The Crazy Is Strong In This One

In case you haven't yet had the pleasure of making his acquaintance, meet Rick Joyner.




Now, ol' Rick there is part of an elite cadre of Christian fundamentalist crackpots who make our good friend Pat Robertson look like a measured and thoughtful individual. There are quite a few these days, and they all seem to believe that Obama is the Antichrist. They simply will not let that canard go. According to these folks, the nation is so far gone at this point there remains virtually no hope for us. Things are bad—really bad—in their eyes. My personal theory is that Joyner and his lot believe things are so bad as a result of the fact that the influence they once wielded over a few crucial people in government has been eroded to the point of rendering them essentially irrelevant.

"But John," one might wonder, "if they're irrelevant at this point why pay them any mind at all?" Good question metaphorical person who acts to allow me to justify taking up other people's time. We pay attention to these people for a couple of reasons: 1) They provide all manner of free entertainment; and, 2) These sorts of people are the ones who advocate murder and sedition because, surprising though it may be when you first hear about it, their priorities and God's happen to match perfectly. Admittedly, the second reason is far more important than the first one.

If you watched the video above (and if you haven't I'm confused as to why you would be reading down here) you'll know that Joyner squandered good bandwidth to make the following case: "We're recklessly disregarding our Constitution! It's the foundation of our republic! My suggestion for fixing this untenable situation is to disregard our Constitution and abolish the republic in favor of military dictatorship. It's important that we get the right man in the White House, and clearly the people can't be trusted to do it." I'm guessing Joyner is of the opinion that Rome continued to be a republic in more than name once Julius Caesar decided to hang on to that dictatorship the Senate bestowed upon him by establishing himself as emperor. Because everyone knows any self-respecting republic has an emperor. It's simply good manners.

Fortunately, there are few people who are sympathetic to Joyner's views these days. Unfortunately, the people who remain sympathetic tend to be easily motivated to act, and a good many of them are well-armed.* I don't fear for our republic. Obama, for all his faults, is a pretty middle-of-the-road politician by American standards. By the standards of the rest of the Western world, he's pretty damn conservative. Assuming our current president manages to royally screw the pooch for the remainder of his time in office, we'll still be fine. We've survived far worse. It's worth making note of people like Joyner, however.

Exceedingly few conservatives would nod in agreement with what the Rickster says in the video I feature in this post. The same goes for evangelical Christians. Of the people I know who are gun owners, every one would oppose his idea of an armed insurrection against our government despite the fact that most of them aren't terribly fond of Obama. Real patriots believe in the enduring value of our system. They hold that you go about changing our system by making your case and winning the argument. Still, the system is flawed. It's messy. Hell, our government shut down this morning because one party refuses to accept that it won't get its way on a particular bill it doesn't like, and it claims it's doing the will of the American people despite the fact that polls show 72% of Americans do not support what it's doing. Said Grand Old Party is also dangling the possibility (again) of an unprecedented default on the debt as a backup plan to defund Obamacare just in case its current tactics fail. What I'm saying here is that things can get crazy with us, but we've endured. We will continue to endure. Hopefully, we'll grow out of this stage in which a vocal minority (with lots of financial backing from powerful groups) can hold the rest of the nation to ransom sooner rather than later, but that day will come.

People like Rick Joyner are not patriots. They're zealots. They're theocrats. They carry on ad nauseum about loving liberty, but their idea of liberty is everyone else doing what they say. Their influence waxes and wanes, but they do not disappear. Not entirely. Not ever. Thanks to today's technology, it's far more difficult than at any point in our history to consign them to the obscurity they so richly deserve which is the primary reason why it's worth keeping an eye on them, and when they reveal their true selves as Joyner has here we do well to hold them to the ridicule they have earned.

*Studies have shown that fewer and fewer Americans now own more and more guns. Plainly stated, certain people are hoarding weapons, and a whole bunch of those people are doing so out of fear of the government. That being said, I'm not trying to besmirch all gun owners. I know quite a few, some of whom are in my family. I'm impugning gun owners who believe the same sort of thing Joyner believes. That's an entirely different exercise.

Automatic Thinking

Back in the middle of July I posted a somewhat lengthy entry on white privilege. As I am wont to do, I have found myself thinking back on it on a somewhat regular basis since. I feel the need to point something out that, in my then-indignant state of mind, I failed to mention at the time of that particular entry. Namely, the thing that most upsets me about seeing evidence of the sort of prejudicial and bigoted mindset on display in the open letter to the president by Dr. Jones (and, unfortunately, not the Dr. Jones who Short Round was talking to) is how easy it is for us to fail prey to that mindset. I do it.

