense to me.
Hell is not a new concept to Phelps, of course. His WBC (why do those initials make me want to go bowling?) is notorious for protesting the funerals of everybody from gay people to U.S. soldiers on the premise that they are all in hell. His primary fixation is on gay people, as evidenced by the title of his website, godhatesfags.com. Since 9/11, he has extended his venom toward the U.S. military (due to “don’t ask, don’t tell”), then America in general, and any other country that he sees as especially gay-friendly. Hence the following websites: godhatesamerica.com, godhatescanada.com, godhatesmexico.com, godhatesireland.com, and godhatessweden.com. Even Mr. Rogers is in hell, according to Phelps! “It’s a beautiful day in the AAAAAAAAAAGH!”
Of course, it doesn’t take too much Googling to find sites that soundly refute Phelps. This site, for example, uses Bible verses to cut through Phelps’ crap like a chainsaw through a bowl of mush. (And you have to love the guy’s name: Darwin Fish.) Not that Fish is exactly a relativist. He has a whole list of religious figures—including Billy Graham!—that he places in hell for taking liberties with Scripture.
So the question is—assuming there is a hell (and there are plenty of eyewitness accounts of people who claim to have been there), who’s going there?
Many people, such as Fish, think that hell is reserved for people who don’t accept a certain religion—which, not coincidentally, happens to be their own religion. Phelps apparently consigns anybody to hell who has ever looked upon a gay person with less than absolute loathing.
One thing I have noticed about Biblical interpretations (and the same probably goes for other religious texts, too): the more literal the interpretation, the crueler it is. The more chapter-and-verse references you see, the more the interpreter claims to be “objective,” the more people are likely to be damned.
So I have come to one of two conclusions:
Either
1) Religious texts simply can’t be read in the same way that one might read The World Almanac or The Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
Or
2) God hates everything.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Fritzburgh endorses a candidate
So I guess it is time for Fritzburgh An’at to endorse a candidate for President.
There was a time when I thought of running myself, but then I figured that any votes I might get would only take votes away from the Democrats. I think we learned our lesson from Ralph Nader.
This is a very important election. We have a chance to bring America back to sanity with the choice we make this year. With the current mess in Iraq, spiraling gas prices and a horrible economy in general over here, and the decline of America’s standing in the world, we need a change.
It goes without saying that the Republican candidates are all a bunch of poopyheads who want to maintain the status quo. That goes for Ron Paul, too, who, behind all his rhetoric of freedom, is just another social conservative who would ultimately put women in burqas, even if he leaves it up to the states to do so.
Then there are the Democratic candidates. The problem with them is that the ones who make the most sense don’t stand a chance. The only one I could stand to listen to during the early debates was Mike Gravel, who probably won’t even get his own vote. Then there’s Dennis Kucinich, a man of great principle with a lot of innovative ideas—but he looks like an elf. Elves are just not electable in this country. Maybe it has something to do with Santa Claus.
Which, in essence, leaves us with the Big Three.
There is Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has proven that she will say or do anything in order to get elected. She has a well-documented history of kowtowing to special interest groups, and she is not committed to withdrawing troops from Iraq. The best thing I could say about a Clinton presidency is that she will receive the input of her husband on many decisions. Remember the ‘90s? Peace and prosperity? What a radical concept!
Then there is Barack Obama, whom I am tempted to support just to spite the people who are passing nasty junk e-mails about him. He is undoubtedly charismatic, the future of national politics. I question his stance on some issues involving alternative energy (he is a supporter of “clean coal” and ethanol). Even if Obama is not elected, you haven’t heard the last from him.
Which brings me to John Edwards. Now, no candidate is perfect, but Edwards appears to strike the best balance. He has experience as a trial lawyer representing injured people against corporations, so he has the background needed to stand up to big-money interests. He is committed to reducing the number of troops in Iraq with an eye to pulling the U.S. out entirely. He also wants to develop truly clean alternative energy sources.
I also found this article convincing. It left me with a lot of respect for the man. If he can pursue a political career despite his son’s death and his wife’s illness, I think he can handle whatever the next four years may throw at him.
For those reasons, John Edwards appears to be the best option, short of Al Gore entering the race.
There was a time when I thought of running myself, but then I figured that any votes I might get would only take votes away from the Democrats. I think we learned our lesson from Ralph Nader.
This is a very important election. We have a chance to bring America back to sanity with the choice we make this year. With the current mess in Iraq, spiraling gas prices and a horrible economy in general over here, and the decline of America’s standing in the world, we need a change.
It goes without saying that the Republican candidates are all a bunch of poopyheads who want to maintain the status quo. That goes for Ron Paul, too, who, behind all his rhetoric of freedom, is just another social conservative who would ultimately put women in burqas, even if he leaves it up to the states to do so.
Then there are the Democratic candidates. The problem with them is that the ones who make the most sense don’t stand a chance. The only one I could stand to listen to during the early debates was Mike Gravel, who probably won’t even get his own vote. Then there’s Dennis Kucinich, a man of great principle with a lot of innovative ideas—but he looks like an elf. Elves are just not electable in this country. Maybe it has something to do with Santa Claus.
Which, in essence, leaves us with the Big Three.
There is Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has proven that she will say or do anything in order to get elected. She has a well-documented history of kowtowing to special interest groups, and she is not committed to withdrawing troops from Iraq. The best thing I could say about a Clinton presidency is that she will receive the input of her husband on many decisions. Remember the ‘90s? Peace and prosperity? What a radical concept!
Then there is Barack Obama, whom I am tempted to support just to spite the people who are passing nasty junk e-mails about him. He is undoubtedly charismatic, the future of national politics. I question his stance on some issues involving alternative energy (he is a supporter of “clean coal” and ethanol). Even if Obama is not elected, you haven’t heard the last from him.
Which brings me to John Edwards. Now, no candidate is perfect, but Edwards appears to strike the best balance. He has experience as a trial lawyer representing injured people against corporations, so he has the background needed to stand up to big-money interests. He is committed to reducing the number of troops in Iraq with an eye to pulling the U.S. out entirely. He also wants to develop truly clean alternative energy sources.
I also found this article convincing. It left me with a lot of respect for the man. If he can pursue a political career despite his son’s death and his wife’s illness, I think he can handle whatever the next four years may throw at him.
For those reasons, John Edwards appears to be the best option, short of Al Gore entering the race.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
The Lord and the Lady
With a new year comes a resolution, of course—and my resolution this year is to be published.
I have written The Lord and the Lady, a 57,000-word young adult novel about paganism, but I find it too limiting to call it a “pagan novel.” Instead, I think it’s about the struggles we all have to be ourselves in a culture that demands conformity.
Jesus was always the answer for 17-year-old Alaina Cole, but when pagan teen Will Clayson moves into her hometown, she starts asking a new set of questions. She is soon faced with many choices—Christianity or paganism, her friends or her church, and the dictates of her culture or her sense of what is right. Her dilemmas form the core of The Lord and the Lady.
To start the year, I’m using Fritzburgh An’at as a forum to post the first chapter of The Lord and the Lady. I welcome any questions, comments, and constructive criticism—and if you are a publisher or literary agent, feel free to contact me!
