#EmptyThePews

“FRICKIN’ HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD! JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH! POPE PAUL VI AND ALL THE SAINTS! AND DEAR GOD WHY ARE ALL THESE WOMEN IN EXPENSIVE ULTRASUEDE DRESSES RUNNING UP AND DOWN THE AISLES SCREAMING THEIR FOOL HEADS OFF???!!!!!”

I posted this elsewhere and on Twitter first, but it also belongs here on the Anon-a-Blog.

Why my pew has been empty since 1982: A long thread for anyone who may be interested, et al. Perhaps someone may relate or need to hear. Inspired by @C_Stroop and #EmptyThePews on Twitter.

It starts in 1975. I’m 12. A budding little gay boy. At the C. of the Naz., we get a spiffy little sermon, which runs like this: “Speaking in tongues is evidence of demonic possession!!!” Amens, claps, whistles, “Kill the Devil!”

Fast forward a week later. Someone in charge of our family’s spiritual development decides to follow info bestowed by the Holy Spirit
Fairy, an entity which seems to act rather … impetuously. Or at least that was my experience with Him.

The Spirit has moved someone that we must immediately abandon the C. of the Naz., where, remember, I’ve just been told on the authority of the church into which I was born and raised that speaking in tongues is evidence of demonic possession.

[An aside: 12-year-old me had memorized the 1960 Church Manual so I could know how to perform weddings and funerals because … get this … I thought I would become a C. of the Naz. preacher.]

Given a choice about which church to attend would have been lovely. Alas, it was not to be. I was the young, stupid child who couldn’t possibly be trusted to know what was good for him, spiritually speaking. At best, a “baby Christian.” (These buzzwords sound familiar?)

Actually, after just one hour of being exposed to the new church’s … shall we say, bizarreness and cultish overtones … I’m confident I would have scurried back underneath the skirts of the mother church (of the Naz.) if I had a driver’s license and a car. But I didn’t.

So I wasn’t given a choice. Remember the previous sermon, supposedly delivered by a stern God to CotN Leaders possessed of “Utter Sanctification” and who are therefore qualified to speak on subjects Most Weighty: “Speaking in tongues is evidence of demonic possession!”

Again, I was 12 years old. Puberty was dawning. Teenage outrage, hatred of hypocrisy, self-righteousness, inflated sense of injustice, and general all-around questioning and boundary-pushing are imminent. I needed constancy. But the Spirit had spoken and must be obeyed.

The next Sunday, we don’t drive over to be with the sanctified who hate devilish tongue-speaking. Instead, we head straight for the new church, an Assembly of God knockoff/alleged “non-denominational.” “We’re going here from now on,” says Parental Dearest.

What happened the first Sunday at the new church to which we had been led by the Holy Spirit? Well, I’ll set the scene one more time: The previous week, the church of my birth told me speaking in tongues is evidence of demonic possession.

This week? FRICKIN’ HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD! JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH! POPE PAUL VI AND ALL THE SAINTS! AND DEAR GOD WHY ARE ALL THESE WOMEN IN EXPENSIVE ULTRASUEDE DRESSES RUNNING UP AND DOWN THE AISLES SCREAMING THEIR FOOL HEADS OFF???!!!!!

Then: The kicker. If I am to understand the main belief point through hours of gibberish, a complete lack of any catechism, no orderly service of any kind, no regular communion, and a multitude of other things, a central belief is this:

“If you do NOT speak in tongues, God is withholding His greatest blessing from you and therefore there is something wrong with you if you don’t immediately babble in tongues in ‘the presence of the Lord.'”

In other words, NOT speaking in tongues was evidence of God withholding his greatest gift from you & you were opening yourself up to … you guessed it, demonic possession. As soon as I hit 16, my pew began to be empty. By 18, only bribery could get me in it. So…bye!

It would take a long thread to describe coming out (yeah, the Spirit got involved there, too), getting away & being an adult in charge of myself & the joys of life since I got myself to #EmptyThePews. Thanks for the inspiration, @C_Stroop and thanks to everyone who read!

It was a Cold and Boring Night

“To me, as a gay boy, hugging another boy was perfectly natural. It always has been, it always will be. I always felt instinctively somehow that people would disapprove and say I was naughty. And I always felt instinctively that I knew what I wanted and I was going to have it and all those disapproving people could just go suck eggs and pound sand. Even at the height of the worst spiritual and sexual repression that Oklahoma and its churches could dole out, my inner belief has always been the same. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’ve known who I am and what I wanted since I was at least five. And everyone else who is not onboard with that can go over Niagra Falls without a barrel.”

21-Apr-64

Interviewer: So, tell me your story.

Steve: I was born in Roswell, New Mexico, one cold Saturday morning in December 1963. I lived in Roswell and Clovis, spent my teens and twenties in Duncan, OK <involuntary shudder>, and then lived in Dallas, TX; Pleasant Hill, CA; Highlands Ranch, CO; San Francisco, CA; Ann Arbor, MI; Brentwood, CA; and Nashville, TN. I was blessed with decades with the love of my life. I was a mensware salesman, a reporter and PR director, a run-of-the-mill temp, an internal communications manager, a substitute teacher, an author, a regular elementary teacher, a jack of all trades, a master of none. Then I died.
What’s to know?


Int: It sounds like an entry in one of those old city telephone guides, you know, the ones like “City of Roswell, NM, 1966: 1616 W. Juniper 88201. Pollock, Marion E., service station mgr.; Janis W, bus driver, custodian; children Kathy, 10, Vicky, 8, Steven, 3. 505-623-1354.

S: Perhaps.

Int: There’s always more to the biographical entry. Even as biography, it’s rather skimpy.

S: Fine. How’s this: My mother went into labor at 2 a.m. on a Satuday morning, Dec. 14, 1963. Everything was closed on a cold winter night. They hustled my sisters over to my near-by aunt’s house, then headed for the hospital, Eastern New Mexico Medical Center, where a future actress who would be named Demi Moore had just been born the month before.

They didn’t really want the Catholic Poor Clare Nuns at St. Mary’s on the south edge of town to deliver a bouncing baby white Protestant boy and have him lie in a nursery sprinkled with Papist holy water surrounded by what my grandparents always called, “Mescans”—a deliberate slur, both literal and figurative, an all around great word for them and their purpose. Catholics were Mescans, Mescans were Catholics. If you went to St. Peter and Paul’s, you were Mescan. You went to the First Church of the Nazarene, you were good Christian white people destined to conquer heaven and have its fruits and riches yours forever and ever amen. The attitude when they moved from Oklahoma where negroes were to be found to New Mexico where there were few and far between negroes, but Mexicans abounded simply shifted their racism from black to brown. “We can’t say ‘nigger’ no more? Fine, we don’t need ‘nigger’ around here anyway, they ain’t that much of them here. But we got lots of Mescans. Wetbacks. Illegals. Mescans steal. Mescans lie. Mescans are pestilential. Somebody gets shot in Roswell, a Mescan done it. We keep loaded pistols under our pillows in case a wetback comes bustin’ through the front door. Thank god for Jesus and the NRA and Sig Sauer 9mms!”

[Can you see a theme, perhaps a thread, that will run through some of my family encounters? Let’s clear this up first. I quote racists. I don’t share their views. Even if they are among the people who created my existence. It doesn’t fly with me. Never has. How my grandparents and parents approached issues of race and sexuality will pop up here unexpectedly like this throughout.]

So about my debut. 2 a.m. I’m screaming (stupid idiot that I was) that it was time to get the hell out of this vag and never, ever, never acquaint myself with one in a personal way ever again. Dad fumbles for some matches. Probably ice on the road, he’s driving with a finger while trying to light his 900th Lucky Strike of the day. He doesn’t have any matches left. She sighs and orders him to turn around and go to the house and get some. Nothing open at 2 a.m. in Roswell, NM, USA, during the deep dark nights of December 1963. So he turns around, grabs some matches, starts the drive back to the hospital.

ENMMC is up in the swankier northern end of town. The fashionable side, not like the ugly, poor Catholic side with all the Mescans. ENMMC is located on West Country Club Road, just off North Main Street. I was BORN on Country Club, motherfuckers and don’t forget it.

So, let’s see … 2 a.m. labor, time of arrival, 06:12 a.m.

Basically the story is that thanks to America’s tobacco companies, their addictive drugs within deadly products, two things were fated for me: One, to almost have been born in the back of the family 1958 Rambler station wagon. Two, to make sure that Dad dies of COPD and heart failure, his body destroyed just as he crosses the 80-year mark.

So, see what I mean? Boring. As. Fucking. Hell.

I: Let us and our readers be the judge of that.

S: Great. Editors and the “people” … fine, I’m sure everything will be just peachy. Go on?

I: For now, if you’re not too tired.

S: Fine. There were years of attending exhausting get-togethers at the Roswell First Church of the Nazarene, W. Eighth Street. I can still taste the sloppy joes from the kitchen in the “family center” (gym). Mom was invited to a service there in 1952 by one of the extended family cousins. She prayed the prayer and joined. And believed, at least, that is until about 1976, when her everlasting war with her oldest daughter shifted into high and serious and everlasting gear.

We moved to the ancestral home of Duncan, OK, in 1974. After a couple of years, the oldest sister rebelled against the “not-with-it-ness” of the Church of the Nazarene. There also weren’t enough husbands on the hoof at the small church in Duncan we attended. She and the more malleable middle sister decamped for the holy rollers. Mom muttered something about slowly changing herself, and promptly dragged me off to the a place that called itself “Gospel Beams” church. A perfectly cromulent word, but in that context … odd and weird. It wasn’t “First Church of the Whatever,” or “Fir Street Baptist,” it was …. Gospel. Frickin’. Beams.

