Volume 4, Number 4

May 5, 2008 -- A couple of things swirled around in the maelstrom of public discourse these last few days: Grand Theft Auto Four and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Hard to say which promotes the most violence. On the one hand Grand Theft just satisfies the lust for violent behavior on behalf of young American youths in this, the country with the highest percentage of the population in incarceration of all the counties in the world. On the other, the Reverend may have very well changed the course of American history by possibly throwing the coming election to the Republican Party.

The Reverend has taken his place in the pantheon of the American demigods of organized religion with outrageous attitudes and proclamations. We might say it is tradition in America. Cotton Mather led the way in the 17th Century by bearing the most responsibility for the excesses of the Salem Witch Trials. Mather saw this county in its native state as the repository of the devil and the responsibility of European settlers to purify it. These days evangelicals see this country as in the hand of the devil and their responsibility to wrest it from him (the Devil always seems to be a “he” although I imagine there are some males who might argue the point).

As the 20th Century came to pass and communications improved demagoguery from the likes of Billy Sunday (who couldn’t shut the old place down, folks kept doing the town) and Amy Semple McPherson were able to reach multitudes with their own brands of professed righteousness. In his lifetime, Sunday addressed over 100 million people in the days before speakers, TV, or radio. He built on his fame as a professional baseball player to achieve national stature (he would approach a lectern with a simulated slide into home plate) and was most influential in the success of the temperance movement, and we all know how well that turned out. As for McPherson, founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, no more than a charge of hypocrisy might be in order: an affair with a married man, lifestyle changes incompatible with her message, and the like.

The forerunner, the precursor, the template of the religious monster-mouths of current times (and Limbaugh and O’Reilly, for that matter) was Father Coughlin, who discovered radio, or radio discovered him, at the beginning of national broadcasting in the early twenties. He had 30 million listeners coast-to-coast. Am I the only person extant old enough to remember that there once was a Father Coughlin, broadcasting his mixed message of love and hate every Sunday afternoon on national radio from the Little Flower Church in Royal Oak, Michigan? The Father who was the father of hate radio. I didn’t listen to him; I was aware, however, of his litany of disturbing diatribes. Anti Semitic. Anti Government. Anti anything that crossed his mind. Just one quote to set the tone, made in 1926: "Must the entire world go to war for 600,000 Jews in Germany who are neither American, nor French, nor English citizens, but citizens of Germany?” He attacked everyone. For years people pled with the Catholic Church to get him off the air, but it took over twenty some-odd years before a new bishop in Chicago managed to get it done.

Although obituaries glossed over the fact, Jerry Falwell gained his fame by railing against the civil rights movement and preaching a strong, segregationist message in the name of God. "The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line” Ork, the, in the name of God keep black people as second-class citizens.

After losing the civil rights battle, Falwell shopped around for another cause to sink his fangs into because if you are a God-fearing, televangelist you have to be against something rather than for something in order to win a following, the idea being to appeal to the base instincts of your audience. He found Roe vs. Wade and even though at that time the Southern Baptist Convention was not opposed to the ruling, Falwell made it a cause celebre and the “moral majority” was hatched (now there was an egg that should have been aborted).

You could have an energetic argument about which men of God made the worse pronouncements, Falwell or Pat Robertson. New York Times columnist Frank Rich reminds us of a television exchange between the two on September 13, 2001 when the two of them blamed the attacks on “America’s abortionists, feminists, gays and A.C.L.U. lawyers.” That’s O.K. I suppose, but Reverend Wright had the gall to blame the attacks on America’s foreign policy. How shameful.

Unlike Obama, now tarred by the rants of Wright, Senator McCain has a free pass on seeking the endorsement of the late Falwell and Robertson, as well as the new star of the poison pulpit circuit, the Rev. John Hagee, he who promotes a pre-emptive war with Iran (right up McCain’s dark alley) and noted for calling the Catholic Church “The Great Whore.”