Enjoy!
********
I have written The Lord and the Lady, a 57,000-word young adult novel about paganism, but I find it too limiting to call it a “pagan novel.” Instead, I think it’s about the struggles we all have to be ourselves in a culture that demands conformity.
Jesus was always the answer for 17-year-old Alaina Cole, but when pagan teen Will Clayson moves into her hometown, she starts asking a new set of questions. She is soon faced with many choices—Christianity or paganism, her friends or her church, and the dictates of her culture or her sense of what is right. Her dilemmas form the core of The Lord and the Lady.
To start the year, I’m using Fritzburgh An’at as a forum to post the first chapter of The Lord and the Lady. I welcome any questions, comments, and constructive criticism—and if you are a publisher or literary agent, feel free to contact me!
Enjoy!
********
CHAPTER 1
The First
Alaina Cole held Danielle Speck’s shoulders and lowered her into the water as if to drown her.
Danielle did not mind, as she leaned her head back into the water with a satisfied smile. Alaina pulled Danielle back out of the water two seconds later, and they hugged.
There were six other teens in the water in three groups of two. The two girls to the left of Alaina and Danielle also hugged, as did the two girls on the right. Farther down were two boys, who, of course, were not about to hug each other, so they high-fived and shouted “Woo!” as if their high school football team had just scored the winning touchdown.
The kids who had been lowered into the water each had a look of bliss, the kind that some of their peers might get from some good pot. Not these kids, though.
For they had all just accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior.
There were about 300 people around them, all applauding, some cheering, a few shouting “Amen!” or “Praise God!” The weather had cooperated on this August evening for the baptism ceremony, which, weather permitting, was always held at the outdoor arena at the Shady Glen First Christian Church.
The people came from all over Shady Glen, Ohio, which had a population of 9,439 in the last census—over a thousand of whom belonged to Shady Glen First Christian. The parents of the kids involved in the ceremony were there. Most of them had dragged their kids to every service at the church before the kids could talk. There were also some other townspeople who had nothing better to do on a Wednesday night. But most of all, there were teenagers, some of them baptized in similar services not so long ago. They were fervent followers of Kevin Boyer, the youth minister.
Kevin had come to Shady Glen five years ago after graduating from an obscure seminary in California. His home state was appropriate, as his blond hair and goatee made him look like an aging surfer boy. He did not care if he was too old for the part. Even though he was now 28 and married with a two-year-old son, he could often be seen tooling around Shady Glen on a skateboard he called Big Bertha, which was decorated with crosses and Bible chapter-and-verse references. That, along with his penchant for peppering his speech with words like “rad” and “phat” and calling boys and girls alike “dude,” made him very popular with the kids. With the urging of someone as cool as Kevin, the kids didn’t mind burning their Ouija boards and rap CDs—or even abstaining from sex.
It wasn’t always that way. In the 1960s, Shady Glen’s churches included one each of the more traditional, mainline Protestant denominations—Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Episcopal—as well as the Catholic church, St. Jerome’s. When Shady Glen First Christian opened in 1970, it was in a white, one-room building on the edge of town—the stereotype of the little country church. Its first minister called the church “non-denominational.” Shady Glen’s old-timers just called the church strange. What was all this talk about repentance and the Holy Spirit and being born again, they wondered? Wasn’t just being a good person good enough anymore? The church remained small for several years, until evangelical Christianity took a big upswing in the late ‘70s.
At that time, young people began to defect from the town’s mainline churches. They became fed up with spending Sunday mornings listening to their grandparents gossiping to the tune of a fusty pipe organ. Soon, they brought their friends to church with them, and they brought other friends. By the late 1980s, Shady Glen First Christian was the largest church in town—big enough to move out of the little white building and onto a three-building campus, including the main meeting hall, a youth center complete with a regulation-size basketball court, and the outdoor arena.
Meanwhile, the mainline churches withered as their members began to die off and not be replaced. Shady Glen Episcopal Church became so small that it merged with another church in the nearby town of Morgan City and moved there. The Methodist congregation was now so tiny that the weekly service was often held in one of the Sunday school rooms to cut the utility bills.
Shady Glen First Christian continued to grow after Kevin came to town, thanks not only to his rapport with the kids, but a slick, aggressive direct mail campaign aimed at teens. It gave the church a snappy nickname—“The First”—and portrayed it as the coolest place in town, which it was to much of Shady Glen’s youth. Shady Glen was a small town, after all, and The First was more exciting than hanging out at the Dairy Queen or sitting at home watching MTV.
Now, standing behind a lectern, Kevin turned toward the baptismal font, which was really a long, wooden trough filled with water three feet deep. He fanned his right hand out toward the font and turned back toward the crowd.
“Hallelujah!” he shouted. “Praise God!” The applause swelled as many in the crowd stood up.
The kids climbed out of the water and walked toward folding chairs in the front row, where stacks of towels awaited them. Alaina used a towel to drain some water out of her jeans, while Danielle used hers to dry off her curly, blonde hair with a frantic motion.
“All we hear in the news is how bad our kids are.”
Kevin’s voice boomed through the loudspeakers as the arena became quiet.
“You turn on the TV and all you see are kids getting pregnant, using drugs, killing people, stealing—and I know you ask yourselves, ‘Where will it end?’”
He paused as they pondered the question.
“Well, I’ll tell you where it ends—right here and right now!” he shouted as he poked an index finger into the air.
The crowd broke out in a roar of applause that shook the arena’s wooden floor.
“For we’re stopping it tonight! We’re stopping it one by one, with every fine young person such as Ashley, and Danielle, and Nicole, and Scott, that we bring to Jesus!”
The congregation responded with a cheer as if it were one entity, approving the baptism with a power worthy of any deity.
“Amen!” Kevin continued. “These young people here in the front row are the hope of our great nation. They will remain true to the Lord Jesus Christ. They will not end up getting high, stealing, listening to that horrible rap music, conceiving babies out of wedlock and then murdering them with abortions, like so many young people in America are doing today! No! They are our hope. They are America’s hope!”
There were a few stray claps, but most of the people remained silent, as Kevin looked down at his notes. He usually looked down right before he dropped a bombshell.
“And, I hate to say it—“
The crowd was fixed on his face, waiting for him to reveal the next threat to their way of life. What would it be this time? Rap music, homosexuality, and secular humanism had already been exposed. Kevin had been playing those cards with great skill since the day he came to town. Now he had the distant look in his eyes that he got when he was about to reveal the latest peril, as if he saw it in the distance waiting to pounce on the congregation.
“—but we must be eternally vigilant, for the forces of evil just will not rest! I have learned from a reliable source that the empty storefront at the corner of Fourth and Main—right here in Shady Glen—will soon be home to a purveyor of witchcraft supplies!”
There were a few gasps, but they were drowned out by a hubbub of confusion. Witchcraft? Come on! They don’t have witches anymore! Sure, there’s that show on TV, “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch,” but that’s just some kid’s show—nobody takes it seriously. Ridiculous! Tell us more!