I suffered so many indignities there. For starters, I didn’t buy the bullshit. Here was my 12-year-old self’s perspective: On one Sunday, I’m going to Oak Avenue Church of the Nazarene, the exact church my dad’s grandmother and her twin sister had propped up for decades, and in which my parents had been married. Wherein there was a disapproving Chuch Lady, predating Dana Carvey’s performance on Saturday Night Live by years, named Mary Mahan (isn’t that a perfect name for smarmy self-righteous Sunday School teachers who conduct warfare on teenage girls who have the temerity to wear not just pants, but horrors! Blue. Jeans. when they are to be seen in the public square. The Church Lady had, of course, her Church Man complement but who wasn’t her husband, the preacher. Charles Stroud meant well, I’m sure, but he agreed with Church Lady and was just as conservative and NOT WITH IT to my sisters, one of whom at that point was about to be a senior in high school, and the other was out of school and doing nursing and office work. And this in 1975-76, a supposedly freer and happier time.

Come one Sunday morning Oldest Sister sits in parking lot of Hypocritical, Self-Righteous and Husband-Material-poor Church, where had sat our ancesters in the pews, still sprinkled with the rice from our parents wedding. They talk it over. Sister 1 says she just can’t bring herself to go in that place ever again. (She didn’t … it burned down in 2009, surely a sign of the removal of God’s blessing if there ever was one.) Sister 2 agrees, but she has other more nefarious plans afoot. They pull out of the parking lot and head to the east side of town, the locale, ‘mongst the poor Rednecks living near the original Chisholm Trail, of Gospel. Frickin’ Beams. They’ll get married there. Husbands on the hoof are far, far more plentiful.

Meanwhile back at the Church of the Nazarene, we get a spiffy little sermon. Follow me here. This is quite crucial to my future. The sermon runs like this: “Speaking in tongues is evidence of demonic possession!!!” <Amens, claps, whistles, “Kill the Devil!” Great-grandma shouts from the grave>.

Fast forward a week later. Mother’s heart has been burdened (poor Mother) with the information given her by the Holy Spirit, who at certain propitious moments in my life has acted more like Mercury, the winged god of speed and messenger boys everywhere, than a sober, deliberative, slow-moving force. So this time, the message is, “Oldest Daughter shouldn’t be defying your religious authority woman! Do something!”

Mother does. She immediately yanks me out of the Church of the Nazarene, where, remember, I’ve just been told on the authority of the church into which I was born and raised and had memorized the 1960 Church Manual so I could know how to perform weddings and funerals because … get this … I thought I would become a Church of the Nazarene preacher, [HA!] and had informed Mother of this when I was about 11.

Given a choice about which church to attend would have been lovely. Alas, it was not to be. I was the young, stupid child who couldn’t possibly be trusted to know what was good for him. So, after one hour of being exposed to “Gospel Beams”’ … shall we say, bizarreness and cultish overtones … I’m confident I would have scurried back underneath the skirts of the mother church (of the Nazarene), even if those skirts did belong to a pants-hating biddy who had a hand in every Oak Avenue C of the N pie.

But I wasn’t given a choice. Remember the previous sermon, supposedly delivered by a stern god to church leaders possessed of “utter sanctification” and who are therefore qualified to speak on subjects most weighty: “Speaking in tongues is evidence of demonic possession!”

I was 11. Puberty was dawning. Teenage outrage, hatred of hypocrisy, self-righteousness, inflated sense of injustice, and general all-around questioning and boundary-pushing are imminent.

The next Sunday, we don’t hightail it over to the other side of town with the sanctified who hate devilish tongue-speaking. Instead, we head straight for “Gospel Beams.” “We’re going here from now on,” says Mummie Dearest.

What happened? Well, last week the church of my birth told me speaking in tongues is evidence of demonic possession. This week at “Gospel Beams”? FRICKIN’ HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH POPE PAUL VI AND ALL THE SAINTS AND DEAR GOD WHY ARE THESE WOMEN DRESSED IN EXPENSIVE ULTRASUEDE DRESSES RUNNING UP AND DOWN THE AISLES SCREAMING THEIR FOOL HEADS OFF???!!!!!

Then: The kicker. If I am to understand through the gibberish, the complete lack of any catechism, any order of service, regular communion or a multitude of things, there is one clear message: If you do NOT speak in tongues, God is withholding His greatest blessing from you and therefore there was something wrong with you if you didn’t immediately babble in “the presence of the Lord.”

In other words, NOT speaking in tongues was evidence of God withholding his favorite gift from you and therefore you opening yourself up to … you guessed it, demonic possession.

It was perfect. This nonsense lasted for next six (!) years until I got a car and a paper route with lots of Sunday morning deliveries to make, and therefore could make my mumbled excuses of “having to work on Sunday mornings” and thus avoid “Gospel Beams” like the plague.

Admittedly, this was convenient. How many times can you watch emotionally and physically repressed women have the greatest outbursts and then run up and down the aisles screaming, with tragic stains of tears spotting their impeccably tailored UltraSuede outfits?

It was the only time in their lives where they could say anything in their gobbledy language and get away with it. They could have been calling their husbands “black holes of emotional needs with cocks the size of pencil erasers”; they could have been yelling about how the very church around them was suffocating all of us, burying us in a cloying smell of death and fear and weird ritual “call and response” exercises, all done up in a format that claimed that the Holy Spirit was in charge of the church bulletin’s list of the order of the service; He and He alone decided which songs to sing, which verses to recite, whether to let the congregation leave before 1 p.m. Sunday afternoon because the pot roast would burn or whether to just meld it with the 6 p.m. service, which had it’s own weird rituals.

Namely: In that evening Sunday service, one went into the church at 6 p.m., sang some choruses the music for which hadn’t been written down; instead, the music dwelled in the brain of the church organist and music director. This system relied on obscure verses to provide lyrics to songs. If you were a newcomer, well, tough shit. You should just KNOW the tune to Psalm 63:3-4: “Thy lovingkindness is better than life. Thy lovingkindness is better than life. Thus will I bless thee, while I live; I will lift up my hands unto they name.”

The choruses, and many other things, will come upon you stealthily. Some day, you’ll stand and belt out, “They lovingkindness is better than life.” with the best of them. And you won’t have to look up the text to Psalm 63:3-4 in the King James.

After the choruses were sung from memory, there would be the show stopper. It was time for the crowd to “testify.” They would get up (as the Spirit moved them to jump) and they would testify: “I thought about that lady in the cubicle next to mine at Halliburton and how she wore that black dress to work on Tuesday and I also thought of about 18 different things I would do to her if I weren’t shackled to the ol’ ball-and-chain and if the sexy lady didn’t think I was a toad with three heads. But the Lord spoke to me and said, “Hey dumbass! You’re married under solemn holy vows and cannot think with your cock anymore, so put it away!” and He saved me right then and there from committing the grave sin of dissing my wife who hasn’t put out since 1957!” And so on.

But “Testify Time” often came with a built-in hazard that almost every Sunday hoisted the Beams of the Gospel by its own petard. The idea was that anyone could speak as the Spirit moved them. But the fatal flaw was that “Testify Time” could be easily hijacked by someone claiming to be moved. And the beauty of that was that no one else could stop him ’cause then they’d be speaking against the mysterious ways and movings of the Lord!

This always led to a brilliant, albeit stultifying, interlude every Sunday night. And some Sunday mornings. See, this dude named Joe Who-Wanted-Desperately-to-be-a-Preacher would get up and start to speak spontaneously and randomly and boringly about … God alone can remember what. Joe Who-Wanted-Desperately-to-be-a-Preacher tried all the words and phrases and everything, but … dear lord, he just wasn’t good. He did NOT have the showmanship, the theatricality, the ability to get Ultra Suede-ed women screaming in tongues, of the father-son team that pastored that church.

So Joe Who-Wanted-Desperately-to-be-a-Preacher always brought the place to a standstill. People would get bored. Some would drift away thinking, “I gotta get up at 6 a.m. to go to work, I can’t sit here all night! Don’t judge me!” The organist would sigh and eventually close her hymn book and leave the stage. I would engage in an hour-long seesaw between fighting off sleep and wondering if I did those goddamn Algebra problems in my homework. The relatives would later tut-tut and cluck-cluck about Joe Who-Wanted-Desperately-to-be-a-Preacher and his Showstopping Show. And I would always wonder, “What are you bitching for? He’s perfect for that place and it’s crazy rituals! They’re both bizarre, rambling, byzantine, stultifying, yawn-inducing, and completely ridiculous!” And I would always keep those opinions to myself.

Invariably, by 7:30 or so, even Mom would give up and give the signal and THANK YOU JESUS we could leave. The evening was over, I was a little over an hour from bedtime with school the next day during half the year, and only a little light left out during the rest of the year, so the evening was always ruined completely. Until I was 16, got some wheels and started working a little, and therefore had built in excuses, Sunday nights were the most miserable time of my entire existence. Thank god for K-Mart; when I started working there at 17, I had to often work Sunday afternoons from 12-6. Church started at 6, leaving me to drive myself straight home. Oh, the glorious freedom!!! Money, wheels and a Get-Out-of-Church-Free card!!!

Rapture. [Get it? Rapture? See what I did there?]