The worst part for me personally about that mindset is how effortlessly I find it comes to me. There is a psychological phenomenon known as Automatic Thoughts which is a pervasive (and rather devastating) feature of anxiety disorders. Hey, look! The magical interwebs have provided a handy video to help you understand what I'm talking about! It also offers helpful strategies on how to deal with the problem! Yay, interwebs!




Now, you may be thinking, "But John, I don't have an anxiety disorder. How do automatic thoughts have anything to do with me?" Well, smarty pants, the actual psychological thingy-bopper may not technically apply to you in an anxiety disorder sort of way, and aren't you the lucky one for that fact? However, the basic idea still applies to my overall point.

We all have been conditioned over the course of our particular existences to think in certain ways about certain things. Sometimes, this conditioning is good and beneficial. For instance, let's say you see what looks like a tasty egg salad sitting on a table at a picnic or family reunion or (insert name of other uncomfortable social gathering here). Sure, it's a bit warm out, and you have no idea how long that egg salad has been sitting there. Maybe you're living in a parallel universe in which it's always the early 1960s, and people still make egg salad. Maybe you're at a gathering of hipsters, and the egg salad is ironic. I don't know. Regardless, there's egg salad. It's warm out. You feel lucky.

Well, you're not feeling so lucky after spending an evening with your new bestie, Mr. Toilet, and his sidekick, Mr. Strategically-Placed Large Soup Pot. And guess what? You've just been conditioned never to eat egg salad that has been left out too long again. Or maybe ever. Depends on how smart you are. Anywho, that's the good (albeit unpleasant) sort of conditioning. It keeps us from repeatedly making poor decisions.

Then, of course, there's the not-so-good conditioning we all experience. It's the sort of conditioning which, when left unexamined and unchallenged, leads otherwise respectable, often well-meaning people to be inveterate jackasses and presume to know a thing or two about someone they actually know very little about. It's the sort of thing which leads us to see someone who fits a particular stereotype in some way and make the leap to believing certain things about that person which we have no way of knowing without spending a significant amount of time with her. Or him. It's nearly always a her or a him, is what I'm saying.

So we end up seeing a woman who maybe reminds us of someone else we've met before, or at the very least reminds us of someone who has been described to us by someone we trust, and we assume we know her. Maybe she's a woman with expensive shoes, a pricey mobile phone, a couple of tattoos, and a gold tooth who also happens to be on Medicaid so we assume she's somehow defrauding all of society. Maybe she's a 20 year-old pop singer who's been a celebrity since she was a tween, and now she's behaving rather strangely (at least compared to how she behaved when she was a tween) while singing her hit on a television program infamous for featuring people behaving strangely. Or for behaving strangely while other people are not behaving strangely as they accept awards for something someone else thinks should be awarded to another person with the GREATEST VIDEO OF ALL TIME! No matter what else may be the case, we're absolutely certain we've got a good bead on who that person is.

See? It just happens without us thinking about it. Almost as if it happens automatically. So "automatic thoughts" isn't just a clever name. Except we don't have to give in to the habit of believing that just because a thought comes to us effortlessly and seems to fit perfectly that it actually represents reality. None of us—from the most famous to the person you pass on the street yet never notice—is so easily reduced to a single idea.

I'm as guilty as anyone when it comes to allowing these sorts of assumptions to gain traction. There's a reason why, as I read the post on FB which lead to both my original entry and this one as well, I knew EXACTLY who Dr. Jones was describing. Because I've been conditioned to make the same assumptions he has. My privilege as a white male virtually guarantees that the Enigma machine in my brain is going to decode perfectly the message our doctor friend is sending, and it's going to happen so quickly that if I'm not extremely mindful my racism and my sexism filters are going to let it slide right by without a second glance. That doesn't mean that these sorts of messages which do get through also determine how I behave, but it does mean that I'm far more prone to making the wrong decisions about what to say and do based on the wrong assumptions at any given time. It means I have to work that much harder to be aware of the privilege I possess. And, perhaps most importantly, it means when someone who doesn't have my privilege decides to take a risk and point out where I've said or done something careless because I'm not really required to be careful I have to rein in my ego long enough to realize that whether or not that person is taking that chance to help me I still stand to benefit by listening.

Sometimes I Think Pat's Really Trying to Help and Then He Starts Talking

I'm not entirely sure what I could possibly add to make Pat Robertson look more ridiculous than he makes himself look here. I have to say, however, that I'd like to see some form of documentation on that claim Pat makes about the Homosexual Community© placing draconian laws on the books. Has there been a change in government of which I am currently unaware? Are those nefarious gays now our overlords who pass laws requiring the we do not discuss their activities? Oh, wait. I believe that last question pretty much covers it.

