Mel-Anon

Annotated Cal Thomas

Here:

That the "peace activists" believed their brand of Christianity would trump the fanatical Muslims who regarded them as infidels and worthy of death meant that Fox and the others would either be used for propaganda purposes by the enemies of freedom, or made to sacrifice their lives like animals on an ancient altar in the furtherance of the fanatics' dream of a theocratic state. In this instance they were used for both.

Later:

Peace, like happiness, is a byproduct, not a goal that can be unilaterally attained. Peace happens when evil is vanquished.

IOW, fundamentalist Muslims believe we are irredeemably evil and don't deserve to live.  Consequently, I think they are irredeemably evil and don't deserve to live.  QED. 

Strange how fundamentalism of many stripes tends to work as a large room of mirrors all reflecting each other.   

More thorough response from David B. Miller (good Mennonite name!).  Hat tip to Peterson. 

Thou shalt have no other Mexicans before me

Okay, I have to pull one thing out from that Goldberg story, because it combines my last two posts into one. 

"Bush has hurt his own troops very badly with what he's done on immigration," Phyllis Schlafly told me in a room outside the hall. "I think he's really destroying his base with his views on bringing in more guest workers." Others complained about Bush's failure to push a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. People were shocked that the government America midwifed in Afghanistan seemed close to executing Christian convert Abdul Rahman. In the face of lassitude, speakers repeatedly cautioned against giving in to disillusionment and apathy. They reminded the audience that they are one judge away from overturning Roe v. Wade. They warned that Christianity is on the verge of being criminalized in America, and they harped on the manifold dangers of the "homosexual agenda."

Pretty standard stuff from these guys, except...what does Bush's policy on immigration have anything to do with the "War on Christians," and why does arch-prude Phyllis Schlafly care about it?  Are they pushing their sinful "poor immigrant farmer" agenda down her throat, or is she slipping up and letting her bile against gays and others go into the realm of xenophobia where she suddenly can't justify it with hackneyed Bible prooftexts? 

It's hard out here...

After another fairly timid year of the cooked-up "War on Christmas," I was willing to consider that maybe, just maybe, the self-pitying religious folks and their talk-radio puppetmasters were coming around to the idea that almost no one actually felt marginalized or persecuted because of store clerks saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." 

Whoo-wee, you have to admire the persistence of some people. 

This week, radio commentator Rick Scarborough convened a two-day conference in Washington on the "War on Christians and the Values Voters in 2006." The opening session was devoted to "reports from the frontlines" on "persecution" of Christians in the United States and Canada, including an artist whose paintings were barred from a municipal art show in Deltona, Fla., because they contained religious themes.

"It doesn't rise to the level of persecution that we would see in China or North Korea," said Tristan Emmanuel, a Canadian activist. "But let's not pretend that it's okay."

For that matter, it doesn't even rise to the level of actual persecution of an actual minority.  Not the best of timing on their part, considering...

...a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

(Ironically, I'm the individual that most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry, so we have something in common!) 

This gives me a chance to plug two of Slactivist's greatest hits, including the awesome satirical rant from commenter Merlin Missy, which I think is the final word on the topic.

Of course Christians are persecuted in the United States. After all, everyone knows Christians can't marry other Christians (except in one state but nobody recognizes Christian marriages anywhere else and it's not like those are real marriages anyway), can't adopt ot become foster parents after they truthfully answer the "Faith" question on the questionnaire, can be denied housing and jobs for being Christians, and are regularly the butt of jokes where practitioners of other religions (especially Jews) are portrayed as kind and giving...

Politicians regularly end statements with "And Allah bless America," and when called on it, they claim they mean all gods when they say Allah. "In YHWH We Trust" is written on our money. Teenagers who tell their parents they're interested in Christianity, or believe they might be Chrisrians, are told they're "going through a (rebellious) phase" and are often sent to counselling to "fix" them. The first response people often make when they hear someone's family member is a Christian is to say "I'm so sorry." Christian clubs at colleges don't advertise their meetings because atheists regularly show up and hand out copies of "On the Origen of Species."

Or you know, not.

Elsewhere, Michelle Goldberg, Street Prophets,

About those huddled masses...

After lurking on the sidelines for several years, illegal immigration has suddenly become the budding starlet of the political world in the past week and a half.  A bill introduced by Rep. Jim Sensebrenner, the same man behind the original Patriot Act, passed the U.S. House last week, making it a felony to be an undocumented worker in the United States, among other things.  The bill set off a wave of protests over the weekend, including many people waving Mexican flags, which has really got the Holy American xenophobes worked up to a lather. 

Which, given the cynical nature of politics, is probably what it's intended to do.  With the Republicans teetering on a midterm schism over the Bushites' incompetence, rallying around immigration reform will at least give the red-blooded "Murican wing of the party something to crow about for the next few months.  Not that we on the left have an open-and-shut case either, as we have to balance multiculturalist goody-goodys like me with the labor concerns that illegals usually end up being exploited by corporations because they can't vote or otherwise defend themselves. 

At the very least, it's fun to watch the jingos squirm and try to explain how things are different from when their inevitably immigrant ancestors lived. 