S: Fun religion-related fact: Sister #2’s extensive geneology research uncovered the origins of the Pollock clan in Scotland at the House of Pollok near Glasgow. In the house is a lovely, very faggy portrait of the Duke of Buckingham, in the full froppery of the age. The story is that King James was a complete fag: a fanny pounder, an ass bandit, an artist, funny, confirmed bachelor who managed to fuck enough to produce some offspring … in otherwords, a light-in-the-loafers Mary, Friend of Dorothy, honest-to-god poofter Mariçon fanny bandit bugger poofter pansy fruitcake Uranian Nancy Boy who is also a pillow biter and shirt lifter, Molly/Maryann, cocksucking, ass fucking, limp-wristed Son or Daughter of Bilitis, who just happened to be the King (and queen) of England when the most famous post-Reformation English translation of the Bible was put together … and then dedicated to … His Pansyness.

I can even remember the start of the dedication to the King James Version of the Bible. It is a translation which inexplicably remains sacred and inviolate to millions of Americans who believe that all other translations are the Devil’s Work—especially that 1960s New International Version, which was authored, obviously, by Satan in a futile attempt to tempt you away from the KJV, the One True Bible. Never mind that the KJV is the one translation commissioned by the biggest fruit and nut to hold the British Throne since King Edward II, a poofter whose poof hole was made poofier with red hot pokers and thus he expired. That is, the biggest fruit and nut until at least, oh, Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson. Yes, I’m well aware they are prime ministers. It’s just that the British throne is no longer occupied by monarchs. The actual Queen (and whatever king succeeds her) has no power and prefers to remain well above sordid political affrays. At the moment, in fact, she is having nothing at all to do with the nasty, muddly mess of Brexit, and wishes to keep herself and the Royal Corgis (who possess more brains than all the prime ministers of the last 75 years put together) clean and well above the fray of sordid power wielding.

Ahem.

Sorry.


Fair warning: There will now be an incredibly long, massive digression. Feel free to skip ahead over the following King James Bible bit. I always did growing up; you should have the same privilege.


I said I clearly remember the KJV dedicatory. If you’ve never had the privilege of growing up in a true, Bible (KJV)-believing household, here’s your chance to get a feel for what it’s like.

The dedicatory is the way the holy priests of the church decided to flatter their fluttery sovereign: They gave him his new Bible and wrote him the most fawning letter in recorded history. This flattery of the fluttery King James is peerless. It took them longer to think of this short paragraph than it did to translate the whole book. And if you’ve ever read the book of Numbers, you KNOW how long it must have taken.

This introductory bit of the monks were so far up His Nibs ass that they could see out his nose. It is officially known as “The Epistle Dedicatory.” It was included in almost every KJV Bible until the latter part of the Twentieth Century.


An aside: Of COURSE!!!!! the Dedicatory was eliminated out of Satanic, Popish ignorance and dishonesty and thus “distorts the intent of the preparers … hides the flavor and meaning of the time in which it was prepared, and presumes that we know better than the preparers. It also changes history by withholding vital historical information,” says the New Albany-Louisville Bible Students Ecclesia. Which appears, interestingly enough, to be an … organization, shall we say … dedicated to pure things such as Gay King James’ Very Own Bible.

The comment quoted above is followed by a longish screed against erasing history and goes on rather tiringly about the scourge of political correctness (quelle horreur!). They end their rant with “We are not critical [underlined not critical] of Catholics! We are critical of Catholic doctrine. The distinction is ENORMOUS!

Insert “blacks” and “black culture” for Catholics and what do you have? “We are not critical of Black people! We are critical of Black culture. The distinction is ENORMOUS!” “I don’t have anything against blacks, but I just hate Rap, welfare and breeding like bunnies!”

And you can play this white, cis, heteronormative, privileged, etc., game with any group from history: “We are not critical of Jews! We are critical of Jewish culture. The distinction is ENORMOUS!” “We are not critical of Gays! We are critical of Gay culture. The distinction is ENORMOUS!” “We are not critical of Mescans! We are critical of Mescan culture. The distinction is ENORMOUS!”

<AHEM> Sorry for the digression from the digression. Back to the main digression:


“The Epistle Dedicatory’ [Gird your loins, girls, it’s gonna be a long read. My pithy, snarky, sarcastic comments attempting to spice up this lickspittle fawning are in brackets.]

“TO THE MOST HIGH AND MIGHTY PRINCE [Get HER!], JAMES, by the Grace of God [and Elizabeth’s shriveled up ovaries], KING OF GREAT BRITAIN [until the Twenty-teens Brexit fiasco], FRANCE [“I fart in your general direction”], AND IRELAND [As if! He wishes!], DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, etc. [Yadda yadda yabba doo] The Translators of the Bible [groveling in the mud] wish Grace [Definition: “Unmerited divine assistance …” “unmerited” certainly fits the description], Mercy [“compassion or forbearance.” Question: Was a man who could have someone beheaded at a gesture capable of being particularly compassionate?], and Peace [oh good lord, the man waged wars right and left and north and west] through JESUS CHRIST [whoa, all caps, don’t shout, my dear monks] our Lord [finally, the end of the sentence].

“(1) Great and manifold were the blessings [We kicked in the teeth of the Welsh and a chicken showed up in our pot, miraculously!], most dread Sovereign [the man called his male lover his “wife” and indulged in very quite un-Dread-Sovereign-like activities], which Almighty God, the Father of all mercies, [who could mercifully strike us down and end this nasty, brutish and short existence—now THAT would be true mercy!] bestowed upon us the people of England, when first he sent Your Majesty’s Royal Person to rule and reign over us [Sorry, that was due to the Scots … and to Henry VII the usurper of Bosworth, and to Elizabeth I’s shriveled up womb, and to other strange oddities of history, but whatevs, good monks].

For whereas it was the expectation of many [oh, the foolish Many with their expectations!], who wished not well unto our Sion [“He’s a faggy Scot! Of course we don’t wish him well!” said the Many], that upon the settling of that bright Occidental Star, Queen Elizabeth of most happy memory [she of the most happy, arsenic-laced, white-ass makup], some thick and palpable clouds of darkness would so have overshadowed this Land [you mean Boris Johnson was floatin’ around the Strand back then too?!], that men should have been in doubt which way they were to walk [to the altar? to the nearest other man? what to do?!]; and it should hardly be known, who was to direct the unsettled State [wherein there had just been Much Slaughter: Catholic by Protestant, Cavalier by Roundhead, sluts by wrothful fathers, and WITCHES by everyone]; the appearance of Your Majesty, as of the Sun in his strength, instantly dispelled those supposed and surmised mists, and gave unto all that were well affected exceeding cause of comfort [“NOW is the Winter of Our Discontent made Glorious Summer by this Son of York!
And all the clouds that low’r’d upon our house,
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds,
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber,
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.”
C’mon, boys, you totally stole all this from frickin’ Shakespeare!]; especially when we beheld the Government established in Your Highness [No Papists or Demoncrats in Your Ministries, no sirree odds bodkins!], and Your hopeful Seed, [Well, now about that seed … something quite wild shall happen with that unhappy seed, but we won’t tell these monks; let ’em be surprised] by an undoubted Title, and this also accompanied with peace and tranquility at home and abroad. [“Undoubted Title” traced all the way back to Edward the Black Prince, we swear! Also, yay, peace and tranquility at home and abroad! Now let’s go burn witches and slay some Spaniards! Also the Dutch! Kill the Dutch!]

“(2) But among all our joys, there was no one that more filled our hearts, than the blessed continuance of the preaching of God’s sacred Word among us; which is that inestimable treasure, which excelleth all the riches of the earth; [Quick, can you esteemed bros name the 33rd chapter of the Book Ezekiel, verses 15-20? No? Anyone?] because the fruit [heh—they said, “Fruit” when writing about James the Light Loafered!] thereof extendeth itself, not only to the time spent in this transitory world, but directeth and disposeth men unto that eternal happiness which is above in heaven. [Nothing but misery here on earth is possible; you must die in agony and obedience to an perhaps invisible spaghetti monster in order to have mansions and True Happiness(tm) in the next world, which we totally swear exists and where there shall be no Papist witches of any kind. Also, no gophers. We hate gophers ]

“(3) Then not to suffer this to fall to the ground, but rather to take it up, and to continue it in that state, wherein the famous Predecessor of Your Highness [The Virgin Ice Queen Elizabeth I, if you’re keeping score] did leave it: nay, to go forward with the confidence and resolution of a Man [And oh, what a Man Jamesy was!] in maintaining the truth of Christ, and propagating it far and near, [and boy do we know how proper non-Papist Christians can propagate themselves far and near] is that which hath so bound and firmly knit the hearts of all Your Majesty’s loyal [Loyal? Ding-dong! It’s Guy Fawkes at the door and he wishes a word with you!] and religious people unto You, that Your very name is precious among them [as it still is among King-James-Version-of-the-Bible-ONLY folks in His Majesty’s former colonies]: their eye doth behold You with comfort, and they bless You in their hearts, as that sanctified Person who, under God, is the immediate Author of their true happiness [He spread his gay-ity far and near and made EVERYone happy!].