Clearly, the Homosexual Community© has finally taken over everything and forbidden us all from discussing that fact openly. Hence, Pat's oblique comments. Sure. Seem legit.

Edit: If you've read much on this blog I'm pretty sure you expected me to lambaste Pat for claiming Teh Gayz in that hotbed of hairy man-love, San Francisco, are using special rings to surreptitiously spread AIDS. All I can say is that some things are so ridiculous that they require no lambasting from yours truly.

Bryan Fischer Confuses Me (Not for the First Time)

I've been kicking around a few ideas for new entries for a couple of weeks now, and I really had no intention to abandon my tried-and-true strategy of letting Pat Robertson embarrass himself. In point of fact, I plan to continue doing so, but I saw this video from Bryan Fischer today and had to ask my single-digit readership whether any of them know what he's on about?

In case you're unfamiliar either with Mr. Fischer or what he's referring to in this little spiel of his (or, if you're super lucky, both), I'll lift the curtain a bit for you. Bryan Fischer is the premiere mouthpiece for our friends-don't-let-friends-be-this-repugnant fellow mammals over at the American Family Association which has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. As for what's got him in such high spirits at the moment, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos, has recently committed $250 million of his rather considerable personal fortune to the purchase of the Washington Post.

Now, why that purchase has delighted Fischer so much is beyond me even after having watched the clip above. I mean, did I miss the declaration of war against Scooby Doo at the last godless liberal chapter meeting? I don't recall any sort of hatred against that classic Saturday morning cartoon series coming from the Left (at least prior to the introduction of Scrappy Doo and his Puppy Power© war cry which I believe has lead to numerous homicidal rampages and is universally hated by all regardless of political allegiance or proclivity). If I'm honest, I'd kind of like to have a Mystery Machine lunch box myself—especially if it's vintage, in excellent condition, AND includes the thermos—because that would awesome. Not as awesome as, say, an "Adam-12" or "Emergency" lunch box with the same features, but still pretty awesome. Don't even get me started on the "Six Million Dollar Man" or the "Bionic Woman" lunch boxes because I'll likely pass out if I ever manage to find either one, but I digress.

So I'm going to toss this mystery (see what I did there?) out to you, my faithful reader(s?). What have I missed here which Bryan Fischer finds so endlessly enjoyable about this development?

Note to Bryan Fischer: You say a couple of times over the course of this clip that the Post is the premiere newspaper on the Left. Just so you know, that really hasn't been the case for quite some time now. One might even argue that it never has been. In fact, the Left reviles the Post pretty much to a person at this point because, let's face it, the old gray mare just ain't what she used to be. It's been a while since the heady days of Watergate, and, despite the fact that Carl Bernstein faded into a somewhat dignified semi-obscurity after all that hullabaloo died down, Bob Woodward squandered any capital he may have gained on the Left in helping bring down Nixon by essentially whoring himself out for the sake of access. One might say he is the originator of that particular journalistic sin which has become so prevalent in our day. So I would suggest you update your perspective on that claim, but considering you badly need to update the whole of your worldview to the latter half of the 20th century (at the very least) I suspect you may need to place this one a bit lower on the priority list. After all, if you plan to catch up to the rest of us you've got quite the row to hoe.

More White Privilege for Your Entertainment and Edification

So I've been absent for a bit. I was in Anchorage visiting family and enjoying their current heatwave (not kidding) featuring the longest stretch of days with high temperatures in the 70s on record. Okay, so I missed that stretch by a couple of days, but while I was there the high one day was 72F (22C for my non-existent, non-American readership), and I don't know how people managed to survive it. Down here in Arkansas we have days like that in December sometimes, but I'm not going to pick nits here. It was madness, people! But then one day was overcast, and the high was 54F (12C). That's how sanity made a comeback in Alaska.

Anywho, I found this gem on Facebook earlier today. Enjoy.

Dear Mr. President:

During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive Shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive
Brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone.

While glancing over her Patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as "Medic...aid"! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer.

And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman's health care?

I contend that our nation's "health care crisis" is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a "crisis of culture", a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance.

It is a culture based on the irresponsible credo that "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me". Once you fix this "culture crisis" that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you'll be amazed at how quickly our nation's health care difficulties will disappear.

Respectfully,
STARNER JONES, MD

A picture of our good doctor.

Let's see if we can break down the subtext here a bit. First, take a look at the wee-bit-too-vague-to-be-effectively-vague description.

1) Tattoos? Could be just about anyone under 40 these days.