“That’s right—witchcraft! The devil is renting a storefront right here in Shady Glen! Now, I know what you’re saying. Witchcraft—that’s something out of “The Wizard of Oz,” isn’t it? They don’t have witches anymore. We had the Salem witch trials long ago, and we burned them all, didn’t we? Well, I hate to tell you that witchcraft is still here, and it’s very, very real.”
The crowd grew silent again.
“You might have heard about it in the news. These are people who have rejected the Lord Jesus Christ! They make up their own gods, create their own rituals, and perform them—sometimes naked!”
There were a few gasps, as some of the older people were shocked that a minister would use the word “naked” in a sermon.
“The people who practice this perversity that they call a religion might call it Wicca or paganism or Druidry or whatever other name they might make up. They might tell you that they aren’t Satanists because their religion was around before Jesus. They might tell you that they worship the earth and love nature. Nonsense! For these people do not have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ! And you’re either for him or against him! If you do not believe in Jesus, you worship the devil, and you are destined to spend eternity in hell!”
The crowd erupted with cheering. Something about that word—“hell”—always made these people go crazy, especially when Kevin said it.
“So what do we do?”
A thin voice could be heard from halfway up in the seats once the cheering began to subside. It was Dara Bingham, a woman who was a mystery in town before she started having children. She now had six of them, ranging in age from 14 to two. When she started having kids, she also started becoming worried about the content of TV shows and music videos and the effect they might have on her kids. With the help of the ministers at Shady Glen First Christian, this worry blossomed into full-scale disgust with popular culture, which she was soon able to turn into a weekly editorial column in the Shady Glen Recorder. It was full of blather about how everything from Ivy League academics to “The Simpsons” were out to destroy the children of Shady Glen. And the town ate it up. If you judged from all the compliments she received when she walked down the street, it was the most popular column on the Recorder editorial page. But before this column hit the paper, nobody in town seemed to know her. Her former teachers at Shady Glen High School had to be shown old yearbooks to remember her, and those who did remember her recalled her as a shy girl who showed no real aptitude for anything—least of all Basic English. But now she was Shady Glen’s resident expert on popular culture.
“I’m glad you asked that, Dara,” Kevin continued. Of course, he had asked her to ask that question about an hour before the baptism. He even told her when to ask it—right after he said “hell.” “I know that some of you are thinking of taking the law into your own hands—of trashing the place, burning it down, or worse—but I beg you, please, do not do that! These people are well within the law, they can open their business, and they have the same protections in the secular law as we do…for now…”
There were a few smiles and nods around the congregation. Kevin, as well as the senior minister, the Rev. Tim Marshall, were not interested in running for office themselves, but they, like most of the members of the church, yearned for the day when righteous people would overturn Roe v. Wade and put prayer back in public schools—and they weren’t above openly campaigning for anyone who had those same goals.
“…but there is a bigger reason why we must not use violence against these heathens—because the Lord Jesus Christ forbids it! He said so himself in Matthew 5:44! He said, ‘Love your enemies! Bless those who curse you! Do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who despitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be the children of your father who is in heaven!’”
There were shouts of “Amen!” and cheers throughout the arena. Just how someone they’d never met had used and persecuted them was a question none of them had asked. Kevin hadn’t asked that question, either. All he knew was that Rod Landon, a Shady Glen First Christian member on City Council, told him who planned to rent the building and what for. Kevin also knew that his wife had wanted to open a restaurant in the same building, but found the rent a bit too high.
“I want you to go home and pray for these people—pray that they find the perfect love of our Lord Jesus Christ. And when they come to town, we must be kind to them and show them God’s love, so that they will see the error of their ways. For nothing is greater than the power of our Lord!”
There were a few prayers, a few more hymns accompanied by Joyfull Noize, a five-piece electric band on a stage behind Kevin, and then the service ended with people hugging those around them. Danielle’s parents and younger brother and sister all mobbed her in a group hug. Alaina’s parents walked up to her and clasped her for a split second. They laughed and exchanged niceties, and then Alaina, as she usually did after the Wednesday night service, told her parents she was going to Dominic’s for pizza with her friends from church.
The kids stuffed into various cars and rode the few blocks down to Dominic’s.
The First
Alaina Cole held Danielle Speck’s shoulders and lowered her into the water as if to drown her.
Danielle did not mind, as she leaned her head back into the water with a satisfied smile. Alaina pulled Danielle back out of the water two seconds later, and they hugged.
There were six other teens in the water in three groups of two. The two girls to the left of Alaina and Danielle also hugged, as did the two girls on the right. Farther down were two boys, who, of course, were not about to hug each other, so they high-fived and shouted “Woo!” as if their high school football team had just scored the winning touchdown.
The kids who had been lowered into the water each had a look of bliss, the kind that some of their peers might get from some good pot. Not these kids, though.
For they had all just accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior.
There were about 300 people around them, all applauding, some cheering, a few shouting “Amen!” or “Praise God!” The weather had cooperated on this August evening for the baptism ceremony, which, weather permitting, was always held at the outdoor arena at the Shady Glen First Christian Church.
The people came from all over Shady Glen, Ohio, which had a population of 9,439 in the last census—over a thousand of whom belonged to Shady Glen First Christian. The parents of the kids involved in the ceremony were there. Most of them had dragged their kids to every service at the church before the kids could talk. There were also some other townspeople who had nothing better to do on a Wednesday night. But most of all, there were teenagers, some of them baptized in similar services not so long ago. They were fervent followers of Kevin Boyer, the youth minister.
Kevin had come to Shady Glen five years ago after graduating from an obscure seminary in California. His home state was appropriate, as his blond hair and goatee made him look like an aging surfer boy. He did not care if he was too old for the part. Even though he was now 28 and married with a two-year-old son, he could often be seen tooling around Shady Glen on a skateboard he called Big Bertha, which was decorated with crosses and Bible chapter-and-verse references. That, along with his penchant for peppering his speech with words like “rad” and “phat” and calling boys and girls alike “dude,” made him very popular with the kids. With the urging of someone as cool as Kevin, the kids didn’t mind burning their Ouija boards and rap CDs—or even abstaining from sex.
It wasn’t always that way. In the 1960s, Shady Glen’s churches included one each of the more traditional, mainline Protestant denominations—Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Episcopal—as well as the Catholic church, St. Jerome’s. When Shady Glen First Christian opened in 1970, it was in a white, one-room building on the edge of town—the stereotype of the little country church. Its first minister called the church “non-denominational.” Shady Glen’s old-timers just called the church strange. What was all this talk about repentance and the Holy Spirit and being born again, they wondered? Wasn’t just being a good person good enough anymore? The church remained small for several years, until evangelical Christianity took a big upswing in the late ‘70s.
At that time, young people began to defect from the town’s mainline churches. They became fed up with spending Sunday mornings listening to their grandparents gossiping to the tune of a fusty pipe organ. Soon, they brought their friends to church with them, and they brought other friends. By the late 1980s, Shady Glen First Christian was the largest church in town—big enough to move out of the little white building and onto a three-building campus, including the main meeting hall, a youth center complete with a regulation-size basketball court, and the outdoor arena.
