the parish

Cynicism Makes a Comeback or Atheist is not an Insult

If you've not been following the Liddy Dole vs. Kay Hagan race for U.S. Senate in NC, read this first. All three ads are available here. When the AP story was written, Dole had not started running the response to the response.

So Dole is now taking a page out of the Rove Manual for Douchebaggery and accusing Kay Hagan, a Presbyterian elder and former Sunday school teacher, of accepting money from the Godless American PAC. The first ad ends with the question "What did she promise?" Well, being a U.S. senator would certainly empower her to do all sorts of stuff: take God out of the pledge of allegiance, remove Him from money, shatter a tablet of commandments or two, possibly use goddamn glibly on the floor of the Senate, and possibly even legislate disbelief. (As one commenter on the MSNBC boards said, Obama will probably solve the separation of church and state issue by eliminating churches. Ah, the Republican version of sanity.)

Hagan felt compelled to release a response ad in which she chastises Liddy for bearing false witness against a fellow Christian. Liddy's response to that response is a classic: If Godless Americans threw a party in your honor, would you go? Fuck yeah. Especially if they had wine.

Lost in all of this nonsense is the reality that calling someone an atheist ought not be an insult nor is it a disqualifier for public office, and I'd be just as happy voting for an atheist as I would be for a Hindu or Jew or Muslim, so long as he or she was honest and competent. I don't give two shits what someone's metaphysical assumptions are as long as she can govern well in a pluralistic culture. The shrill demagogues on the Right are proving, again, that they are incapable of playing well with others. However, Dole and Hagan are in a virtual tie for the seat, partly because NC white folk are credulous enough to allow Dole's staff to trade on the ambiguity in the word godless. These godless folk at GAPAC are simply atheists. Many of them are parents, teachers, politicians, lawyers, tax-payers, workers, professionals—some good, some bad. But toss out the word godless to white, Southern fundamentalists, and you conjure up images of sodomites and concupiscence and lasciviousness like the orgy scenes in old DeMille Bible movies minus the campy costumes. Nice to see Dole following so well in the footsteps of the man she replaced, Jesse Helms.

Hope: A Post-Christian Lexicon, Part 2

Hope was always my favorite Christian virtue. I mean, I like love. Who doesn't? But it's such a smarmy word with too many meanings and not enough substance. Christians themselves are comfortable talking about Jesus' love and his death on the cross as demonstration of that, yet they can't seem to apply the ideal to God the Father, especially in his role as YHWH. Read through a fundangelical lens that brings the Tanakh into play, love ends up meaning judgment, wrath, murder, and genocide. Faith always seemed to irrational, and I mean that in the bad sense of the word, as if there is a good one. Christians never could seem to distinguish between irrational and non-rational, despite the huge chasm between the two ideas. Faith was always applied to both, and that seems to me to be a silly and often dangerous idea. Hope though...

Hope through a Christian lens was the "Christ in you, the hope of glory" kind of talk. The looking forward to glorification, perfection, sinlessness, joy, God's presence, and the meting out of perfect justice, understood as the poor, marginalized, and voiceless finally having their part in the glories of the kingdom of God. For some it also meant heaven, a concept that always struck me as tragically odd until I read Yoder. I want to keep part of the Christian definition, but I think it's time to redefine hope as a post-Christian.

One of the primary reasons I am choosing to vote for Obama is the hopefulness I hear in him. Contrast his tone and message with this from Focus on the Family (be sure to read the .pdf linked at the bottom of the article). Where is the hope in the Christian Right? Where is the message of God's presence? Where is the certainty of a "kingdom which cannot be shaken"? Obama sounds like Isaiah; Focus sounds like Lamentations, but Jerusalem has not fallen. America has not been razed. Obama has been criticized for his links to Jeremiah Wright, but Wright's prophetic role should be understood by Christians. Instead, they have lapped up the pablum served by the prophets of hegemony and ignored the substance of Wright's message: there is an ideal called America; it is not salvific; it is not always good; it can be better than it is, especially if it keeps its promises to provide equality to all. Does Wright go too far? Sometimes. But how can someone read the prophets and not realize they have gone too far from time to time? It is possible to love an ideal and hate its current iteration. It is possible to believe to the point of anger that things ought to be different. What ultimately separated Obama from Wright was, I believe, the virtue of hope. Wright may have lost his; Obama has not.