Some better analysis from around the blogosphere:

Body and Soul ties things together with FDR.

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez undresses the ridiculous Lou Dobbs.  (uh..poor choice of words)

Spittin' image

A picture is worth a thousand words, unless it's a picture of me, in which case it's a misdemeanor in 41 states and most of the Commonwealth. 

Anyway, yeah, that's my picture and no, it's not a very good one, but anything else is frankly more ugly than even I can handle.  Consider that your punishment for not commenting; just say something and I"ll consider taking away the pain ;-). 

Obligatory "barren countryside" photos may follow a bit later; photo editing can be almost fun;, makes me wish I were good at it. 

Sunday silence

As a longsuffering fan of Indycar racing, I've learned that--barring an unusual exception--there's only really ever one reason why I would see any coverage of my favorite niche sport on evening news broadcasts or the frontpage of NYTimes.com.

That's when someone's dead. 

The Indy Racing League rookie Paul Dana, a new teammate of the 2004 Indianapolis 500 champion Buddy Rice and the 2005 Indy 500 rookie sensation Danica Patrick, died today after he was involved in a collision during a practice session five hours before the season opener at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida.

Dana, a native of St. Louis who would have celebrated his 31st birthday on April 15, was pronounced dead at noon today at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. Rice and Patrick, whose cars are co-owned by the 1986 Indy 500 champion, Bobby Rahal, and the late-night talk-show host David Letterman, withdrew from the Toyota Indy 300.

"It is a very black day for us," Rahal said at a news conference before the race.

As an unofficial apologist for "the press" in most circumstances, I'm usually inclined to defend them against charges of an undue fascination with the morbid, at least by the more reputable news sources (i.e., not cable televison.)  But days like today are when they earn that reputation.  Typically, a race like today would barely register, at most warranting a three-paragraph wire service story on the last page of the sports section.  Is an incident like this significant news?  Sure, but only if you give some significance to the context where it took place.  When you assign the mantle of "front-page news" to an event only when something sensationally terrible happens, it (and thus far exceeding the significance you would normally ascribe to it), the public gets an unfair representation of the sport, and furthermore we fans think that you only care about us when something awful happens. 

Knight school

Browsing Wikipedia the other day I found it amusing that the Bob Knight article has been tagged with the dreaded neutral point-of-view desingation.  If that seems like a trivial item to get the NPOV warning more commonly associated with discussions like abortion or the Israeli-Palistenian conflicts, trust me, for Indiana folks it's not. 

Knight won three national championships in nearly 30 years as the basketball coach at my alma mater and though he was not the first coach to have success at Indiana, his legacy has become almost interchangeable with the program.  Beyond mere basketball, though, Knight was an iconic figure for Indiana conservatives.  An avid hunter whose coaching career at West Point inbued him with a ruthless autharitarian streak, he frequently and colorfully clashed with the press and non-athletic faculty.  He  was also wholly self-absorbed and prone to outbursts including but not limited to throwing a Puerto Rican police officer in a garbage can and a folding chair across the floor in midgame, and his often politically incorrect remarks (such as telling Connie Chung that if rape is inevitable, women should sit back and enjoy it) only made him loved even more.  But Knight's temper tantrums and physical abuse of players and staff got him on the wrong side of university president Myles Brand (his name is misspelled in the Wiki article) and shortly after I arrived at Indiana in September 2000, Knight was sent packing.  (Suffice to say, Brand was not the university's president for long after that.) 

Knight's supporters can be summed up pretty well in this Wikipedian's paragraph

Despite the controversies, Bob Knight has tremendous support among many Indiana basketball fans especially those who are aware of his many accomplishments off the court and the positive influence he's had on former and present players. They cite his honesty and exacting ethical standards, the fact that the Indiana University program was never charged with NCAA violations. He was intolerant of behavior of other people, on court or off, that would taint his the team or the school in any way [ED:  except his own, apparently]. The majority of his players earned degrees. Many parents of Knight's players praise the coach for instilling ethics and a drive to succeed in their sons and are grateful to him. Knight has also raised countless dollars through his charity work and volunteer efforts.

In other words, he did more or less what any decent college professor is asked to do as a basic job description.  Who knew Knight was just as ordinary as thousands and thousands of other educators and mentors around the country?  Factor in his sphere of influence barely encompssing 15 kids at any one time and you've got something even less notable.  But alas, this is just one act in the grander game of charades that passes for American interscholastic sports.  Americans are unique in the world in that their sub-professional athletics are tied to academic institutions, and it gives us the comfortable illusion that are athletes come out well-rounded scholars and our coaches deserve recognition for shaping the future leaders of our country's institutions. 

Ho Ho Ho. 

I can say with some certainty that Bob Knight or anyone else who's a major college football or basketball coach in America has never been evaluated by the athletic boosters for his player's remarkable performance in study hall.  Likewise, no coach has ever survived a run of losing seasons because his athletes are putting up bigger numbers on their report card than the scoreboard.  They probably should, given that even though they are ostensibly teaching young people to become professional athletes, very few actually will, and for them a degree becomes just as important as it is to the rest of us ordinary collegiate shlubs.