Meanwhile, the mainline churches withered as their members began to die off and not be replaced. Shady Glen Episcopal Church became so small that it merged with another church in the nearby town of Morgan City and moved there. The Methodist congregation was now so tiny that the weekly service was often held in one of the Sunday school rooms to cut the utility bills.
Shady Glen First Christian continued to grow after Kevin came to town, thanks not only to his rapport with the kids, but a slick, aggressive direct mail campaign aimed at teens. It gave the church a snappy nickname—“The First”—and portrayed it as the coolest place in town, which it was to much of Shady Glen’s youth. Shady Glen was a small town, after all, and The First was more exciting than hanging out at the Dairy Queen or sitting at home watching MTV.
Now, standing behind a lectern, Kevin turned toward the baptismal font, which was really a long, wooden trough filled with water three feet deep. He fanned his right hand out toward the font and turned back toward the crowd.
“Hallelujah!” he shouted. “Praise God!” The applause swelled as many in the crowd stood up.
The kids climbed out of the water and walked toward folding chairs in the front row, where stacks of towels awaited them. Alaina used a towel to drain some water out of her jeans, while Danielle used hers to dry off her curly, blonde hair with a frantic motion.
“All we hear in the news is how bad our kids are.”
Kevin’s voice boomed through the loudspeakers as the arena became quiet.
“You turn on the TV and all you see are kids getting pregnant, using drugs, killing people, stealing—and I know you ask yourselves, ‘Where will it end?’”
He paused as they pondered the question.
“Well, I’ll tell you where it ends—right here and right now!” he shouted as he poked an index finger into the air.
The crowd broke out in a roar of applause that shook the arena’s wooden floor.
“For we’re stopping it tonight! We’re stopping it one by one, with every fine young person such as Ashley, and Danielle, and Nicole, and Scott, that we bring to Jesus!”
The congregation responded with a cheer as if it were one entity, approving the baptism with a power worthy of any deity.
“Amen!” Kevin continued. “These young people here in the front row are the hope of our great nation. They will remain true to the Lord Jesus Christ. They will not end up getting high, stealing, listening to that horrible rap music, conceiving babies out of wedlock and then murdering them with abortions, like so many young people in America are doing today! No! They are our hope. They are America’s hope!”
There were a few stray claps, but most of the people remained silent, as Kevin looked down at his notes. He usually looked down right before he dropped a bombshell.
“And, I hate to say it—“
The crowd was fixed on his face, waiting for him to reveal the next threat to their way of life. What would it be this time? Rap music, homosexuality, and secular humanism had already been exposed. Kevin had been playing those cards with great skill since the day he came to town. Now he had the distant look in his eyes that he got when he was about to reveal the latest peril, as if he saw it in the distance waiting to pounce on the congregation.
“—but we must be eternally vigilant, for the forces of evil just will not rest! I have learned from a reliable source that the empty storefront at the corner of Fourth and Main—right here in Shady Glen—will soon be home to a purveyor of witchcraft supplies!”
There were a few gasps, but they were drowned out by a hubbub of confusion. Witchcraft? Come on! They don’t have witches anymore! Sure, there’s that show on TV, “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch,” but that’s just some kid’s show—nobody takes it seriously. Ridiculous! Tell us more!
“That’s right—witchcraft! The devil is renting a storefront right here in Shady Glen! Now, I know what you’re saying. Witchcraft—that’s something out of “The Wizard of Oz,” isn’t it? They don’t have witches anymore. We had the Salem witch trials long ago, and we burned them all, didn’t we? Well, I hate to tell you that witchcraft is still here, and it’s very, very real.”
The crowd grew silent again.
“You might have heard about it in the news. These are people who have rejected the Lord Jesus Christ! They make up their own gods, create their own rituals, and perform them—sometimes naked!”
There were a few gasps, as some of the older people were shocked that a minister would use the word “naked” in a sermon.
“The people who practice this perversity that they call a religion might call it Wicca or paganism or Druidry or whatever other name they might make up. They might tell you that they aren’t Satanists because their religion was around before Jesus. They might tell you that they worship the earth and love nature. Nonsense! For these people do not have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ! And you’re either for him or against him! If you do not believe in Jesus, you worship the devil, and you are destined to spend eternity in hell!”
The crowd erupted with cheering. Something about that word—“hell”—always made these people go crazy, especially when Kevin said it.
“So what do we do?”
A thin voice could be heard from halfway up in the seats once the cheering began to subside. It was Dara Bingham, a woman who was a mystery in town before she started having children. She now had six of them, ranging in age from 14 to two. When she started having kids, she also started becoming worried about the content of TV shows and music videos and the effect they might have on her kids. With the help of the ministers at Shady Glen First Christian, this worry blossomed into full-scale disgust with popular culture, which she was soon able to turn into a weekly editorial column in the Shady Glen Recorder. It was full of blather about how everything from Ivy League academics to “The Simpsons” were out to destroy the children of Shady Glen. And the town ate it up. If you judged from all the compliments she received when she walked down the street, it was the most popular column on the Recorder editorial page. But before this column hit the paper, nobody in town seemed to know her. Her former teachers at Shady Glen High School had to be shown old yearbooks to remember her, and those who did remember her recalled her as a shy girl who showed no real aptitude for anything—least of all Basic English. But now she was Shady Glen’s resident expert on popular culture.
“I’m glad you asked that, Dara,” Kevin continued. Of course, he had asked her to ask that question about an hour before the baptism. He even told her when to ask it—right after he said “hell.” “I know that some of you are thinking of taking the law into your own hands—of trashing the place, burning it down, or worse—but I beg you, please, do not do that! These people are well within the law, they can open their business, and they have the same protections in the secular law as we do…for now…”
There were a few smiles and nods around the congregation. Kevin, as well as the senior minister, the Rev. Tim Marshall, were not interested in running for office themselves, but they, like most of the members of the church, yearned for the day when righteous people would overturn Roe v. Wade and put prayer back in public schools—and they weren’t above openly campaigning for anyone who had those same goals.
“…but there is a bigger reason why we must not use violence against these heathens—because the Lord Jesus Christ forbids it! He said so himself in Matthew 5:44! He said, ‘Love your enemies! Bless those who curse you! Do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who despitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be the children of your father who is in heaven!’”
There were shouts of “Amen!” and cheers throughout the arena. Just how someone they’d never met had used and persecuted them was a question none of them had asked. Kevin hadn’t asked that question, either. All he knew was that Rod Landon, a Shady Glen First Christian member on City Council, told him who planned to rent the building and what for. Kevin also knew that his wife had wanted to open a restaurant in the same building, but found the rent a bit too high.
“I want you to go home and pray for these people—pray that they find the perfect love of our Lord Jesus Christ. And when they come to town, we must be kind to them and show them God’s love, so that they will see the error of their ways. For nothing is greater than the power of our Lord!”
There were a few prayers, a few more hymns accompanied by Joyfull Noize, a five-piece electric band on a stage behind Kevin, and then the service ended with people hugging those around them. Danielle’s parents and younger brother and sister all mobbed her in a group hug. Alaina’s parents walked up to her and clasped her for a split second. They laughed and exchanged niceties, and then Alaina, as she usually did after the Wednesday night service, told her parents she was going to Dominic’s for pizza with her friends from church.