I am 44. If you had asked me two years ago if a black man would be elected president in my lifetime, I would have told you a woman or a Latino had a better chance than a black man. I would have said, "I hope it happens, but I don't expect it in my lifetime." Ah, see, sometimes hope pays off, whereas faith almost never does. I grew up on military bases during and after the Vietnam War. It never occurred to the children to hate other races because we were all together, a community whose fathers were away at war, or whose fathers could be called away any time. We were knit together by a common commitment and a shared sacrifice. Color didn't matter; commitment, and to borrow King's phrase, content of character mattered. People were friendly or not, trustworthy or not, faithful or not, but they were certainly not different than us based on physiological or ethnic issues. Our parents probably harbored those old resentments, but we children were free from them, at least for a time. It never occurred to me that my friends Mike and Al James couldn't be president one day. It never occurred to me they shouldn't date white girls. I loved them, why wouldn't any girl love them too, if differently?

I am about to see a black man elected president in my lifetime. I cannot tell you the degree to which my cynicism is taking a beating right now. Is it possible that I have grossly underestimated my fellow Americans? My fellow white folk? Is it possible that hope still animates enough of us that we can dare to believe that America can be better than it is? That we needn't listen to the preachers of fear, the evangelists of division, and the prophets of doom? This is an amazing time to be alive. The hot, Obama-supporting, hairdresser wife and I keep talking about how proud we are of people willing to put aside their instinctual fears, their prejudices, their sense of despair, their apathy, and their cynicism to get behind someone who actually understands the power of hope and the dream of America. Not the dream where America is better than everywhere else, or that "greatest country in the world" talk, or that America is blessed by God or is some sort of salvific force for the world (always at the end of a gun, somehow), but the America that believes all people are created equal. That a black man can be president. That a kid can work hard and achieve great things. That being poor is not a dishonor. That dignity and honor and pride and decorum really seem to matter to people. That somehow people have seen through the ugliness and divisiveness and lies of the hegemonic forces that attempted to keep us locked up in envy and hate and greed and fear, and that we will be coming out of this with a terrible uphill climb but a corresponding willingness to make it work because it's really worth it. If we can be the kind of country where we finally, finally, elect a minority to the White House, we can be the country where anyone truly can do anything.

Is it possible that Christians, not all of them, are going to miss this revelatory moment? Is it possible that the Church still can't lay aside the swords and guns of fear and hatred and participate in the construction of something that, though not heaven, is better than we have a right to expect? Can they for this kairos moment in time finally participate with the heathens in helping to build something better than all of us? Can they share in the hope? I hope so, because it is from their texts that I learned to define hope as that virtue which animates the daring to believe that things can be better than they are, not just for me and mine, but for all of us.

Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you feel like Bob Larson

Haven't heard this name in years, but Larson has an upcoming reality tv series on SciFi. Exorcisms on reality tv. Can't wait. Starts Thursday night. Thanks to Adam for the link.

The Theater of the Absurd Continues

I need to get serious about a linguistic critique of this election, but right now I'm too busy with other stuff, so I'll have to settle for two new items that will need to be revisited later.

Michael Savage is now telling his rabid pack of listeners that Obama did not go to Hawaii to visit his critically ill grandmother. Instead, according to Savage, he is there to doctor his fake birth certificate. We have officially re-entered the Vince Foster days. Sane people will ignore this, but we're going to need a broader definition of mental illness because I'm pretty sure many of Savage's listeners pass for sane until the subject of politics comes up.

Sarah Palin now says the flap over her clothing expenditures is sexist. Yes, Sarah, we would not think of complaining if the RNC gave John McCain 150k for suits. That is, of course, moot, because McCain, Obama, and Biden all pay for their suits, as the governor of a state ought to be able to do as well. The way she's milked the state for her personal financial benefit should have provided at least minimal means to purchase some decent clothing. Not so apparently. Instead, she expects contributors to pay for her $92 romper for the baby, as well as suits for Todd, and if we complain that a) it's outrageous, and b) probably against campaign finance laws, then we are sexists. It now appears that we can add another word that has been drained of referential meaning to the Republican lexicon.