2) Expensive mobile phone? Ditto. R&B ringtone? Hmmm. Well...

3) Expensive athletic shoes? Okay, now we're veering toward a more "urban" (to use the generally accepted kinda-sorta-race-neutral euphemism for "African-American" which is obvs totally accurate because EVERYONE knows all black people are denizens of the inner city) stereotype. It's not impossible that the good doctor could be describing a white woman, but youngish white women who sport multiple tattoos and go in for pricey mobile phones tend to wear throwback Converse or something more socially conscious these days. (Toms, anyone?) Expensive athletic shoes not so much. Do me a favor. Next time you walk into a Whole Foods look at what the employees sporting multiple tats and piercings have on their feet. If you see one with the latest pair of $200 athletic shoes endorsed by an NBA star please share a pic with me. Otherwise, I'm not inclined to believe it. Also, please do the same for any unicorns or Sasquatch you happen to encounter.

4) Gold tooth? At this point, Doc might as well start butchering vocabulary from Urban Dictionary in an attempt to relate with "the kids" who might be reading. "But John," you might ask, "aren't you engaging in a racial stereotype by saying that 'gold tooth' is code for 'shiftless black'"? Yes, I am, and the reason I am is to expose the fact that this guy is doing it. Be honest, if not with me then at least with yourself. When you read "gold tooth" did you think of a white person? Of course not. You weren't meant to. This whole parade of stereotypes is meant to evoke a singular image. Not because stereotypes are accurate, necessarily, but because they're useful shorthand for things we're not supposed to say.

5) Finally, to get to his point, he makes sure to say this person was on Medicaid. So what we're looking at here is really a not-so-cleverly reimagined cover tune, so to speak. It's a replay of the Golden Oldie, "Welfare Queen". Granted, not as ear-wormy as "Caribbean Queen" (you're welcome, btw), but Billy Ocean's classic '80s adult contemporary hit doesn't have the staying power of that perniciously persistent (hooray for alliteration!) tune, either.

I'll just bottom line it since we're running a bit long at this point. Do people like this exist? Probably. Most stereotypes have at least a modicum of truth which is why they seem plausible in the first place, but to suggest that the representation on offer here is applicable even to the greatest majority of people on Medicaid is specious, at best. In fact, like Welfare and Food Stamps, a substantial majority of people on Medicaid are white, poor, and they work. So what this "letter" to the president (and we all know which president despite the lack of a name) really amounts to is one more attempt to slander the poor by a privileged white dude who doesn't like that his money goes toward helping people he doesn't identify with personally. The medical doctor part of it, I would suggest, is meant to lend the whole thing a bit more respectability, but allow me to assure you that there are just as many medical doctors out there who are insufferable, selfish pricks interested in little more than the money as there are good, decent, selfless practitioners of the healing arts. Well, maybe not as many, but certainly enough to cast unwarranted doubt on others who became doctors for much better reasons.

There is absolutely no way this doctor can know who pays for this woman's phone. Or when she got those tattoos. Or how she came by those expensive shoes. Or really anything else of substance about her since he seems never to have bothered to get past his own smirking assumptions. He cannot possibly know what circumstances lead to her being on Medicaid. All he knows is that he doesn't approve of this woman's choices (which he also has no means of understanding without, you know, talking to her), and he resents having to pay for "these people's" Medicaid. Well, you know what, Doc? I didn't approve of the invasion of Iraq back in 2003. Some of my taxes still go toward paying for it, and will keep going toward paying for it for quite a while. In a society as diverse as ours, you are virtually guaranteed to disagree with some part of what your taxes pay for, but that's part of the deal. You don't have to stand by and say nothing about what you dislike about the system, but when part of your complaint includes dehumanizing people who don't share your standing within that system by using broad, unsupported, and inaccurate stereotypes you've pretty much just opted for going full douchebag. This guy also decided to spring for the full racist douchebag package. Why not? It only costs a little more, and he's a doctor so he can probably afford it.

Racism & Forgiveness

I'm a tiny bit torn over these revelations about Paula Deen. On the one hand, I find her to be representative of so much I despise about white Southerners—ignorant, solipsistic, entitled. The fact that she's such a caricature isn't much help in gaining any of my sympathy, either. Then there's that damn other hand.