The kids stuffed into various cars and rode the few blocks down to Dominic’s.
-----
“Did you hear about the car that the 12 Apostles drove?”
Jeremy Echols asked that as Alaina gathered with her friends around the table at Dominic’s in front of a large cheese and a large pepperoni and mushroom. Jeremy was president of Young Life at Shady Glen High School and had an air of maturity beyond his years. His father was one of the town’s most successful attorneys, and was a bit disappointed that his son wanted to be a minister, but tried not to let it show. He figured his son could be a success at anything he wanted to do, and the boy hadn’t done anything so far to prove him wrong.
His dinner mates were silent, as they’d never heard the joke before—or at least they weren’t letting on.
“They were all in one Accord!”
The kids groaned. Andrew Yeoman, Jeremy’s best friend, tossed a wadded-up napkin at him.
“Thirty whacks with a pepperoni for that one, dude!”
“‘Dude?’ What is this? Kevin Boyer, Jr., here?”
“Hey, I left my skateboard at home, man!”
Alaina was sitting at the end of the table, to Jeremy’s right. She was on her second piece of pizza and was having trouble finishing it as Jeremy ran through his litany of jokes. Where is baseball mentioned in the Bible? Oh, boy, here we go again—Genesis 1:1, “In the big inning…”
The stomachs began to get full and the kids were starting to get tired. Finally, there was silence, and Alaina asked the question she’d had on her mind ever since Kevin’s sermon.
“So have any of you heard anything about this witchcraft store?”
“I didn’t know anything about it until tonight,” Lisa Post said. Lisa was a cheerleader and had the personality to go with it. She was five foot two, greyhound thin, with long black hair and enough energy to light up the stadium. “It gives me the creeps! Ugh!”
“Why?” Alaina asked. “What do you really know about witches, besides what you’ve seen in the movies?”
“I’ll get you, my pretty! You and your little dog, too!” Jeremy broke in, hitting the Wicked Witch of the West’s voice dead-on, to much laughter—but not from Alaina.
“Well, I read an article in Rolling Stone last year that said that witches are not Satanists. They worship nature and the earth—“
“Tree huggers!” Jeremy mocked as he picked up the napkin that Andrew had thrown and tossed it at Alaina. “And what are you doing reading Rolling Stone, girl? Don’t you know that all those rock magazines have a humanist social agenda?”
Jeremy said the last three words with great foreboding, even though he wasn’t really sure what a humanist social agenda was. He’d never heard the phrase before Kevin used it a sermon six months ago.
“My dad said he saw on the 700 Club where witches sacrifice babies!” Lisa said, her voice starting to shake with fear.
“How do you know?” Alaina asked. “Do you remember that girl who was in our class when we were freshmen? Redhead, wore all that Goth stuff—I think her name was Megan?”
“Oooh, that girl was weird!” Lisa said.
“Yeah, she was weird, but she was also really nice. I witnessed to her a couple of times, and she started telling me about this Wicca she was into. But she was still nice to me when I talked about Jesus. She listened. She even asked some questions. I liked that. Then she moved away. I kinda miss her.”
“Face it, Alaina, you like everybody,” Jeremy said, admiring, but wary for her sake.
“Yeah, you even like that Fitzgerald kid!” Andrew said.
“Justin’s one of my best friends! He saved my life when we were 10—“
“Yeah, we know, he pulled you out of the creek when you couldn’t swim,” Andrew retorted. “He’s still a weirdo. I can’t believe they made him drum major.”
Jeremy laughed. “Yeah, he sure knows how to twirl that baton. I hear it’s all in those wrists of his.” He waved a limp wrist at Alaina to emphasize his point.
“Come on, guys,” Alaina protested. “Be nice.”
The conversation turned to the classes the kids would take when they went back to school, the Bible chapters they were supposed to read for Sunday school next week, and a linebacker on the Shady Glen High football team who was suspended for smoking pot and how stupid he was to blow his senior season like that.
Alaina let the subject of witchcraft rest, but she thought about it throughout the conversation. She thought about who the people behind the shop might be, what they believed, whether she might be able to save them, and just how much their beliefs really threatened hers.
After a while, she tired of all these thoughts, then thought she’d have another piece of pizza.
“Did you hear about the car that the 12 Apostles drove?”
Jeremy Echols asked that as Alaina gathered with her friends around the table at Dominic’s in front of a large cheese and a large pepperoni and mushroom. Jeremy was president of Young Life at Shady Glen High School and had an air of maturity beyond his years. His father was one of the town’s most successful attorneys, and was a bit disappointed that his son wanted to be a minister, but tried not to let it show. He figured his son could be a success at anything he wanted to do, and the boy hadn’t done anything so far to prove him wrong.
His dinner mates were silent, as they’d never heard the joke before—or at least they weren’t letting on.
“They were all in one Accord!”
The kids groaned. Andrew Yeoman, Jeremy’s best friend, tossed a wadded-up napkin at him.
“Thirty whacks with a pepperoni for that one, dude!”
“‘Dude?’ What is this? Kevin Boyer, Jr., here?”
“Hey, I left my skateboard at home, man!”
Alaina was sitting at the end of the table, to Jeremy’s right. She was on her second piece of pizza and was having trouble finishing it as Jeremy ran through his litany of jokes. Where is baseball mentioned in the Bible? Oh, boy, here we go again—Genesis 1:1, “In the big inning…”
The stomachs began to get full and the kids were starting to get tired. Finally, there was silence, and Alaina asked the question she’d had on her mind ever since Kevin’s sermon.
“So have any of you heard anything about this witchcraft store?”
“I didn’t know anything about it until tonight,” Lisa Post said. Lisa was a cheerleader and had the personality to go with it. She was five foot two, greyhound thin, with long black hair and enough energy to light up the stadium. “It gives me the creeps! Ugh!”
“Why?” Alaina asked. “What do you really know about witches, besides what you’ve seen in the movies?”
“I’ll get you, my pretty! You and your little dog, too!” Jeremy broke in, hitting the Wicked Witch of the West’s voice dead-on, to much laughter—but not from Alaina.
“Well, I read an article in Rolling Stone last year that said that witches are not Satanists. They worship nature and the earth—“
“Tree huggers!” Jeremy mocked as he picked up the napkin that Andrew had thrown and tossed it at Alaina. “And what are you doing reading Rolling Stone, girl? Don’t you know that all those rock magazines have a humanist social agenda?”
Jeremy said the last three words with great foreboding, even though he wasn’t really sure what a humanist social agenda was. He’d never heard the phrase before Kevin used it a sermon six months ago.
“My dad said he saw on the 700 Club where witches sacrifice babies!” Lisa said, her voice starting to shake with fear.
“How do you know?” Alaina asked. “Do you remember that girl who was in our class when we were freshmen? Redhead, wore all that Goth stuff—I think her name was Megan?”
“Oooh, that girl was weird!” Lisa said.