And this their contentment doth not diminish or decay, but every day increaseth and taketh strength, when they observe, that the zeal of Your Majesty toward the house of God doth not slack or go backward, but is more and more kindled [okay, now this is all sounding just plain naughty-naughty, you cloistered bro-bros!], manifesting itself abroad in the farthest parts of Christendom, by writing in defence of the Truth, (which hath given such a blow unto that man of sin, as will not be healed,) [James is writing Truth-defending tracts! Take that, Satan!] and every day at home, by religious and learned discourse, by frequenting the house of God, by hearing the Word preached, by cherishing the Teachers thereof, by caring for the Church, as a most tender and loving nursing Father [that loving Father who goes to church every time the doors are open when he’d rather be back at the castle playing ring-around-the-bedstead with his wife, the Duke of Bedford, and who pays for those church doors out of his dwindling purse, (God smack Elizabeth in her pancake-madeup face for spending all that money on ships) and who suffers through many sermons about the perils of the bare female ankle <yawn> and the heartbreaking, sinful evil of teaching peasants to read].

“(4) There are infinite [seems a bit hyperbolic] arguments of this right Christian and religious affection in Your Majesty; but none is more forcible to declare it to others than the vehement and perpetuated desire of accomplishing and publishing of this work, which now with all humility we present unto Your Majesty. [We worked DAMN hard to do this for your Royal Gayness, so you DAMN well better appreciate it … er, if it please Your Grace!] For when Your Highness had once out of deep judgment apprehended how convenient it was, that out of the Original Sacred Tongues, together with comparing of the labours, both in our own, and other foreign Languages, of many worthy men who went before us, there should be one more exact Translation of the holy Scriptures into the English Tongue; [Good, plain, white, Anglo-Saxon English, as it should be, not in those dirty Jew, brown-skinned Aramaic and oily Greek languages, no sir!] Your Majesty did never desist to urge and to excite those to whom it was commended, that the work might be hastened, [“So, Abbot, can you have your bros draw like, 100, capital letters a day so we can get this done in my lifetime, huh? 100 a day, don’t leave out the naughty bits in Song of Solomon and chop-chop, there’s a good lad, or We’ll chop-chop your head!”] and that the business might be expedited in so decent a manner, as a matter of such importance might justly require. [Tote that barge! Life that bale! Or get Thine scribbling ass in jail!]

“(5) And, now at last, by the mercy of God, and the continuance of our labours, [but mostly our labours, ’cause we didn’t see no finger of God coming out of the clouds above Canterbury inking no thee’s, thine’s, thy’s and begat’s … oh, dear God, all the begats that we had to write!] it being brought unto such a conclusion, as that we have great hopes that the Church of England shall reap good fruit thereby [good fruit coming from a book dedicated to a good fruit! These just write themselves]; we hold it our duty to offer it to Your Majesty, not only as to our King and Sovereign, but as to the principal Mover and Author of the work [thanks for all the lashings and breads-and-waterings!]: humbly craving of Your most Sacred Majesty, that since things of this quality have ever been subject to the censures of ill meaning and discontented persons [unless you send us some troops to protect us after this, these ignorant Papist hayseeds around here are gonna try to burn us at the stake], it may receive approbation and patronage from so learned and judicious a Prince as Your Highness is [again, we’ll need some troops and firefighters, which you just have to send because this was all your idea and now the Papists are all pissed at us], whose allowance and acceptance of our labours shall more honour and encourage us, than all the calumniations and hard interpretations of other men shall dismay us. [The same calumnarious men, in fact, who are going to cut off your son’s head so cleanly in 1648.] So that if, on the one side, we shall be traduced by Popish Persons [Catholics! Shudder! The horror! Also, don’t you just LOVE them actually writing “Popish Persons” unironically and all that?] at home or abroad, who therefore will malign us, because we are poor instruments to make God’s holy Truth to be yet more and more known unto the people, whom they desire still to keep in ignorance and darkness [Popish plots to keep the masses ignorant! They’re different than our plots to keep the masses ignorant because the Pope is the Beast (see Revelation, re: the Beast) and only we are true Christians!]; or if, on the other side, we shall be maligned by self-conceited Brethren, who run their own ways, and give liking unto noting, but what is framed by themselves, and hammered on their anvil [Oh, that conceited bishop over there in Lincoln or somewhere, we know his kind! He thinks he knows everything, the mary!]; we may rest secure supported within by the truth and innocency of a good conscience, having walked the ways of simplicity and integrity, as before the Lord [the Bishop of Lincoln wears pink bloomers under his red stole and reeks of Chanel No. 5! We only wear hair shirts and the manly, simple scents of our own unwashed bodies!]; and sustained without by the powerful protection of Your Majesty’s grace and favour [Again we ask: Having made us do this book thing, which took like 20 million man-hours and enough ink to stain the North Sea purple for centuries, you WILL protect us from egotistical bishops and Popist Poopheads, won’t you? Please?], which will ever give countenance to honest and Christian endeavours against bitter censures and uncharitable imputations [and burnings at the stake for buggery and witchery and encouraging the plebes to learn to read].

“(6) The Lord of heaven and earth bless Your Majesty with many and happy days [21,466 days, to be exact, if you’re curious], that, as his heavenly hand hath enriched Your Highness with many singular and extraordinary graces [yeah, his “graces” included dressing in silk frocks and playing “hide the tarse in the furse”], so You may be the wonder of the world in this latter age for happiness and true felicity, to the honour of that great God, and the good of his Church, through Jesus Christ our Lord and only Saviour.” [Dear great God, his church, Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the prophets and saints, you monkly bros were long winded! It was like that long-winded inauguration address by William Henry Harrison, who ranted on for two hours in a cold rain and caught his death of pneumonia or typhus or both and died after 31 cough-filled days as President. Dedication?! It takes dedication to even read one convoluted phrase! Ahem. Amen!]

—Epistol Dedicatory, King James Version, Holy Bible, 1611

That’s some fawning, long-ass shit, huh? Geezus H. Bro monk noses were so far up His Nibs’ ass, he looked around and said, “Is that you, Buckingham?” But yes, I just adore the fact that all this time the fundies have insisted on the King James version being the One, Only and True Bible, they’ve been worshipping with something created for a big, ol’, fuh-laming faggot. Delicious irony does indeed exist in the world.


I: That was quite a digression. Long-winded much? Um. Sorry. Any chance we might get back on track? Say, perhaps, to the 1960s when you were but a wee lad in Roswell?

S: Sure. Why not. In fact, let’s go back farther and note some genealogy, shall we? Welllll, speaking of dead relatives, I recently found out a juicy little tidbit that scrambled my bacon. It’s not a DNA test that revealed I was … somebody else’s child or something … but. I got an email from familysearch.org. You know them, that’s the exhaustive genealogy repository presided over by the Mormons so they can posthumously baptize you and all your forebears and Anne Frank and Popes John Paul I and II as Totally We Swear Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Now, I normally ignore them but looked at this e-mail because they had a bunch of marriage records of the line of me great-grandparents. One was for James Holmes, who my sister has documented as being part of our family, and who was married to … Sarah Sally Donelson. Oh lordy. Yup, as in her daddy was John Donelson, as in Donelson, TN, as in the co-founder of Nashville, as in the owner of the Clover Bottom Plantation and its buncha slaves and as in the dude who was also that asshole Andrew Jackson’s father-in-law and was undoubtedly an asshole himself with the whole killing Injuns and buying and selling shackled negroes. Yep, that guy. Me great-whatever-grandpappy. Sigh. It’s like a stab in my liberal, bleedin’ heart.

I: And they undoubtedly had many descendants, so I would anticipate the guilt is spread around quite a bit. So how do you figure in the mass of all those descendants?

S: You WOULD ask. So here’s the lineage: John Donelson, who founded Fort Nashborough with James Robertson, now known as Nashville, married Rachel Stockley.

John and Rachel had two kids: John Patrick and Rachel, Jr.. Rachel Jr. married Andrew Jackson. John Patrick married Mary Purnell and John Patrick and Mary had Sarah Sally Donelson. So my great-great-great-great-great grandmother was Andrew Jackson’s niece. And now I want my piece of the action from Donelson’s Clover Bottom mansion being hired out for all those expensive weddings, and from the city of Nashville. Given how many other relations there are, my share should be at least $1.98.

To continue: Sarah Sally Donelson married William Holmes, birthed James Holmes (who had, and I am totally not making this up, a brother named Welcome. Welcome Holmes! Isn’t that a gas?! You just can’t write gags that good!). James-the-brother-of-Welcome-Holmes married Mary Denton. They had a daughter named Sarah Holmes. Nothing jokey and hilarious for their kid, just “Sarah” period.

Then Sarah Holmes married John Yates and they had a daughter named Malvina Yates and Malvina married a dude named Joseph Starr. Joseph and Malvina had twin daughters named Mittie and Minnie Starr (not much imagination for a great-niece of Welcome Holmes). Mittie and Minnie were my relatives who built and propped up the Oak Avenue Church of the Nazarene aforementioned. Minnie then married Lee Robert Teague.

Minnie and Lee then had a daughter named Lorene Teague, who married Curtis Pollock, who had a son named Marion, who married Janis, who had, on that cold December night that was outlined in such detail at the beginning of this narrative, me, myself, I … moi.

Like I said, where’s my share of the revenue and land value of Clover Bottom? Since my house is on what was originally the land stolen from the Injuns to create Clover Bottom, my mortgage should be wiped out at least, and $1.98 ain’t gonna cover it. We queens gotta look out for our interests, you know?

I: Lord. <sigh> Let’s back up. Way back up. You skipped from barely escaping being born in a car to being yanked between fundamentalist churches when you were 12 to lengthy digressions on King James, Bibles, foppery, popery, and genealogy. Wasn’t there anything that happened in between, say, your birth and the whole church thing?