While maintaining her ignorant, solipsistic entitlement, she also comes across as genuinely remorseful. She doesn't seem quite able to put it all together in any meaningful way, but she certainly appears to want to understand. She wants to be a good person, but she's also an unintentional racist. I don't mean to suggest that racism of any sort is defensible. We're responsible for it whether we've taken sufficient time to reflect on our complicity, on our privilege, on our attitudes or not, but the unintentional part is where so many of us white folks get lost. Even people who are obviously guilty of being as racist as Paula Deen has been somehow manage not to notice. A few racists I come across these days (and they're around) are either quite secretive about their views until they're in all-white company and therefore feel free to let their racist hair down, or they're disturbingly proud of those views and seem to hold them as a sign of conscientious resistance to creeping decadence. But no matter which of those two categories they happen to fall into, they all intend to be racist. They're not even slightly motivated to dress it up as some aw-shucks-it's-how-I-was-raised-I-can't-help-it metaphorical shrug. They genuinely believe it's immoral for races to interact (much less mix), and they believe anyone who isn't white, conservative, and Christian also isn't worthy of the benefits of our—in their view—white, conservative, Christian nation. In other words, if you're not a member of the club then you well and truly do not belong. Any subversion of what they see as their birthright as white, conservative Christians is, in their view, a usurpation of their divinely mandated role in the universe.

All of that said, here's the thing about Paula Deen and her current predicament which has motivated me to write about these things today. I've been in her shoes. I know what it is to grow up clueless in a horrifically racist environment only to come to recognize the abject evil of it later in life. Fun fact: At the end of the street in Pine Bluff, Arkansas where I grew up—just across Olive Street where Hudson Avenue meets it—there was once a family restaurant (yes, I see the irony there) in the vein of Shoney's named Sambo's. When I say "once" I do mean it's no longer there, but it did exist concurrently with yours truly. I ate there as a kid, and I had no clue. It was the late '70s. There were paper place mats that featured renderings of black people (I'm hesitant to associate the term "African-American" with these particularly vile representations) with giant lips, bones through their exaggeratedly wide noses, and dressed in loin cloths. They looked more like apes than like people, by design.

That was the soup I swam in, and it was represented not only as the ways things were but also as how they were meant to be. I accepted it for a time, but although I have managed to come at least a great deal of the way out of that worldview—I still hold that I have blind spots even though, by definition, I cannot be aware of them—I've only managed it in steps. There was no Damascene conversion for me after which the scales fell from my eyes. The revelations were persistent and usually small. They also have been cumulative, to my great fortune. So, if I'm honest and just, I can't refuse Deen my sympathy without refusing it to myself. It's a sad day when we realize how often we have to view such things through our own prisms in order to be able to extend grace to others, but there it is. The truth as it applies to this situation is two-fold: 1) I am repulsed by Paula Deen but feel compelled to extend her grace as well as credit her for at least not wanting to be a racist; and, 2) I feel this way toward Paula Deen because my own history as an ignorant, solipsistic, entitled, and ultimately unintentional racist white Southerner still brings up deep wells of shame in me. Then I remember that I was fortunate enough to be shown the errors of my ways quietly and privately beginning before I even graduated high school. Paula Deen gets to do it loudly and in public after having gained the stature of a celebrity in her field. Any misgivings on my part notwithstanding, that alone is enough to evoke my pity.

So do we forgive Paula Deen? Well, I can't forgive her because I am not the injured party here. I do not hold the power of absolution. In short, it's not my call. I also don't get to make suggestions to African-Americans about whether they should forgive her or me. Most importantly, I don't get to judge African-Americans should they decide against forgiving either of us.

The thing I find most odd about this situation is the cries of outrage coming from white people. (See the YouTube comments under the video I embedded above for examples.) It's not that we're wrong about the outrage. Casual racism of this nature is certainly outrageous. It's that in engaging in these performances we ignore how much we've benefited from the same racism that's motivating us to scream for Paula Deen's blood. By hurling invective at her without restraint, we try to set ourselves apart from her. It's as if we hope to transform ourselves into the Other in order to take up the role of the ones who have suffered the trespass on their human rights and human dignities, but none of us white folks get to do that. It's neither within our capabilities nor within our rights. We do not possess the moral standing to indulge ourselves here. We—each and every one of us—to greater or lesser degree have benefited at the expense of Others as a result of exactly this kind of racism. Deflecting criticism toward Deen does nothing to mitigate our complicity. Screaming to the rafters about the injustice of the racism that Deen represents doesn't remove the slightest mote of privilege under which we have existed in this society for centuries.

Using Paula Deen as our proxy in an attempt to assuage our guilty consciences, whether we realize what we're doing or not, means we have many lessons yet to learn. Paula Deen is a symptom. She's a signpost guiding us white people back to ourselves. We would do well to exhibit a great deal of humility in moments like this one, and remember how we all carry a privilege by virtue of having been born where we were, when we were, and the color we were. We have never earned it, and we do not deserve it. The only way we can possibly move past it toward a more just and equal society is to stop believing we don't have it. A good first step down that path would be to acknowledge that we are all in one way or another like Paula Deen—ignorant, solipsistic, and entitled.