Feminists ought to get a kick out of Hagee’s view of family values. “It is the natural desire of a woman to lead through feminine manipulation of the man.” “The man has the God-given role to be the loving leader of the home." Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist." That must have been his God Damn PMS speech.

When McCain spoke to residents of New Orleans this week (an all-white crowd at that) I wonder if he used this quote from Hagee on Katrina: “I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are -- were recipients of the judgment of God for that.” Must have been great comfort to the survivors.

McCain has a spiritual advisor, Ron Parsley. According to Katie Halper from a column posted t the Huffington Post, Parsley believes “The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion (Islam) destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms.” The fact is, of course, it wasn’t. These “Spiritual advisors” are more Spiritualists than advisers. More from Parsley: “A lesbian can only expect to live to be 45 years of age.” Say what?

Pat Robertson, in the name of God, was not opposed to the assassination of world leaders we don’t care for, and was willing to pray for the death of a Supreme Court Justice or two. I think when he has those personal conversations with God that he refers to, he should have with him a translator. I can’t believe he gets the message straight.

These clericals spouting venom are all white people, but the Rev. Wright is not. That must make his statements all the more outrageous. Obama takes heat for the black minister; McCain does not for the white ones. No hypocrites here, of course. As bad as he is, Wright is just one more in a long line of ludicrous holy men spouting venom; no better, no worse. It’s tradition. Republicans, always ready to play the race card (they should take up dominoes), can make what they will of this by as NYT columnist Frank Rich points out “the so-called party of Lincoln does not have a single African-American among its collective 247 senators and representatives in Washington.”

Wright can’t say these crazy things, we say. Oh, really? Does that mean Falwell, Robertson, Hagee, or even Limbaugh and O’Reilly can’t say those crazy things? Wait a second, as in an amendment. Yes they can.

We’ve had priests and ministers, but no rabbi. In the spirit of ecumenism, I feel we should have one. I nominate Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of New Jersey who it has been said “spews hate and vitriol toward the elected leaders of Israel.” He once used a biblical term for one who comes to kill you — and who must be killed pre-emotively when speaking about prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who shortly thereafter was assassinated, an act inspired, it is said, by such
incendiary language. Give this man a mike and air time and let him join his like minded brethren of the cloth. He fits right in. Now those old stories about the priest, the minister and the rabbi make sense.

Where are the gentle clerics like Billy Graham, who found good things about each and every president (and that takes a soul that can see goodness everywhere), or Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. Whose TV programs appealed to millions of all denominations and who spoke with grace and good humor. A story typical of Sheen: Heckler asks him about someone who had died. Sheen replied “I’ll ask him when I see him in heaven.” Heckler: “What if he isn’t in heaven?” Sheen: “Well then you ask him.”

Perhaps these current blood thirsty clerics are spending too much time with the Old Testament. Historians will tell you Moses looted an Egyptian village for supplies before leading his flock into the desert, arousing the ire of the Pharaoh who gave chase. Joshua, in the name of God, committed genocide on the Canaanites. Esther saved her people by whispering into the King’s ear and encouraging him to launch ethnic cleansing. You could make a pretty good Grand Theft Auto Five using the Old Testament for mayhem inspiration if you take it literally.

While the other religious perpetrators of inflammatory rhetoric are bad enough, Reverend Wright may have the distinction of affecting the course of history. If his actions result in a victory of McCain over a Democratic candidate in the Fall it is likely the Supreme Court will obtain more justices on the order of Roberts and Alito and favor corporations over people for the next thirty years, the debilitating costs in lives and resources we don’t have of the conflict in Iraq will continue indefinitely, and the United States will continue its downward spiral toward becoming Mexico, a country with a lot of wealthy people, a great many poverty level people, and very few in between. His call to God to Damn America will have become a reality.

Obama actually has a national director of religious affairs who commands a team of six full-time religious outreach staffers and it isn’t Wright. The campaign also has hundreds of volunteers and surrogates around the country. Jehovah Witnesses, eat your heart out.