“Yeah, she was weird, but she was also really nice. I witnessed to her a couple of times, and she started telling me about this Wicca she was into. But she was still nice to me when I talked about Jesus. She listened. She even asked some questions. I liked that. Then she moved away. I kinda miss her.”
“Face it, Alaina, you like everybody,” Jeremy said, admiring, but wary for her sake.
“Yeah, you even like that Fitzgerald kid!” Andrew said.
“Justin’s one of my best friends! He saved my life when we were 10—“
“Yeah, we know, he pulled you out of the creek when you couldn’t swim,” Andrew retorted. “He’s still a weirdo. I can’t believe they made him drum major.”
Jeremy laughed. “Yeah, he sure knows how to twirl that baton. I hear it’s all in those wrists of his.” He waved a limp wrist at Alaina to emphasize his point.
“Come on, guys,” Alaina protested. “Be nice.”
The conversation turned to the classes the kids would take when they went back to school, the Bible chapters they were supposed to read for Sunday school next week, and a linebacker on the Shady Glen High football team who was suspended for smoking pot and how stupid he was to blow his senior season like that.
Alaina let the subject of witchcraft rest, but she thought about it throughout the conversation. She thought about who the people behind the shop might be, what they believed, whether she might be able to save them, and just how much their beliefs really threatened hers.
After a while, she tired of all these thoughts, then thought she’d have another piece of pizza.
-----
Copyright 2008 R.A. Fritz
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Clowns In My Coffee
Well, Christmas is three days away, and the world is going down the toilet. So I'm not in the mood for a "God-bless-us-every-one" blog entry. But that doesn't mean I don't have a sense of humor. So, I'm going to take this opportunity to share some of my favorite mondegreens.
We all have words and phrases that we have misread or misheard over the years, and the phrase "mondegreens" has been coined to describe them. In recent years, collections of mondegreens, particularly phrases in popular songs, have become popular. Some of the most common mondegreens, such as "'Scuze me while I kiss this guy" and "There's a bathroom on the right" have become pop culture phrases in themselves.
Some misheard song phrases have had bigger implications than a good laugh. The FBI investigated The Kingsmen for two years due to rumors that "Louie Louie" contained dirty lyrics. Rumors that Paul McCartney was dead began when a line from "Strawberry Fields Forever"--"cranberry sauce"--was misheard as "I buried Paul." And some radio stations balked at playing The Rascals' "Groovin'" because "you and me endlessly" was misheard as "you and me and Leslie."
I have misheard many lyrics, particularly when I was a child, so mondegreens are near and dear to my heart. Allow me to share with you a few of the mangled lyrics I've picked up over the years:
WRONG: Gimme that old-time pigeon
RIGHT: Gimme that old-time religion
“Gimme That Old-Time Religion,” traditional
WRONG: Through the courtesy of Pistol Pete
RIGHT: Through the courtesy of blistered feet
Theme from “The Flintstones”
WRONG: We'll have lots of fun with Mister Snowman until the alligators knock him down
RIGHT: We'll have lots of fun with Mister Snowman until the other kiddies knock him down
"Winter Wonderland," Darlene Love
WRONG: Track two to Texas
RIGHT: Try to detect it
“Whip It,” Devo
WRONG: I had some dreams, they were clowns in my coffee
RIGHT: I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee
WRONG: Someone who would spy on the wife of a close friend
RIGHT: Some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend
Both “You’re So Vain,” Carly Simon
WRONG: Eat me on a Friday, that’s all right
RIGHT: Eat meat on a Friday, that’s all right
“The Bitch Is Back,” Elton John
WRONG: I may take a little drink and shout out, "Tripoli!"
RIGHT: I may sink a little drink and shout out, "She's with me!"
"Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting," Elton John
WRONG: My God! A Doberman’s got me!
RIGHT: Montgomery’s got the answer!
“Sweet Home Alabama,” Lynyrd Skynyrd
WRONG: I wasn’t what I confessed
RIGHT: I’m worst at what I do best
“Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Nirvana
WRONG: Oh, my disco will begin
RIGHT: Oh, I just don’t know where to begin
“Accidents Will Happen,” Elvis Costello
WRONG: Her hair is Harlow gold
RIGHT: Her hair is hollow gold
“Bette Davis Eyes,” Kim Carnes
WRONG: She’s bound to put a cracker on my bed
RIGHT: She’s bound to put a blanket on my bed
“From a Buick 6,” Bob Dylan
WRONG: Our only goal’s to reach the rest of the show
RIGHT: Our only goal’s to reach the western shore
WRONG: So now you’d better stop reaping all your ruin
RIGHT: So now you’d better stop and rebuild all your ruins
Both “Immigrant Song,” Led Zeppelin
WRONG: Ma Rainey and Beethoven were wrapped up in roll
RIGHT: Ma Rainey and Beethoven once unwrapped a bedroll
“Tombstone Blues,” Bob Dylan
WRONG: So, open the door
RIGHT: Soy un perdador
“Loser,” Beck
WRONG: Jews in Frothingham
RIGHT: Jeux sans frontiers
“Games Without Frontiers,” Peter Gabriel
WRONG: Precious are these eyes
RIGHT: Yeux sans un visage
“Eyes Without a Face,” Billy Idol
WRONG: We can make men’s shorts
RIGHT: Wie du wirklich sollst
“Wooden Heart,” Joe Dowell
WRONG: Come and take my herb
RIGHT: Plowmen dig my earth
“All Along the Watchtower,” Jimi Hendrix
(Note: some of my high school buddies sang this line as “Come and toke my herb” as a joke, but I never heard it as such.)
WRONG: Curse the walls around me, you were such a stupid get
RIGHT: Curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid get
“I’m So Tired,” The Beatles
WRONG: I feel so suicidal, just like dinners fixed at home
RIGHT: I feel so suicidal, just like Dylan’s Mister Jones
“Yer Blues,” The Beatles
WRONG: I was educated at Woodstock
RIGHT: I was educated, got good stock
“Soul Man,” Sam and Dave
(Note: “Soul Man” was released two years before Woodstock.)
WRONG: Brightest building wall
RIGHT: Your pride has built a wall
“Still Loving You,” Scorpions
WRONG: Nature is a whore, cruises on a broom
RIGHT: Nature is a whore, bruises on the fruit
“In Bloom,” Nirvana
WRONG: I would not fight
RIGHT: I’ll win the fight
“T.N.T.,” AC/DC
WRONG: We said goodbye to his girl, cheerio
RIGHT: We said goodbye to his skull, shrill yell
“The Black Angel’s Death Song,” The Velvet Underground
WRONG: Adios, au revoir, I’ll be the same
RIGHT: Adios, au revoir, auf wiederseh’n
The closing theme from “The Lawrence Welk Show”
WRONG: Airmen, airmen, airmen, airmen, airmen
RIGHT: Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen
“Amen,” The Impressions
My wife and I ran into a strange mondegreen at karaoke a few weeks ago. Karaoke lyrics often contain mondegreens because many of them are made in Japan by people who may be translating the words phonetically. My wife was singing "Tears Of a Clown," and the line "Just like Pagliacci did" appeared on the screen as "Just like Polly Archer did." She couldn't stop laughing through the rest of the song!