By all means, decry the injustice of racism. By all means, fight against the tide of it. By all means, work to right the wrongs it has done. Just do it humbly. Get down in the muck of it because that high horse we're sitting is all in our heads, and it does nothing but hinder everyone's efforts.

Impenetrable Logic

Every time I hear a politician (generally from the right these days) come out with some truly stupid pronouncement a part of me silently hopes we've hit bottom. My hopes continue to be dashed mercilessly. To wit: Meet the Honorable Gentleman, U.S. Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) who once sincerely argued that there is not a single law in the United States to prevent a pedophile from secretly transporting his underage victim across state lines to force her to abort her pregnancy in order to destroy the evidence of his crime. Not one law. But, hey, it's not like he's in charge of laws or anything, right? Right? Oh, wait.

Anyway, he said the following just recently.

Before I go any farther, I'd like to offer a quick message to my Republican friends (by which I mean people I personally know who are conservative and support the GOP for lack of a better option). I hope you all know how much I love and respect you. I also hope you know I am aware that not one of you is this stupid. In fact, living in deepest-of-deep-red Arkansas, the vast majority of my friends (family, too, for that matter) are conservative and serious-minded, devout Christians so I've had the opportunity that so few non-conservatives seem to avail themselves of these days—namely, actually talking to people who disagree with my politics. You are all, to a person, good and decent folks who are willing to accept that we can disagree on important issues without either of us being a degenerate. You have no idea how much I appreciate that fact. So, having said all those things, please understand that I'm not lumping you in with the likes of Rep. King up there. Now, onward we go.

The thing I'd like to point out about what Rep. King has to say in this clip is the exceptionally abysmal logic at play in his unspoken assumption that only Christians have any sort of morals therefore any display of morals is, by default, a conspicuous display Christianity. I see that assumption at work throughout much of the political right in the U.S. today, and it troubles me for several reasons. I won't go into them all right now, but I will describe one of them.

The attitude in question is a covertly hostile declaration against non-Christians whether we're talking about theists who believe in a different god or atheists who believe in none. In some cases, this declaration applies to theists who believe in the same god but do so in a slightly different way. I find this sort of bigotry (let's just call it what it is) deeply troubling since it necessarily means that those who hold this attitude operate under the assumption that anyone who doesn't share their conviction is a lesser person, and as such certain rights simply don't apply to that person.

As a somewhat different manifestation of this same bigotry, consider for a moment the current simmering scandal over the Obama administration assassinating U.S. citizens overseas. I have to admit that it took me a little while to come around on this issue because, let's face it, Anwar al-Aulaqi and his ilk are awful human beings. Al-Aulaqi, in particular, wasn't awful because he was a Muslim. I've known lots of Muslims who are just the finest people you'd ever want to meet. No, al-Aulaqi was awful because he decided that it would be a good idea to encourage other people to engage in suicide-murders in the name of an idea that he particularly liked. I hold that people who do such things have forfeited their right to breathe, but I don't get to make those decisions all on my own. Neither does anyone else, including our president. We established a system of justice in this nation when we ratified the constitution that guarantees certain rights, and if anything it's all the more important for us to uphold those rights when we're dealing with someone as terrible as al-Aulaqi was. The fact that it's difficult to do it is what makes it meaningful. If these things were easy then everyone would do them. We like to think we hold ourselves to a higher standard so it's a good idea that we actually do that.

So what does all of that have to do with our Rep. King? Well, other than offering a bipartisan example of really problematic attitudes toward people we don't like, what I'm attempting here is to show how much easier it is to dehumanize those you believe have somehow disqualified themselves from being worth the effort to respect, if nothing else, their basic humanity. I doubt very seriously that Rep. King would agree that he's dehumanizing people, but when you demote someone who doesn't see things your way to a lesser status that's exactly what you're doing. So when Rep. King argues, albeit implicitly, that morality equals Christianity he also implies the corollary—namely, that non-Christians cannot be moral by default. I suspect that the Honorable Gentleman believes he's being admirably ecumenical by sweeping up every moral person into Christendom, but some people don't want to be a part of Christendom. Sweeping them into it violates their right to make those decisions for themselves and debases them as a result.