S: You mean all the screaming and crying? The Battle Royale that was the parentals’ attempts to get me to go to Kindergarten? The abject terror of everything from fireworks and sirens to teachers and heights, elevators and roller coasters? The seduction of my best friend from across the street when we were five years old, and I would get him to raise his shirt so we could hug barechested for as long as I could get him to do it, and how sometimes I bullied him into doing it and that one time, sheltered at the side of the garage surrounded by the back yard fence, I got him to raise his shirt and laid on top of him barechested and it was the most sublime feeling I ever had, one that I’ve tried to replicate my entire life? You mean all that stuff?

I: Well, er, uh, well, yes, that “stuff” would be good to hear about, yes.

S: Okay, you asked for it. So, the first time I went to the movies in my entire life, my sisters took me to a horrific horror film at the Plains Theater on Main Street in Roswell, New Mexico. Unfortunately, the Plains is no more; the building is infested with the world’s tackiest displays of silliness and its marquee now touts it as the “UFO Alien Research Center and Museum” and the pics I’ve seen of it are incredibly horrible. The place where such sublime cinema as American in Paris and Beach Blanket Bingo and Bonzo Goes to College now defines tacky. Look up the definition of “so tacky it doesn’t even qualify for camp,” and you’ll find pictures of this UFO Alien tourist trap.

Anyway, before all that, sometime in early 1968, when I would have been a little over four years old, my sisters took me to see this unspeakable horror film, which had been released on 8-February that year. It was just awful, terrifyingly scary, and horribly and tackily done to boot.

It was entitled, Blackbeard’s Ghost and it was made by the <shudder> Walt Disney Company and starred Dean Jones (ohdeargodthehorror) and three actors who I would later actually appreciate greatly: Suzanne Pleshette, Elsa Lanchester and Peter Ustinov (the poor, poor things, having to prostitute themselves to the Walt Disney Corporation in 1968! See what I mean about all the horror?)

I: Pardon the interruption, but Blackbeard’s Ghost isn’t usually thought of, if it is thought of at all, as a “horror flick,” nor is Disney typically a purveyor of terror.

S: A lot you know! Speak for yourself! Disney is perhaps the quintessential shit show/horror show exemplifying Corporate Fascism of all time. And its products are indeed horrific, whether that Frozen abomination of last year or that whole Davy Crockett mass insanity of the 1950s.

Where was I before your naive interruption? Oh yes. I was four. And scared of everything. So I basically cried all the way through the movie. See, in the movie, Blackbeard (Ustinov) was a ghost. He had died and been condemned to haunt a … restaurant or hotel or something or other to atone for his great sin of Piracy on the High Seas. Dean and Suzanne had to help him out to not be a ghost anymore.

There’s this scene where Blackbeard gets on a policeman’s motorcycle and drives it and it looks like no one was driving it because he’s an invisible ghost (and there was NO explanation about how a pirate from the 1600s could possibly know how to drive a police motorcycle which is no lead-pipe cinch, boy. And that pirate also somehow knew how to turn on the motorcycle’s screaming SIREN (!!!!!) which terrified the bloody hell out of me whenever I heard them in real life.

Well, I screamed louder than the movie siren and cried so much that the poor oldest sibling of mine had to remove me to the lobby. I may have calmed down and gone back in for a bit, but I know she was steaming that she was missing her movie while her bratty brother (she still refers to me as a spoiled brat, as recently as 2016, when I was 52 years old; she seems to be sort of stuck on that idea) had to be mollified in the lobby to keep the other patrons from shoving a stopper in my gob.

Now, to be fair to myself, I actually wasn’t being bratty. It really was terrifying. Loud noises and auditoriums with their huge, high ceilings and vertiginous balconies, as well as stadiums, always freaked me the hell out. So not only was there a scary ghost, a wailing siren, the Disney company, Dean Jones’ acting and some angry, shushing patrons, but there was that vast space of the Plains Theater and it’s steep balcony reserved for kissers, smokers and negroes. It was not an Amusing Experience, that I can tell you.

I: It doesn’t sound like it. While movie reminiscing is interesting, I’m more interested in the seduction, as you put it, of your friend from across the street.

S: Well, there’s some more stuff before that. Don’t you want to know my earliest memories?

I: Um, yes, actually. Let’s get some order in this thing. Start with what you remember after your almost-born-in-the-car-because-of-nonexistent-matches-for-cigarettes-tobacco-companies-should-rot-in-hell birth.

S: Sure. I remember the very warm and fuzzy memory of waking up in the late evening, when it was dark outside, and I was in my crib under my blankie, and there was a table lamp on, but the rest of the room was dark, and the parents and siblings were watching TV in the living room, and I felt all warm and snuggly and sleepy and happy. Then I went to sleep.

More? Well, we have the hospital visits. So many hospital visits. Hospitals terrified me too, especially ambulances, getting sick in ambulances and emergency rooms. I have been in them so frequently in my adulthood, however, that they hold no further terror. Except now during the global pandemic. Jesus, we’re all going to die.

But wen I was two, I had to have my tonsils out. And Dr. Richardson yanked ’em at the place where I was born, Eastern New Mexico Medical Center. It was actually a cool place to visit. It smelled pretty good and unusal and antiseptic, and it had two stories. One of probably only two escalators in the whole town of Roswell. It had an elevator, but that was scary and I avoided it.

The hospital had these colored lines embedded in the floor and you just followed the colored line that took you where you needed to go. If you needed to go to the ER, you followed the red line and it took you right there. Patient rooms? Follow the green line. Blue was for maternity. And so on. I’ve always loved rainbow colors and that floor was so cool.

Visiting someone, you would follow the green line, which led you right to the escalators. You rode upstairs and there were three wards (I think), but children under 14 or so were not allowed inside them unless they were a patient.

Now, my Uncle Leon had a lung disease which developed after he got polio when he wsa a kid. He was hospitalized numerous times until he died in August of 1967, when I was three-and-a-half. We would go up to the Medical Center to visit him, and I always stayed in the upstairs lobby with the sisters (who couldn’t go in the ward either) or Dad or whoever, listening to the constant shooooshing of the escalators and the occasional ringing of a chime, praying to god that no ambulances would come.

I loved that escalator. I still remember the fun of riding it. Why was I not scared of it like I was everything else? I haven’t the foggiest.

But the elevator? Hoo boy, that was an evil monster. This one time, we went to visit someone; maybe Leon, maybe not. Oh, the horror! The descending side of the escalator was out of business! You could only go up. It was evening, so they weren’t even working on it. It was blocked off so you couldn’t even use it like a stairway to get back down!

Once we got upstairs, there was a problem then. The stairs were a bit too much for my little legs, but I was a bit too big for Dad to carry me, and besides they were way at the end of the hall. So when the visit was over, we had to get back down somehow and that somehow was the elevator monster, which was also right by the escalator and front lobby, while those damn stairs were further away.

Oh the terror.

Dad had to pick me up and hold me and I cried. We got in and the doors closed and whoosh! My stomach fell out and we plunged that entire whole one story! 12 whole feet!! It took forever and five minutes! Then the doors opened and we stepped out into the lobby. I stared through my tears vengefully at the broken downalator side of the escalator. I seem to remember vowing that if we ever came back to that hospital I was NOT going upstairs unless the downalator was working. It never betrayed me again, fortunately.

But what I was tellin’ was that sometime around this period, probably 1966, I needed my tonsils out. I remember being put in a room which had a crib with tall side bars and rails around it so I couldn’t jump or fall out. I was roughly two or two-and-a-half.

I have three memories connected with this. First, a group of nurses, perhaps some in a nursing class, gathered around my crib, smiling and talking and cooing to me. All in white with white caps. Freaked me out. Although I was cute, ’tis true, so they had a reason to gather round and smile and talk to me. But they were women barking up the wrong tree, boy, and I had no use for them.

Then I remember lying in the crib in the night. The room was dark, but the door was open and so light from the hall came in. There was a “10, 2, and 4” Dr. Pepper clock with a blue neon border on the wall opposite the hospital room. “10, 2, and 4” referred to the old Dr. Pepper slogan that urged people to take a break every day at 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. to drink a Dr. Pepper. That Dr. Pepper shit would help wreck my health after decades of drinking it, so I guess that memory is rather prophetic.

Then I remember the start of the surgery. I was in the OR and there were people with white hats and gloves and masks and Dr. Richardson was coming towards me with an instrument. Then they must have hit me with anaesthetic. I don’t remember anything else, fortunately. How they kept me from screaming and crying in terror during all that, I don’t know. I suspect they drugged my little ass up. In 1966 with an Air Force base down the street, they could probably get all the trippy drug shit they could load up on, so who knows what they used.

And the final memory was going home from the hospital. For some reason, they parked the 1959 Rambler station wagon at the curb, instead of up in the driveway. Maybe there was another car there. It was very cold and I think it may have been snowing, or had just snowed. I was taken out of the car and covered in a blanket and then carried inside.

Those are the earliest memories I can summon. Happy now?

I: I’m happy if that takes us up to when you were five.

S: Almost. First there’s the memory from when Leon died in 1967. I remember our aunt Joyce taking me and my cousin Jeff, who is just three months younger than me, by the hand and leading us up to Leon’s casket in the funeral home. We were both dressed in suits and ties. In what I now think is pretty weird, but whatever, Joyce lifted me up to see Leon lying there, saying something about how he looks like he’s just asleep, but he’s gone, and having me reach out and touch his cold, dead cheek. I am not making this shit up. And she didn’t seem to be crying or upset. Trying, I guess, to reassure us and not scare us, especially me, the scaredy cat. I don’t think Jeff was ever scared of anything in his life. But that’s another story. I don’t remember anyone being in the room but us and the body, so it was probably before the funeral or something.