So, to all of you, have a Merry Christmas, Happy Yule, Festive Festivus, or whatever you want to celebrate. That means you, too, Polly Archer.
We all have words and phrases that we have misread or misheard over the years, and the phrase "mondegreens" has been coined to describe them. In recent years, collections of mondegreens, particularly phrases in popular songs, have become popular. Some of the most common mondegreens, such as "'Scuze me while I kiss this guy" and "There's a bathroom on the right" have become pop culture phrases in themselves.
Some misheard song phrases have had bigger implications than a good laugh. The FBI investigated The Kingsmen for two years due to rumors that "Louie Louie" contained dirty lyrics. Rumors that Paul McCartney was dead began when a line from "Strawberry Fields Forever"--"cranberry sauce"--was misheard as "I buried Paul." And some radio stations balked at playing The Rascals' "Groovin'" because "you and me endlessly" was misheard as "you and me and Leslie."
I have misheard many lyrics, particularly when I was a child, so mondegreens are near and dear to my heart. Allow me to share with you a few of the mangled lyrics I've picked up over the years:
WRONG: Gimme that old-time pigeon
RIGHT: Gimme that old-time religion
“Gimme That Old-Time Religion,” traditional
WRONG: Through the courtesy of Pistol Pete
RIGHT: Through the courtesy of blistered feet
Theme from “The Flintstones”
WRONG: We'll have lots of fun with Mister Snowman until the alligators knock him down
RIGHT: We'll have lots of fun with Mister Snowman until the other kiddies knock him down
"Winter Wonderland," Darlene Love
WRONG: Track two to Texas
RIGHT: Try to detect it
“Whip It,” Devo
WRONG: I had some dreams, they were clowns in my coffee
RIGHT: I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee
WRONG: Someone who would spy on the wife of a close friend
RIGHT: Some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend
Both “You’re So Vain,” Carly Simon
WRONG: Eat me on a Friday, that’s all right
RIGHT: Eat meat on a Friday, that’s all right
“The Bitch Is Back,” Elton John
WRONG: I may take a little drink and shout out, "Tripoli!"
RIGHT: I may sink a little drink and shout out, "She's with me!"
"Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting," Elton John
WRONG: My God! A Doberman’s got me!
RIGHT: Montgomery’s got the answer!
“Sweet Home Alabama,” Lynyrd Skynyrd
WRONG: I wasn’t what I confessed
RIGHT: I’m worst at what I do best
“Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Nirvana
WRONG: Oh, my disco will begin
RIGHT: Oh, I just don’t know where to begin
“Accidents Will Happen,” Elvis Costello
WRONG: Her hair is Harlow gold
RIGHT: Her hair is hollow gold
“Bette Davis Eyes,” Kim Carnes
WRONG: She’s bound to put a cracker on my bed
RIGHT: She’s bound to put a blanket on my bed
“From a Buick 6,” Bob Dylan
WRONG: Our only goal’s to reach the rest of the show
RIGHT: Our only goal’s to reach the western shore
WRONG: So now you’d better stop reaping all your ruin
RIGHT: So now you’d better stop and rebuild all your ruins
Both “Immigrant Song,” Led Zeppelin
WRONG: Ma Rainey and Beethoven were wrapped up in roll
RIGHT: Ma Rainey and Beethoven once unwrapped a bedroll
“Tombstone Blues,” Bob Dylan
WRONG: So, open the door
RIGHT: Soy un perdador
“Loser,” Beck
WRONG: Jews in Frothingham
RIGHT: Jeux sans frontiers
“Games Without Frontiers,” Peter Gabriel
WRONG: Precious are these eyes
RIGHT: Yeux sans un visage
“Eyes Without a Face,” Billy Idol
WRONG: We can make men’s shorts
RIGHT: Wie du wirklich sollst
“Wooden Heart,” Joe Dowell
WRONG: Come and take my herb
RIGHT: Plowmen dig my earth
“All Along the Watchtower,” Jimi Hendrix
(Note: some of my high school buddies sang this line as “Come and toke my herb” as a joke, but I never heard it as such.)
WRONG: Curse the walls around me, you were such a stupid get
RIGHT: Curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid get
“I’m So Tired,” The Beatles
WRONG: I feel so suicidal, just like dinners fixed at home
RIGHT: I feel so suicidal, just like Dylan’s Mister Jones
“Yer Blues,” The Beatles
WRONG: I was educated at Woodstock
RIGHT: I was educated, got good stock
“Soul Man,” Sam and Dave
(Note: “Soul Man” was released two years before Woodstock.)
WRONG: Brightest building wall
RIGHT: Your pride has built a wall
“Still Loving You,” Scorpions
WRONG: Nature is a whore, cruises on a broom
RIGHT: Nature is a whore, bruises on the fruit
“In Bloom,” Nirvana
WRONG: I would not fight
RIGHT: I’ll win the fight
“T.N.T.,” AC/DC
WRONG: We said goodbye to his girl, cheerio
RIGHT: We said goodbye to his skull, shrill yell
“The Black Angel’s Death Song,” The Velvet Underground
WRONG: Adios, au revoir, I’ll be the same
RIGHT: Adios, au revoir, auf wiederseh’n
The closing theme from “The Lawrence Welk Show”
WRONG: Airmen, airmen, airmen, airmen, airmen
RIGHT: Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen
“Amen,” The Impressions
My wife and I ran into a strange mondegreen at karaoke a few weeks ago. Karaoke lyrics often contain mondegreens because many of them are made in Japan by people who may be translating the words phonetically. My wife was singing "Tears Of a Clown," and the line "Just like Pagliacci did" appeared on the screen as "Just like Polly Archer did." She couldn't stop laughing through the rest of the song!
So, to all of you, have a Merry Christmas, Happy Yule, Festive Festivus, or whatever you want to celebrate. That means you, too, Polly Archer.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Huckabee: Environmentalism led to Columbine
I may be hanging out with these guys on Jan. 20, 2009.Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s spotlight grew a few weeks back when he said that God was responsible for his rise in the polls.
This statement cemented his position among evangelicals as their candidate for the White House. It also cemented his position among many other people as a stark raving loon.
Now comes a quote from his 1998 book, Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture of Violence, in which he blames school shootings, in part, on environmentalism.
That’s right. You tree-hugging hippies helped create Columbine. Here’s the quote:
This statement cemented his position among evangelicals as their candidate for the White House. It also cemented his position among many other people as a stark raving loon.
Now comes a quote from his 1998 book, Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture of Violence, in which he blames school shootings, in part, on environmentalism.
That’s right. You tree-hugging hippies helped create Columbine. Here’s the quote:
Abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual
activism have fragmented and polarized our communities.
I expect odd birds such as Huckabee to blame abortion and pornography for violence in our culture—but environmentalism?
Of course! That’s what goes through the mind of every kid who goes postal in school! They’re doing it because they care about the earth! Fewer people mean less greenhouse gases, which mean less global warming. What else could Ryan Harris and Dylan Klebold have been thinking about? So I suppose, by this same logic, that it’s Al Gore’s fault that our kids are killing each other? Thank you so much for enlightening me, ya jagoff.