Of course, doing what Rep. King is doing here is not the same as murdering U.S. citizens with flying killer robots, but the kernel of the idea is basically the same. When you make the mental shift to consider the rights of everyone who (insert thing you don't like here) to be beneath consideration, you've stepped onto a very dangerous path. You may only go far enough down that path to decide that it's just dandy to ignore the deeply held convictions of other people so you proclaim that governing according to your religious convictions is the only right thing to do because, conveniently, everyone really agrees with them whether they admit it or not. Or you may decide that it's a good idea to start murdering people with flying killer robots, but let's all hope things don't get that far out of hand.

As to the problematic nature of Rep. King's specific argument in this case, the logic only works if the neighbor whose dog you killed happens to be Jesus. Otherwise, you're just a decent guy with a decent neighbor.

Pat Robertson is mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore!

Pat Robertson is extremely upset about people twisting his words, and can you guess which words he's upset about people twisting? I'll just tell you. He's referring to the video I posted of him in my last entry. Here's what he had to say about the response to his previous advice.

So let's talk about what Ol' Pat had to say about what other people said about what he said the last time he said something so awful it needed to be exposed.

1) He begins by saying that his advice as a pastor (emphasis mine) is meant for specific people in specific situations to help them have a better life. Now, there's room for disagreement on this issue, but I personally think that to be a pastor you kind of need to be leading a congregation. Last I checked, Pat doesn't do anything like that and apparently never has.

2) He claims that some organization he refuses to name has as its raison d'etre embarrassing conservatives on television by twisting their words. I'm in no position to deny that there are some organizations on both sides of the political divide who do work very hard to selectively quote and suspiciously edit people with whom they disagree in an attempt to misrepresent and embarrass them. However, if Pat is referring to the organization which posted both this clip and the last one I posted he's going to have a bit of trouble trying to back up that claim. One reason I pay attention to Right Wing Watch is because they very clearly do not do the things Pat is referring to in this latest statement. What they do is take lengthy quotes, preserve their context, and simply allow people like Pat to say the horrible things they say on a fairly regular basis. That's a very different thing than what Pat says his critics are doing to him.

3) He trots out an email (which I will assume for the sake of argument is genuine) from a viewer as a means of demonstrating that, you know, he's not a terrible person after all because the ladies think he was right to say what he said. I typically avoid casting too wide a net on these things, but I have to point out a plain factual error in the email. Her second sentence reads, "I heard no excuse for the man's poor behavior in your answer to her." Hmmmm. That's a problem because Pat said quite plainly that this guy cheated because he is in fact a guy, and that guy's are prone to stray unless their ladies give them a reason to do otherwise. Where I come from (which, for the record, is Earth) that's an excuse for the guy's poor behavior. What's worse is the fact that said excuse at least partly shifts the responsibility for the guy's infidelity onto his apparently long-suffering wife which is just a complete asshole move. Granted, Pat doesn't come right out and say that, but when he starts doling out the advice on keeping the home attractive and appealing to the man in question it's pretty clear that he's not placing that responsibility on the husband.

4) Last thing about the email, I promise. The emailer says that God forgives us in the same manner she describes "a million times a day". I realize people like to use hyperbole in these instances as a way of making their points more effectively, but just stop for a moment and consider what she's saying regardless of what she may or may not mean by it. My basic assumption is that if God is having to forgive you a million times a day for just about anything you're probably not living the sort of life you need to be working toward living. Hell, for that matter, I'd say a hundred times a day is way over the line. Maybe, just maybe, instead of trying to mansplain by proxy Pat might want to encourage his viewers to work a wee bit harder on being decent humans in their daily lives. I know this is crazy talk and all, but it might be a good idea to set a goal of being a decent human for one full day and build from there.

5) Pat says toward the end of the clip, "I'm not politically correct in case you haven't learned. I tell it like it is." I submit to you, gentle reader, that anyone who believes Pat is politically correct has never once heard him speak, read anything he's written, or read/viewed anything about him. I envy those people. Really, I do.

6) Pat repeats his claim that he's being misrepresented by virtue of having his words twisted. I'll just repeat that running full-length, in-context clips of things you say that reflect poorly on you does not constitute the twisting of words. It's more akin to giving him enough rope to hang himself.

7) Finally, Pat intimates that he's going to air "a full-scale exposé" of this especially nasty group of mean meanies who show people who won't like what Pat has to say the things Pat says. My only response is a hearty, "Please do it, Pat. Pretty please with sugar on top!" If we've learned one thing about these kinds of people trying to take on and ultimately shame their critics it's that those efforts almost inevitably backfire and cause even more problems. Honestly, that sort of thing couldn't happen to a better guy. Besides, if I'm going to keep up this blistering pace of posting more often than every four years I'll be needing source material, and Pat is a goldmine, let me tell you.

Time to Shut Up Now, Pat

If I may, I humbly recommend Mr. Robertson go totter off into a quiet retirement now. Very quiet.