And speaking of absurd, I have to go see Fred Phelps and his godhatesfags crowd protest tonight. Oklahoma City University is putting on a production of The Laramie Project, and Phelps will be in town to protest. Protest? Yes. We shouldn't be condemning murder. We should embrace it; after all, a cursory reading of Joshua shows that Phelps may not be too far off from YHWH's methods.

AJR, Rolling Stone, and Afghanistan

Sherry Ricchiardi at American Journalism Review has a good piece on how the MSM has dropped the ball on the war in Afghanistan. For the record, the current issue of Rolling Stone has an excellent piece on the forgotten war—except that Obama keeps talking about it. This dropped ball will be one of the worst legacies of the Bush administration—to have won so thoroughly and quickly only to watch it all dissolve in the miasma in Iraq.

If I Believed in Heaven, I'd Love to be There to See Their Faces

Adelle Banks of Religion News Service did a story about a Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion survey that found white literalist Christians are less likely to vote for a racial minority candidate for president than other white Americans. Approximately 8 in 10 white Protestants said they would vote for a racial minority for president, while 75 percent of white literalists and 69 percent of members of all-white congregations said the same. For the record, 90 percent of white Americans with no religious affiliation answered yes. It seems religion, especially the fundamentalist variety, has a pernicious effect on racial ethics. I'm shocked! Who would have thought fundies had more of a tendency toward bigotry and ignorance? Not me...

Beliefnet has the story.

It's a Race Thing, Really

So it finally happened. Talking to students today about racial politics and the politics of race. We didn't start that way. We started talking about Colin Powell's excellent question in reference to Barack Obama being Muslim. Powell gave two answers: he's not; he's a Christian; always has been, and what if he was? Ah, there is the question. What if he was a Muslim? Or a Jew? Or an atheist? Can he be president? Not in the "what does the Constitution say" sense, but the "would he have a chance" sense. In the brief poll I took during class, the order of least to most preferred for a presidential candidate looked like this: Muslim, atheist, Jew, Christian. Seems even the godless have a better chance in Oklahoma. This conversation led to one young lady whispering back and forth with a classmate.

Me: "Student X, what are you saying?"
Student X: "Nothing."
Me: "Really. I want you to say what you just said."
Student X: "I said I could never vote for a Muslim."
Me: "Why not?"
Student X: "Because they aren't American."

To their credit, a few students laughed out loud at this level of ignorance, but we eventually got to the point where most admitted that when they hear Muslim, they think Arab. Not sure how the numbers actually break down, but I'm willing to bet a little money that more Muslims are Asian and African than Arab or Persian. So, I asked them, assuming Obama was a Muslim, would you vote for him. The answer from the back of the room: "I wouldn't vote for him because he's black."

I am not making this up. I asked Student Y to repeat herself, and she did so with a little less fervor. Then, emboldened by something, with great confidence and defiance, she said, "I don't care what you think. I admit to being a racist. I don't like black people. I don't trust them. They are thugs, with their baggy clothes and guns and music. I could never vote for a black person." Drawing strength and support from their racist colleague, two other students agreed that they felt the same way.

After congratulating them for their honesty, we had a gloves-off conversation about race in class. It was fantastic. We have three biracial students in that class, and our lone black student was missing today, probably fortunately, else the comment would never have been made. I am appalled by this sort of racism, but I hope that we managed to address things in a way that was constructive. We missed the voices of black students in class, so I hope I managed to represent them well, but I am hopeful that this kind of conversation can happen more openly and with less rancor in the future.

As for the election, I wish whatever percentage of white America thinks like my students could be honest enough to voice their prejudice rather than couch their racism in political double-talk. At least that way we'd know what we're dealing with and how far we have to go.

Palin as President

With polls trending so strongly toward Obama, this is probably no longer a possible view of our future, but it's still funny. For you Luddites, it's also interactive, so move your mouse around and click on stuff.