Despite heavy campaigning by candidate Hillary Clinton, the Big Brown male won over the filly in the race ( "I hope that everybody will go to the Derby on Saturday and place just a little money on the filly for me" Clinton said). A portent? Sad to say, the filly came in second, breaking two ankles and was immediately put down. So far no one can put down Hillary, even in the figurative sense. The race goes on. As NYT columnist Maureen Dowd put it, “The lioness of Chappaqua is hot on the trail of the Chicago gazelle.” But Obama won Guam. By seven votes. Who says he can’t win the big ones! They each picked up four delegates. My memory of Guam is a long, hot, sticky small-boat ride to shore, a gravel path up a steep hill to a huge Quonset Hut wrapped around a long bar where whiskey was plentiful for navy officers, but they had run out of water. Twenty years later I was offered a job in Guam. Do they have any water? I asked.

The latest conflict on the campaign trail is over the idea of a gas tax holiday this summer, and as usual soul mates Clinton and McCain take one position, Obama another. Most cool heads believe it is a stupid idea, to encourage the use of more gasoline in time of an energy crises, mere pandering to voters. Obama noted that Clinton deployed a surrogate, who also happens to be a lobbyist for Shell Oil, giving him the opportunity to say “It’s a shell game, literally.”

From the Clinton campaign: “Senator Obama wants Americans to pay the gas tax, but Senator Clinton thinks the big oil companies should pay it this summer.” Now I am confused. How are the oil companies going to pay? Even if oil companies don’t hike the price to fill in the gap, once people pay less won’t they use more gas, the oil companies sell more gas and make even more profit, which Senator Clinton keeps complaining about?

You’ve probably been reading about the world-wide food crises, and this probably will not matter much to the 280,000 workers who have been laid off in the first three months of 2008, but
the current price of beluga caviar has gone through the roof. Beluga, of course, comes from the roe of the sturgeon, a fish once abundant in the Caspian Sea. Thanks to the unbridled appetite of caviar lovers, and those who catch and sell it, the fish has all but disappeared. But even if its admirers had shown some self-restraint, it would not have mattered because the Caspian Sea itself is in the process of vanishing, thanks to all manner of environmental rape and pillaging. All of those people Republicans are branding as liberal elitists are going to suffer. Republicans, however, are more apt to just say “let ‘em eat cake.”

Liberals in the American Catholic Church see the trip of Pope Benedict as the death knell of their long-time movement toward modernity that began with the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65. American clergy embraced the principle of religious freedom; rejected anti-Semitism; and permitted Catholic scholars a lot of latitude. They also battled the Vatican’s birth-control ban, rejection of female priests, insistence on celibacy, and Vatican authoritarianism. It was certainly interesting to go to mass in the sixties, as clergy tinkered with the process. In one church my wife and I attended in Atlanta the priest roamed up and down the aisle playing his trumpet when the spirit moved him. At a convent near our home in Rhode Island, the Sisters indulged in a guitar mass with so much personal embracing and hugging, today you would call us domestic partners. But no more. Benedict came here they say to put a stop to it all. The funny thing is Italians don’t seem to pay much attention to it all. Right outside the Vatican doors is a country with the lowest birth rate in Europe. You want to tell me that Italians, of all people, are eschewing birth control and practicing celibacy? Oh, sure. And the Pope keeps Kosher.

If you see a particularly bad mistake in this piece, please consider it a “thinko,” a word now employed on the internet, according to NYT language drill sergeant William Safire, for a mistake that can’t be called a typo. Keyboard goof, “typo”; mental gaffe, “thinko.” More new words to remember, “yuko. “

One last note. Time Magazine reports pain is related to income. “Households making less than $30,000 a year spend nearly 20% of their lives in moderate to severe pain, compared with less than 8% of people in households earning above $100,000.”

Time to chuck this in for the night. I think I am supposed to be having a headache.