To be honest, the moment for his self-removal from the public eye passed many years ago, but he apparently has no sense of shame whatever. Pat, so it would seem, fears that we just couldn't possibly muddle through without him. After several decades of dispensing this sort of over-privileged claptrap masquerading as advice and counsel, however, I have a difficult time imagining how we could possibly do any worse. It boggles the mind to imagine how many times Pat's co-host must have cringed as he prattled on in this clip, and it's little wonder that this clip doesn't include a single wide shot of them both. I suspect it was simply impossible for her to keep the look of incredulous dismay off her face. At least, I hope that's the case.

Yeah, bite me.

Okay, so it's been a while since I posted anything on my blog. Don't act like I'm the first blogger ever to let a mere few years elapse between entries. What do you want from me?

It's probably important to point out that I officially have no followers for this blog, at the moment. Which means I'm really addressing myself. I'm okay with that. I talk to myself all the time because, let's face it, someone needs to benefit from my intellect and humor, and it might as well be me. Hell, pretty much everything I do online amounts to little more than amusing myself. Now, let's get on with it, shall we? (Yes, John, let's.)

So today is Mother's Day, and, despite the fact that most everybody knows it's a faux holiday created out of whole cloth as a way for greeting card companies to pad their ledgers during the other eleven months of the year when people don't feel compelled to mass mail their products to virtual strangers and people (they think) they're distantly related to, no one--NO ONE--would dare miss observing it by participating in one of the many empty gestures available to them for the purpose of acknowledging the person who popped them out into the world. I'm guilty of it. I just sent an email to my mother's work address apologizing for the fact that I didn't get the same pro forma gesture to her 24 hours earlier. Why her work address, you ask? Well, I've somehow managed to lose her home address. Not her physical address, mind you. Her email address. I totally have her physical address, and I could have very easily mailed her a real card or some such thing which probably would have gotten me bonus points for taking five minutes during a regular visit to the grocery store to pick out some vacuous card telling her I care enough to make a 20-foot detour between buying bananas and wandering through the baking goods aisle wondering why the fuck Kroger doesn't carry Dutched Cocoa. (And, yes, I know Hershey's is Dutched, but I don't buy Hershey's because I'm a cocoa snob. See the title of this entry if you have a problem with that.)

Now, I'm sure you're wondering how I managed to lose my mother's home email address. I know you're wondering because I'm wondering, and as previously mentioned I'm the only person who's reading this entry. That's actually a very good question. If you had asked a question it would have been good, at least. Anyway, I'm guessing it has something to do with the Cloud™. See, I very wisely back up things like my iTunes library and my personal contacts list to the Cloud™ because the worst could happen and my DVD backup disc, my external hard drive backup, and my smart phone could crap out at precisely the same moment (or, because fate is a motherfucker, each could crap out the instant I raced to it in a futile effort to retrieve the pertinent information so that I might have the experience of watching each safeguard fail in sequence in real time). So, of course, I make the only decision left me which is to entrust vital personal information to whatever company actually maintains the Cloud™ without asking myself whether it's secure or how said company might use said information in ways I wouldn't appreciate but will probably never learn about anyway. So, yeah, I do that because I trust anonymous people not to fuck me over. Because that sort of thing never goes wrong. So, John, you're patiently reading this entry as you type it wondering when I (also, you) will manage to get to the goddamn point. That would be now. Thanks for being patient.

Apparently, during one backup or another only my mother's work email made the transition, and when I synced everything else like a responsible 21st century man the Cloud™ noticed that one set of data had multiple email addresses for her while the other set did not so it did the only reasonable thing. It deleted the set with multiple addresses because the Cloud™ has reached the point in its evolution where it has an intellectual capacity equivalent to your run-of-the-mill English major (or a sensitive, precocious high schooler) and is rather fond of Thoreau's famous instruction to simplify. In essence, I've been outflanked by a computer algorithm. It's not surprising because, you know, Skynet and all.

So what does my ability (well, let's be honest, inability) to deal with the mystery that is the World Wide Web (which, for those non-existent readers under 30, is an archaic name for the internet) have to do with Mother's Day? Not much. It's a way to pad an entry centering on the overused trope which points out how Mother's Day is bullshit commercialism, and how that fact does nothing to prevent us from feeling obligated to tell our mothers that they're special on this particular day. Honestly, I considered for a moment not sending anything to my mom, but I knew that she would feel disappointed, at best, and rejected, at worst, and no matter what baggage I carry because of the history I share with her she really doesn't deserve to feel either of those things. Even though this day really isn't more important than any other, and we're both being manipulated.