Since When is Professorial a Bad Thing?

Listening to the CNN pundits after the debate last night and they were uniformly amazed that so many viewers had Obama winning. I had a couple thoughts, one related to that, and one related to racism.

1. One of the pundits, and I can't remember which one, said Obama was too professorial. Well, as a professor myself, and having only been out of grad school since '05, allow me to take the side of the professorial among us. It is refreshing to hear a candidate be able to address the complexity of the issues after 8 years of Strategery Man. Also, are the pundits so out of touch that they forget what kind of impact teachers have on the lives of young people? Do you suppose some of the excitement generated by Obama amongst the young might be because he reminds them of the professor or high school teacher they loved so much? The man was a professor, after all. It's inconceivable to me that his students didn't love him.

2. Twice that I remember McCain referred to Obama's "eloquence" as a negative attribute. I told the hot, drunk, combative hairdresser wife that McCain looked like a petulant child waving his finger and yelling "Pretty words! Pretty words! He's using pretty words. Not fair!" Eloquence is only a liability if your opponent has it and you don't. It's only cast as a negative attribute if the people you're trying to appeal to are ignorant, uneducated, or anti-intellectual. Hmm...what large, white, Southern demographic does that remind me of...? Maybe the folks showing up at Palin events? Maybe...

3. There is a kind of racism that was exposed in me about 20 years ago that I think McCain would do well to admit to. My cell was across the run from a black gentleman about ten years my senior. On the street he had a crack addiction that led to his robbing a bank. Take away the crack, the man is eloquent, studious, intelligent, passionate, and kind. He regularly counseled young gang-bangers about the direction of their lives. We had hundreds of conversations over a two-year period. He finally pointed out why I was unable to actually hear what he was saying. "When a white man and a black man sit down to have a conversation, the white man, even if he's not an overt racist, will think he's is better equipped intellectually to understand the issue. He will attribute racist motivation to the black man's argument or he will simply believe that he is smarter and better able to understand complex issues." It hurt, but he was right. He told me that right before I met a man who changed my life: Chaplain Harvey Simpson, a Jamaican AME minister and graduate of Seton Hall and Drew. Had I not heard Barney, I never could have heard Harvey and my life would be much the worse. Perhaps I'm guilty of eisegesis last night, but McCain never seemed to understand that Obama is simply smarter—much, much smarter. Combine that with his character, work ethic, complex thinking, outstanding communication ability, and leadership qualities, and you'll understand why I'm voting for him.

How Much do the Hookers on FoxNews Cost?

A conservative gentleman who is no longer speaking to me because I attempted to explain that a small point on a map is actually much larger in real life—we were talking about drilling in ANWR—had coffee with another, saner conservative friend of mine this morning. Three things emerged from the mouth of this white, church-going, professional gentleman.

1. Barack Obama will not be a good president because he is black. Anyone who studies the history of Africa knows that no black leader has ever been a great leader. By the way, I accused this man of being a bigot six months ago. He vehemently denied it. Liar, liar...which leads me to...

2. Sarah Palin is the most intelligent female politician since Elizabeth Dole. First, Sarah Palin has only vague anatomical similarities to Libby Dole, and no intellectual similarities. I'm not the guy who is going to call Sarah Palin stupid, although she is a liar, but you probably can't get elected to the governorship of a state and be a dummy. However, comparing her intellectual gifts related to politics to Libby Dole's is like comparing George W. Bush's grasp of moral philosophy to Anthony Flew's. You'll also note that he assumed she is smarter than Hillary Clinton. (How much fun would a Clinton/Palin debate be?)

3. This one is the inspiration for the title because I'm pretty sure he got the story from Steve Doocy of Fox & Friends. A federal lawsuit will stop Obama from winning (thereby making point one moot) because Obama is not a U.S. citizen. Can I tell you how weary I am of this? Just read factcheck.org's take so I don't have to tell you how weary I am. I do love the tinfoil hat reference near the end. It's how I feel when I talk to Oklahomans these days. I should say that my sane conservative friend thinks Mr. Racist is a loon too, so it's not all you conservatives. Honest.