Cousin Jeff has a memory of the exact same thing except it’s he and I sitting during the funeral. He also remembers Joyce holding us by the hand. Where our parents where, we have no idea. I have no memory of the funeral, but a little of the grave side moments.

So I guess you can say I first touched a dead man when I was three-and-a-half.

I: Did that not scar you for life?

S: Weirdly enough, no. I didn’t scream or cry or try to run away. In fact, I was a little fascinated that he could be alive and in the hospital and then be lying there in his good suit with a cold cheek and be just gone. That was a mind-blowing concept. I didn’t question it, but I thought it was weird. Perhaps it was a very smart thing that Joyce did; I’ve had no problem the rest of my life with dead people, just with the fact that every living thing dies, and I have no desire to stop living.

I: Okay, well, let’s move on from dead bodies, shall we? Now, not to get too nosy and drool over the juicy bit that might be coming, tell me more about the “boy next door” or across the street, as the case may be. What was the barechested hugging thing when you were five all about?

S: Oh, lord. Okay, we agreed I’d lay everything out there to the bright light of openness and transparency and truth. Fine. Here it is. And I stress, there’s nothing “sexual” about this. It’s about two curious five year olds exploring the sensations of the body and what can make you feel good. We were BOTH five and peepees were not involved. In fact, I personally didn’t know what sex was until I was 14. So I don’t want any of the outrage brigade reporting this to the cops as a child porn fantasy. It is most definitely NOT that! It’s something kids have done and do and will do naturally for centuries. But anyway, here goes.

His name was … and I am not making this up … Fayette. Yes, he was a blond-haired, blue-eyed cute boy whose mother named him Fayette. No amount of Googling has turned him up. Either he died years ago or, more likely, changed his name to something less likely to get him beaten up. I mean, he couldn’t even shorten it to Fay, could he? He’d still have to fend off hordes of toxic masculinity. Maybe he called himself George. Or Rock. Whatever he did, I hope he survived his name.

This woman would often, like mothers of the era would do, go out on their porch and yell for him as loud as she could all over the neighborhood: “FAYYYYYYY-EEEETTTTTTTTEEEE!!!” Over and over until he answered her. At this time, before schooling began, he didn’t seem to be bothered by his name, just that it was time to go inside.

I could write reams about the free range kids that we were in the era, even at five. We could cross the street to each others’ houses, which were within about four houses apart, so it was a smallish range we were free to roam in, but it included our back yards and riding our bikes three blocks away to first grade.

I don’t know how or why it started. But I did sorta fancy Fayette. He was my type. Blond/blue/hairy chested/over 40 still IS my type. We even looked a bit alike. I certainly liked him more than the girl down the street who I think wanted to be my girlfriend except we had arguments and I once yanked the bow out of the sash around her dress because we were mad at each other. There’s another (and gory) story about her parents for when we’re done with this one. It involves my greatest childhood phobias, blood, stitches, and emergency rooms.

Now that I have had lots of experience teaching kindergarten, I have realized that five year olds love to hug. They’ll hug anything. Teachers, visitors, stuffed animals, the roof support pole in the classroom, the trees on the playground. And they will especially hug each other. The boys don’t hug the girls (that could be a problem), but they do hug other boys. These are happy, innocent, good-feeling clinches. Our rules these days are “don’t touch anyone else,” so we often have to be stern and pry them apart and say “don’t do that!” but we can’t explain why in any detail. Not just me, but most kindergarten teachers, really don’t want to talk about danger and touching and sex and good hugs and bad hugs and why they’re bad. Let the first grade teachers do it. I tend to look a little the other way. If one boy looks uncomfortable I immediately put a stop to it. But otherwise, I don’t break it up with a pole or an angry comment (some teachers do the angry face thing), but I do put a stop to it. I just don’t go into anything with them.

My point in mentioning it is that we were, it looks like, normal five year old boys who liked to hug each other. The same thing happened in kindergarten and sort of first grade, but after that, you stop hugging other guys or it becomes problematic at best and provokes ass kicking at worst. So you grow out of natural expression and into closeted repression, all well before you turn 10. I did … to a point.

Anyway, I don’t remember how it started, we just liked hugging each other. But I liked it better than he did and I wanted to do it for a loooonnnnngggg time. And at some point, I discovered that it felt even better if our skin was touching without those pesky shirts to get in the way. So for awhile, our play time became a bit of a negotiation with me trying to persuade him to raise our shirts and hug, for at least a little while. I think I became a bit of a bully about it; I remember we had a fight because he wanted to stop and I didn’t one day. And I don’t think I ever asked him to again. I sensed that I was right up against an unspoken and not understood line. Being a kid that was afraid to get in trouble (even though I hadn’t really ever been trouble and the consequences had never been more than my mother’s quick swat on my butt), so I just stopped trying to get poor Fayette to give me some of that sweet, sweet hugging.

Sorry, Fayette, if you run across this. Sorry if I was a bully about this and sorry if we fought. It was my fault. But I was five and clueless. And you were adorable. But still so very, very sorry. I hope you’ve had a wonderful life.

Really, sincerely, I hope he has. I used to hope he turned out gay like me and that he had actually enjoyed our hugging and that he has had a great life and is married to a great guy who gets millions of hugs from Fayette.

But at the time, roughly 1968, the best feeling I had ever had was discovering the thrill of pressing my bare chest against another boy’s bare chest. No kissing or anything else occurred. We just hugged. And for me, that great feeling was in the chest and in my heart. Not … down lower. I was five, c’mon. It’s not a dirty story. In fact, it’s a sweet story, of how kids, in spite of how it may freak out us adults, will explore and discover and do what comes natural.

To me, as a gay boy, hugging another boy was perfectly natural. It always has been, it always will be. I always felt instinctively somehow that people would disapprove and say I was naughty. And I also felt instinctively that I knew what I wanted and I was going to have it and all those disapproving people could just go suck eggs and pound sand. Even at the height of the worst spiritual and sexual repression that Oklahoma and its churches could dole out, my inner belief has always been the same: There’s nothing wrong with me. I’ve known who I am and what I wanted since I was at least five. And everyone else who is not onboard with that can go over Niagra Falls without a barrel.

So there.


I have another clear early memory, somewhat related. My mother was shopping in Gibson’s, an early version of Wal-Mart that was in towns like Roswell and Duncan and places in between. Gibson’s always smelled of fresh popped popcorn; all the dime stores did. I can smell it even now. I was in the seat of the shopping cart and we were moving along. Suddenly, I saw this other boy in the seat of his mother’s shopping cart going the opposite way. Our eyes locked and we just stared at each other. We didn’t make faces or holler at each other or turn to mothers for reassurance. We stared during those few minutes that we were stopped across from each other.

He had dark black hair. We must have been three or something. Same age. I have no idea what was going on in his head, but in mine, I thought he was gorgeous. And then our mothers continued shopping. We watched each other until we were out of sight.

I wanted to hug him too. If you want to know when a gay guy knows he’s gay, well, there you go. For me, three to five years old. But what is gay? At first, at that age, it’s just attraction. Fascination you can’t figure out. Knowing you can’t hug the girls in your class, but you sure can hug the boys and it’s seen as boys being boys, and that’s what you want anyway. Being gay is your heart beating faster at random moments like seeing a cute boy your age in a store. And that happens whenever we’re six or 56.

This is all separate and apart from the sex in being gay. The attraction is there. And once the realization that the attraction is not acceptable to the people around you, well, after the attraction comes the closet.

And after the closet comes the sex part of being gay. At first, you’re closeted just because you like other boys and you know by first or second grade that that is just not going to fly if you want to avoid a wide variety of severe consequences. So you’re in the closet about your attraction. Then, at a certain age, you’re told what sex is. And the closet door gets more tightly closed.

For me, I found out, sort of, what sex was in three ways: From a novel in the library, from a clinical article in our Encylopedia Americanas, and in the form of the question, “Is there anything you want to know? If so, ask me or your dad. Oh, and homosexuality is a grave sin that God will punish you for with everlasting burning. Let us know if you need anything!” from my mother. (Dad believed the home front was women’s responsibility, especially educating us about religion and sex. And she was, to her credit, committed to education and having us be educated and informed. After all, she scrimped and saved to get those 1962 Encyclopedia Americanas in the first place.)

Here’s how I learned what (straight) sex was at age 14, after gathering some hints from things whispered in junior high.