If this guy gets elected, I’m moving to friggin’ Canada. It should be fairly temperate by then, if Huckabee’s attitude toward the environment remains unchecked. We wouldn’t want to fragment our communities, even if they’re underwater.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Say It Ain't So, *
The ugly truth is now out, even if it has seemed inevitable for quite some time.
The report by former Senator George Mitchell has been released, and it has linked over 80 Major League Baseball players to steroid use.
It seems sad that there is not more shock or outrage. Instead, this scandal seems like a foregone conclusion.
Baseball was The Great American Game once upon a time. Whoever first called it that is now lost in the murk of history, and the phrase itself is probably headed for extinction, unless some desperate sports publicist tries to resurrect it.
Even if you never played the game--even if you didn't like it--if you grew up in America in the 20th century, baseball was probably a major fixture of your youth.
I know it was for me. Some of my earliest memories consisted of lying in bed on a summer night when I was four or five, as my brother Joe and I listened to a Reds game on WLW. I'll never forget the monaural whirr of those broadcasts. I didn't know much about baseball yet. I thought a home run was the only way to score (the guys just ran around the bases for the exercise), and I had no idea what a shortstop did. But as I heard the names--Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Dave Concepcion, and the rest of what would later become known as "The Big Red Machine"--I knew that this thing called baseball was something timeless and important. Or so it seemed.
My brothers and I followed the Reds through the World Series years of the '70s, into a long, bad stretch in the '80s. Then there was that great championship season of 1990, with its sweep of the A's in four games.
At some point after that, my interest in baseball started to wane. Perhaps it was because I began to work in horse racing and had less time to follow other sports. Maybe it was due to the 1994 players' strike, which cut a season short right when it was getting interesting. Or perhaps it was the sport's financial inequities, which have turned 26 franchises into farm teams for the other four. In any case, I could sense that something had changed in the sport, and not for the better.
And now you have an obvious cheater holding the coveted home run crown and a report on steroid abuse that reads like an All-Star Game roster, all coming off the heels of a World Series that no one outside of New England or Colorado cared about.
I've heard it said that the top three sports of my grandpa's generation were baseball, boxing and horse racing. They were the most popular sports in the first half of the 20th century, but have each lost their dominance. The reason most pundits cite is that they are too slow for a modern audience that craves constant action. But it should be noted that allegations of cheating have been widespread in all three as well.
I'm not naive enough to think that things were better in the old days. Babe Ruth may have done it on hot dogs and beer, but who's to say he wouldn't have used steroids if given the opportunity? Maybe baseball hasn't gotten worse so much as chemistry has gotten better.
Some may feel that a piece of their innocence was lost with today's announcement of the Mitchell Report--but maybe innocence is overrated.
The report by former Senator George Mitchell has been released, and it has linked over 80 Major League Baseball players to steroid use.
It seems sad that there is not more shock or outrage. Instead, this scandal seems like a foregone conclusion.
Baseball was The Great American Game once upon a time. Whoever first called it that is now lost in the murk of history, and the phrase itself is probably headed for extinction, unless some desperate sports publicist tries to resurrect it.
Even if you never played the game--even if you didn't like it--if you grew up in America in the 20th century, baseball was probably a major fixture of your youth.
I know it was for me. Some of my earliest memories consisted of lying in bed on a summer night when I was four or five, as my brother Joe and I listened to a Reds game on WLW. I'll never forget the monaural whirr of those broadcasts. I didn't know much about baseball yet. I thought a home run was the only way to score (the guys just ran around the bases for the exercise), and I had no idea what a shortstop did. But as I heard the names--Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Dave Concepcion, and the rest of what would later become known as "The Big Red Machine"--I knew that this thing called baseball was something timeless and important. Or so it seemed.
My brothers and I followed the Reds through the World Series years of the '70s, into a long, bad stretch in the '80s. Then there was that great championship season of 1990, with its sweep of the A's in four games.
At some point after that, my interest in baseball started to wane. Perhaps it was because I began to work in horse racing and had less time to follow other sports. Maybe it was due to the 1994 players' strike, which cut a season short right when it was getting interesting. Or perhaps it was the sport's financial inequities, which have turned 26 franchises into farm teams for the other four. In any case, I could sense that something had changed in the sport, and not for the better.
And now you have an obvious cheater holding the coveted home run crown and a report on steroid abuse that reads like an All-Star Game roster, all coming off the heels of a World Series that no one outside of New England or Colorado cared about.
I've heard it said that the top three sports of my grandpa's generation were baseball, boxing and horse racing. They were the most popular sports in the first half of the 20th century, but have each lost their dominance. The reason most pundits cite is that they are too slow for a modern audience that craves constant action. But it should be noted that allegations of cheating have been widespread in all three as well.
I'm not naive enough to think that things were better in the old days. Babe Ruth may have done it on hot dogs and beer, but who's to say he wouldn't have used steroids if given the opportunity? Maybe baseball hasn't gotten worse so much as chemistry has gotten better.
Some may feel that a piece of their innocence was lost with today's announcement of the Mitchell Report--but maybe innocence is overrated.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
The conservative's "F word"
During an attempt to convince his evangelical Christian base that he’s not a member of an insidious devil cult after all, Mitt Romney today put forth the proposition that freedom requires religion.
"Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the
windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and
commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone,"
the
GOP contender said.
This speech, while making Thomas Jefferson spin in his grave, alienated millions of nonreligious Americans, and with good reason. Romney is saying that anybody who is not religious is an enemy of freedom.
My attitude toward Romney’s speech is…eh. I’m not going to vote for him anyway, but I have to wonder just how he defines freedom.
Freedom, once the defining concept behind America, has become the ultimate conservative buzzword. You will not find a conservative who doesn’t throw the word around more often than Mel Gibson did in Braveheart. But what does it mean to them?
Freedom of speech? As long as you agree with them. Go to Free (there’s that word again) Republic or a similar conservative website and tell them, for example, that you think gay people should be left alone. I guarantee you that someone will respond calling you a “rump ranger.”
Freedom of religion? As long as you’re a Christian—preferably an evangelical Protestant. Of course, they’ll let in mainline Protestants, Catholics, Mormons—and even Jews!—but only when it serves their purpose. But the rest of you heathens are SOL.
The freedom of association? As long as it's not with anyone swarthy. Then you could be shipped off on a plane bound for Gitmo.
The freedom to marry whomever you choose? The freedom to have an abortion? You gotta be kiddin’!
I’ve listed the many possible freedoms and crossed each one off that these supposed freedom-mongers do not actually support, and I’ve narrowed down their definition of freedom to one thing.
The freedom to own an assault rifle.
That’s it. That’s what freedom means to a conservative. The right to own a weapon that’s capable of tearing your neighbor’s internal organs to shreds.
Then again, given the Bush administration’s policies toward civil liberties, maybe the conservative concept of freedom is the one defined many years ago by Kris Kristofferson—just another word for nothing left to lose.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)