It's not of much importance to the alumni boosters, though.  Their donations keep the purse fattened, and they want to see the kids they're exploiting for their fantasy minor-league sports show put bigger digits in the win column.  The interscholastic sports world is filled with stories of coaches who couldn't care less about their role in the academic lives of their players, so long as they took enough cupcake courses to stave off academic ineligibilty (best illustrated by former Georgia assistant Jim Harrick, Jr.). Even at my small but basketball-crazed high school there were at least two coaches whose teaching rigor was farcical but who needed to at least give the appearance of teaching a class to keep themselves employed. 

Perhaps if academic performance is such the panacea they pretend it is, Bob Knight would still have a job, if he could only have avoided being a blight on the university unlike the rest of his colleagues in the education business.  But then, perhaps Mike Davis would still have one as well. 

 

That teenage feeling

More proof I live in a small town:  My niece is getting married.

She's a senior in high school; her hubby-to-be is a college freshman.  As I say, not all that unusual for a small town.  At 24, I'm practically a creepy old dinosaur (not that I'd be anything but somewhere else, but you know.)  Statistics are not in their favor, but to mix metaphors, the game isn't played on paper.  I certainly would've been drastically unprepared for such a thing at that age.  I know because I had my only romantic encounter to speak of when I was slightly older than that (though it's not a fair comparison, I was arguably a bigger loser at that age than I am now!) 

But it's fascinating to me, watching the courting traditions that were ubiquitous when I was growing up here and now returning to them after observing other people's experiences and expectations about a romantic relationship.  Things are certainly more understated here.  Marriage is almost like a passive endeavor, where you wake up one day to find out "well, Bob's got himself a girlfriend now." 

I question this because it relates to something I wrote about last month.  People get married young here because, for the most part, they don't have breakups.  While I'm sure nobody enjoys going through a breakup, I think it signifies a consciousness between the people involved that the complex chemistry between them is not satisfactory.  Relationships end because they know each other well enough to know they are ultimately uncompatible.  The odds aren't good that the first person you begin seeing seriously is going to fit you ideally. 

But that gives me another problem:  Am I condemning these hasty marriages because
they seem shallow and unfulfilling?  It seems like I am, and I don't think that's fair.  I'm not in one, after all, and it sounds like I want to profile couples with some kind of "love aptitude" test to determine how skilled they are at being married to each other.  Pretty ridiculous really. Whatever makes it work, it must be a cultural thing, and in the end I can only throw up my hands and admit it's a mystery I can't understand. 

Artificial insinuations

Michael Specter had an article two weeks ago in the New Yorker entitled "Political Science:  The Bush Administration's war on the laboratory."  It's neither new surprising that politicians would be uneasy with honest science, but the introduction of the story has a particularly lucid picture of the fallout from so-called "values voters."  The pharmaceutical company Merck has developed a vaccine for for the human papillonavirus, the primary cause of cervical cancer which, according to the article, kills 5,000 women in the US each year and hundreds of thousands in the developing world.  Sounds like a good deal right? 

The Bush Administration, its allies on Capitol Hill, and the religious base of the Repubican party are opposed to mandatory HPV vaccinations.  They prefer to rely on educational programs that promote abstinence from sexual activity, and see the HPV vaccine as a threat to that policy.  For years, conservatives have regarded the human papillonavirus as a kind of index of promiscuity. Many abstinence supporters argue eliminating the threat of infection would only encourage teenagers to have sex.  "I personally object to vaccinating children when they don't need vaccination, particularly against a disease that is one hundred percent preventable with proper sexual behavior," Leslee J. Unruh, the founder and president of Abstinence Clearinghouse said.  "Premarital sex is dangerous, even deadly.  Let's not encourage it by vaccinating ten-year-olds so they think they're safe. 

This is apparently obvious to everyone except Ms. Unruh, but premarital sex is dangerous in part because she's doing her darndest to keep it that way.  Just how arbirary is the "morality" advocated by the "moral values" crowd?  Apparently arbitrary--not to mention shaky--enough so that they need to keep certain taboos artificially dangerous even when human ingenuity has found ways to overcome it.  It makes you wonder what constitutes an immoral action in the first place.  Kids shouldn't have premarital sex because they might get pregnant, er, they might get STD's, er...

Well, when real-world consequences for "immoral" behavior are used up, it might be time to turn to an even more antiquated solution.  Let's just stone them. 

I tell the kids these days

Forget about your education.  The one thing you learn when you try to gain worthwhile employment is that nobody cares what you learned.  They care about how much time you've spent in aimless jobs doing inane labor that the adult world finds beneath them, and how many of those employers you can get to parrot empty platitudes in your favor when you want to move up the ladder.  Silly book-larnin' and actual curiosity and capability would be icing on the cake, but you're probably better off not wasting your time with it.  Heck, you can probably even fudge a bit, since 56 percent of the public already does.

It's not hard to wonder how we ended up with an underqualified president when our system of filling most lesser occupations seems to be wired for the same ends.