  1. I heard that “intercourse” was sex, probably at junior high. I went home and looked it up. It referred to the word “coitus.” So I looked that one up. And wham bam, thank you ma’am, there it all was. With drawings of male (flaccid) and female reproductive systems. With full descriptions of foreplay and how the penis becomes erect. And how it is inserted. And how there is sexual activity, the man, er, what was the word they used? Moved his penis in and out of the woman’s vagina. Yeah, that was roughly it. And then he had an orgasm and ejaculated sperm into the vagina. And then the sperm swam into the uterus, found an egg, penetrated it and voila! the beginnings of a zygote/fetus/child. Such a warm and interesting way to describe it all. And to this gay boy, let me tell you. The whole male reproductive diagrams were fascinating, as were the whole getting an erection and ejaculating thing. But what about us gay boys? The female diagrams, which didn’t really give you a clue about how a woman actually looked in her nether regions, still repulsed me even without a beaver shot, as male friends would later so charmingly put it. I didn’t care about beavers or pussies or vulvas or why such bizarre names were applied to them. My mother and my sisters had those. Fine for them and any man who wanted that. But I sure as hell didn’t. It was the penis I was interested in. And HUGGING.
  2. Around this time (1977ish), I discovered a seemingly innocuous fictional book in our public library about a tornado hitting a small town in Ohio. It was Twister by Jack Bickham (if you want to look it up), based on the super outbreak of 1974 that levelled, among other cities, Xenia, OH. The plot: Two of the main characters, man and woman, are having an affair. As the storm gathers, they’re somewhere having sex. And Bickham gives it the full, dirty description that our Encyclopedia Americanas lacked. A paraphrase from what I remember: “Reaching down, she grasped his engorged penis. Just before she tucked him inside her, she felt a tiny qualm … ‘Oh, Jack, you’re so big! You fill me UP!” And so on. I had to go look up what engorged meant. But it was the first connection, however badly written, between the clinical encyclopedia entry and reality. So this is sex. Well, count me out. I’m getting a thrill from sleeping naked and getting a hard on, but I’m not using it THAT way, that’s for damn sure! So, still in the closet, some clarification occurred for me, but the closet was now useful to both hide me from the scrutiny of others and to protect me from the horrors of heterosexuality. It was both comfort and prison.
  3. The third way was the aforementioned question from my mother. It was not informational, except for the part that slammed my closet door closed and nailed the son of a bitch shut for the next 16 years. This was merely confirmation of what I had sensed since I was five.
  4. And finally, how did I find out what gay sex was? Wellllllll, here’s where things get sticky (both complicated and sticky like as in sex sticky). Putting it simply, I was groomed and then sexually abused by a male relative. For what I figured out, the abuse was off and on for 12 years. The grooming began when I was 14 and he married into the family, and finally ended when I was 27 and figured out a simple way to stop it that was so simple that I hadn’t grasped it before. I simply removed access to myself. I just made sure we were never alone together ever again. It worked. He moved on to other targets. Including his own daughter’s boyfriend. But that’s a story for much later in our tale.
  5. Although I was rather experienced in everything but anal sex by the time I was in college, a wonderful book called The New Joy of Gay Sex was mighty helpful. When I would go to the local mall for lunch between morning and evening classes, I invariably stopped in Waldenbooks and usually bought something, but much of the time I just browsed. I discovered their “Marriage and Sexuality” section fairly quickly. And lo and behold! There on a shelf, often in different spots on different shelves when I would visit, was a copy of The New Joy of Gay Sex. Hallelujah!! The only problem: I couldn’t buy it. That would involve checking out up front where another human would discover I was a fag. Plus it was on the expensive side. And for a commuting college student still living at home, where would I stash it? Probably in the car, but that carried risk. The best plan? Do what all the other fags were doing. Wait until there was no other people around, grab it off the shelf, move over to the History section, maybe even put it between the pages of a bigger book, and take in the glorious images that made your heart beat in your ears and your pulse race, because these pictures were showing you what you had been wanting since you were five. Hell, they were even showing you what you were missing by having your only sexual contact be the abusive stuff you were getting from the in-law. The drawings were great. I learned it could be loving and open and free and exciting and painful and there were things called condoms and sounding rods and how you could clean out your ass and use it to fuck, and nipple clamps and golden showers and daddies and proper fellatio and good, explosive cum blasts and hand jobs and cruising and tea rooms and having sex with black men and Prince Alberts and piercing and tattoos and drag queens and tops and bottoms and the role of the prostate in a bottom’s amazingly good, explosive orgasm and AIDS/HIV and protection and love and kissing and … and … and … It was a magical book. Our Harry Potter. The story is the same: Harry is “different” and living with uptight, intolerant, straight people (muggles) in a closet below some stairs. And then the day comes when an owl arrives and Harry discovers others like himself. In fact, a whole entire world for him and his kind. You can interpret that many ways. But for us queers, it was immediately recognizable. The New Joy of Gay Sex in the Waldenbooks was our Harry Potter. It was the invitation delivered by the owl for us to come and ride the express train to Hogwarts/Gayville and never look back, to be free of Muggles/Breeders forever. I looked for it and caged long reads of it as much as possible, until finally, my erection would get obvious and I would have to hide behind the magazines I was buying (usually GQ or something else with shirtless men in it) and then also hide it behind the front counter until they gave me the bag back and I could use that bag to hide my hard cock that was already dripping pre-cum through the top of my jeans and threatening to poke his insistent head through the top of my belt. I would walk immediately to the car, find a place in a parking lot where the pants could come down, find the most appealing shirtless pic I could find in GQ and then take care of business. It was a glorious time, being 18-22 years old. Glorious.

So, that pretty much covers the sex education of this particular average American boy of the 1970s/80s. We’ll be revisiting all this later. But there’s so much more childhood to cover first! Apologies for being a bit out of order.

I: <Whew> Wow, that’s … interesting. You had quite a time in that closet!

S: Yes. Don’t we all?


I: Well. <ahem> Let me adjust my hot collar and get back on track. Kindergarten is where I believe we are.

S: Ah. That. Kindergarten. What a … fucked up, memorable year.

[This is nonfiction work in progress. Come back soon for more.]

Movie Night: A Cry in the Night

“Whatever the novelty of seeing goodie two-shoes Perry Mason as a Peeping Tom/Kidnapper, it’s Carol Veazie who is the standout.”

[The movie poster for A Cry in the Night. What did "Cert X" mean? Was Perry Mason in an X-rated film?!]

Four Stars!

From 1956: A weird flip-flop which is like a Perry Mason episode … because it stars Perry Mason‘s Raymond Burr as a violent voyeur/kidnapper and Perry Mason‘s Richard Anderson (more famous for the Bionic Man/Woman stuff) as one of Burr’s victims. The bonus here is the kidnappee is Natalie Wood.

The «synopsis»:

“A police captain’s emotions get in the way when his daughter is kidnapped.”

TMDb

IMDb’s «synopsis» isn’t much better:

“A deranged man kidnaps the nubile daughter of a police captain. “

IMDb

There doesn’t seem to be any contemporary reviews of this noir, so we’ll have to rely on a «user review on IMDb by “bmacv”», who writes:

“When Raymond Burr’s face (grotesquely lighted by John F. Seitz) looms out of the shrubbery at Lovers’ Loop [sic], he adds A Cry in the Night to his long string of films in which he cemented his reputation as the noir cycle’s most indispensable and unforgettable creep. He’s prowling the petting grounds looking for a girl, and doesn’t care how he gets her. Assaulting the male half (Richard Anderson) of a necking couple, he kidnaps the other (Natalie Wood), spiriting her off to a den he’s fixed up in an abandoned brickyard. This time, though, there’s a catch to Burr’s villainy: He’s a dim-witted hulk, a childish monster akin to Lennie in Of Mice And Men.

“Even less wholesome is Carol Veazie as Burr’s doting, sweet-toothed mother. Managing simultaneously to suggest Dame Judith Anderson, Jean Stapleton and Doris Roberts, she shuffles around drinking coffee in her horse-blanket bathrobe, whining about that missing slice of apricot pie. Nineteen-fifty-six, some may recall, was the high-water mark of a national panic about ‘Momism,’ a threat deemed scarcely less perilous to the republic than the international Communist conspiracy; Veazie endures as one of its most formidable operatives (her successors would include the unseen Mrs. Bates in Psycho, Angela Lansbury’s Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate, and Marjorie Bennet’s Dehlia Flagg in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?).”

IMDb

The reviewer is right: Whatever the novelty of seeing goodie two-shoes Perry Mason as a Peeping Tom/Kidnapper, it’s Carol Veazie who is the standout. She is indeed freaky-deaky, rattling on about her “something sweet before bed from Baby,” that brought to my mind “It puts the lotion in the basket” dude from Silence of the Lambs. After watching so much Perry Mason over the last year or so, thanks to MeTV (I had never seen an episode of it before), seeing his freaky turn was a bit laughable. But Veazie: Now THAT was truly creepy.

Edmond O’Brien and Brian Donlevy were good as always as the cops, and Irene Hervey was so very 1950s mother that at first I thought she was Jane Wyatt of Father Knows Best, the quintessential 1950s mom. Natalie Wood gave the screaming her best and pre-Perry Mason‘s Richard Anderson competently walked around in a daze.

The weirdest thing in this weird concoction though was the very short subplot of Madge (Mary Lawrence), who is, we can only guess, O’Brien’s sister? Wood’s sister? Who knows? She’s there for a couple of scenes, Hervey says Madge is unhappy because she’s unmarried and then <boom> nothing further happens with her. Weird, weird, weird.

Still, it’s all good clean, dirty fun, that says much about the decade it was made in, as well as being a good example of its genre. Worth a look if you get the chance.


Perry Mason, er, Raymond Burr Strangles Natalie Wood!

Best quotes:

Terence McNally knows how to write ’em:

Capt. Dan Taggart: “I just wanna know what’s bothering Madge.”
Helen Taggart: “She isn’t married, that’s what’s bothering her. She’s 37 years old and she isn’t married.”

A Cry in the Night

Boy on Motorcycle: “Sock her again! They love it!”

Ibid

Capt. Ed Bates: “How do ya tell a guy that his kid has been grabbed?”

Ibid

Capt. Dan Taggart: “I don’t care about your coffee! Your son has kidnapped my child!”

Ibid

Four Stars!

A Cry in the Night. 1956. TCM. English. Frank Tuttle (d). David Dortort, Whit Masterson (w). Edmond O'Brien, Brian Donlevy, Natalie Wood, Raymond Burr, Richard Anderson, Irene Hervey, Carol Veazie, Mary Lawrence, Herb Vigran. (p). David Buttolph (m). John F. Seitz (c).


Same Here

There’s this thing that has been closely guarded for going on 40 years in 2018. It’s my secret. So as it hits its 40th birthday in our new year, I decided it’s time to tell the world.


In Which I Join in on a Hashtag, God Help Me!

There’s this thing that has been closely guarded for going on 40 years in 2018. It’s my secret. So as it hits its 40th birthday in our new year, I decided it’s time to tell the world.

#MeToo.

There. It’s out. More is coming.


[Text by HawkEye. Photo by Mihai Surdu via Unsplash.]

'Baptized in Blood'

I’m not sure why I’ve been leaning towards supporting John Edwards this primary season. Perhaps its his populism and anti-corporatism (although I’m realistic about his chances to actually do anything about it once in office). Or perhaps it’s because it’s refreshing to hear reasonable, quiet, calm, realistic talk during times of international crisis (as opposed to the … garbage we’ve put up with from the Boy Emperor for almost eight years). «Here’s» Edwards’ response to the Bhutto assassination:

Henderson: “In regards to the situation in Pakistan, if you were president, what would you be doing?”
Edwards: “If I were president I would do some of what I’ve already done. I spoke with the Pakistani Ambassador and then a few minutes ago I spoke with President Musharraf, urging him to continue on the path to democratization, to allow international investigators to come in to determine what happened, what the facts were so that there would be transparency and credibility about what actually occurred and also about the upcoming schedule of elections and that the important thing for America to do in this unstable environment is first of all focus on the tragedy that’s occurred. Benazir Bhutto was a strong woman, a courageous woman, someone that I actually spoke at a conference with a few years and she talked about the path to democracy in Pakistan being baptized in blood so she understood the extraordinary risk that she was taking by going back and it’s a terrible tragedy for the people of Pakistan, but it’s important for America to be a calming influence and provide strength in this environment.”’

The audio file is available at the link above.

The Beast's 50 Most Loathsome

The only end-of-the-year list I ever pay any attention to (and agree completely with) is the list of the 50 most loathsome people produced by «Buffalo Beast», which features The Boy Emperor firmly in spot el numero uno, up from el numero tres in 2005 and 2006:

‘Is it a civil rights milestone to have a retarded [emperor]? Maybe it would be, if he were ever legitimately elected. You can practically hear the whole nation holding its breath, hoping this guy will just fucking leave come January ’09 and not declare martial law. Only supporters left are the ones who would worship a fucking turnip if it promised to kill foreigners. Is so clearly not in charge of his own White House that his feeble attempts to define himself as “decider” or “commander guy” are the equivalent of a five-year-old kid sitting on his dad’s Harley and saying “vroom vroom!” Has lost so many disgusted staffers that all he’s left with are the kids from Jesus Camp. The first president who is so visibly stupid he can say “I didn’t know what was in the National Intelligence Estimate until last week” and sound plausible. Inarguably a major criminal and a much greater threat to the future of America than any Muslim terrorist.’
—BuffaloBeast.com

A better summing up of the emperor (and his assorted hangers-about) I have yet to see.

Farewell, Sweet Molly

Since I wasn’t posting during the last few months, I missed noting the saddest day of the year, which made me weep. Molly Ivins is no longer with us.

The Nation collected a beautiful «salute to Molly Ivins»:

‘The country was founded by dissenters, and if as a doubter of divine authority Molly inherits the skepticism of Tom Paine, as a satirist she springs full blown, like Minerva, from the head of Mark Twain. Twain thought of humor, especially in its more sharply pointed forms of invective and burlesque, as a weapon with which to attack pride victorious and ignorance enthroned. He placed the ferocity of his wit at the service of his conscience, pitting it against the “peacock shams” of the established order, believing that “only laughter can blow…at a blast” what he regarded as “the colossal humbug” of the world. So also Molly, a journalist who commits the crimes of arson, making of her wit a book of matches with which to burn down the corporate hospitality tents of empty and self-righteous cant. Molly’s writing reminds us that dissent is what rescues the democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors, that republican self-government, properly understood, is an uproar and an argument, meant to be loud, raucous, disorderly and fierce.’
The Nation

Sigh.

God bless and rest you, Molly. You fought the good fight. We are the poorer for your passing, the richer for your acquaintance. RIP.

Lost in 2005

There were some remarkable people who left us in 2005:

‘When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom profit that loses.’
—Shirley Chisholm, who died 1-Jan-05

‘“We went through the top of the head, I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch.” The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. “We put an instrument inside,” he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord’s Prayer or sing “God Bless America” or count backwards. … “We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded.” … When she began to become incoherent, they stopped’
—Dr. James W. Watts and Dr. Walter Freeman, report on frontal lobotomy on Rosemary Kennedy, who died 7-Jan-05

‘I had a happy marriage and a nice wife. I accomplished everything you can. What more can you want?’
—Max Schmeling, who died 2-Feb-05

‘Without alienation, there can be no politics.’
—Arthur Miller, who died10-Feb-05

‘America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.’
—Hunter S. Thompson, who died 20-Feb-05

‘Me, I’m good at nothing but walking on the set with a pretty dress.’
—Sandra Dee, who died 20-Feb-05

‘I’m just not the glamour type. Glamour girls are born, not made. And the real ones can be glamorous even if they don’t wear magnificent clothes. I’ll bet Lana Turner would look glamorous in anything.’
—Teresa Wright, who died 6-Mar-05

‘It’s inevitable that the company come back.’
—John DeLorean, who died 19-Mar-05

‘War is a defeat for humanity.’
—Pope John Paul II, who died 2-Apr-05

‘There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever… money, for instance, or war.’
—Saul Bellow, who died 5-Apr-05

‘I work hard in social work, public relations, and raising the Grimaldi heirs.’
—Princess Grace about her life with Prince Rainier Grimaldi of Monaco, who died 6-Apr-05

‘Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.’
—Andrea Dworkin, who died 9-Apr-05

‘Well, the musicals give emphasis to love, longing, melancholy, sadness. All of that is always there.’
—Ismail Merchant, who died 25-May-05

‘I don’t really care how I am remembered as long as I bring happiness and joy to people.’
—Eddie Albert, who died 26-May-05

‘I’d like to be remembered as a premier singer of songs, not just a popular act of a given period.’
—Luther Vandross, who died 1-Jul-05

‘There’s nothing more irresistible to a man than a woman who’s in love with him.’
—Ernest Lehman, who died 2-Jul-05

‘Abhorrence of apartheid is a moral attitude, not a policy.’
—Edward Heath, who died 17-Jul-05

‘Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.’
—William C. Westmoreland, who died 18-Jul-05

‘I’m not tired of [beam me up Scotty] at all. Good gracious, it’s been said to me for just about 31 years. It’s been said to me at 70 miles an hour across four lanes on the freeway. I hear it from just about everybody. It’s been fun.’
—James Doohan, who died 20-Jul-05

‘I will be father to the young, brother to the elderly. I am but one of you; whatever troubles you, troubles me; whatever pleases you, pleases me.’
—King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz, who died 1-Aug-05

‘There were no international terrorists in Iraq until we went in. It was we who gave the perfect conditions in which Al Qaeda could thrive.’
—Robin Cook, who died 6-Aug-05

‘It’s a brassiere! You know about those things, you’re a big boy now. … It’s brand new. Revolutionary up-lift: No shoulder straps, no back straps, but it does everything a brassiere should do. Works on the principle of the cantilevered bridge. … An aircraft engineer down the penninsula designed it; he worked it out in his spare time.’ [from Vertigo]
—Barbara Bel Geddes, who died 8-Aug-05

‘I think Alexander Hamilton has received a little bit of short shrift from history, and I think Jefferson has been treated a little bit too generously. I admire them both, but I admire them both about equally.’
—William Rehnquist, who died 3-Sep-05

‘I’ve often wondered if maybe I tried to tell too many stories in The Sand Pebbles.’
—Robert Wise, who died 14-Sep-05

‘Sid Luft was no gentleman. He was a weight lifter. He was a former test pilot. He was a gambler. He’s still one of those old-time Hollywood guys.’
—Lorna Luft about her father, Sidney Luft, who died 15-Sep-05

‘The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So information is a defence. Through this we can build, we must build, a defence against repetition.’
—Simon Wiesenthal, who died 20-Sep-05

‘I said to myself, where are we living? In the United States of America where you’re innocent until proven guilty, or Nazi Germany with the Gestapo calling?’
—Tommy Bond during the Robert Blake trial. Bond died 24-Sep-05

‘All I was doing was trying to get home from work.’
—Rosa Parks, who died 24-Sep-05

‘I- I- I watched him for fifteen years, sitting in a room, staring at a wall, not seeing the wall, looking past the wall – looking at this night, inhumanly patient, waiting for some secret, silent alarm to trigger him off. Death has come to your little town, Sheriff. Now you can either ignore it, or you can help me to stop it.’
—Donald Pleasance in 1978’s Halloween, produced by Moustapha Akkad, who died 11-Nov-05

‘The changes in both radio and television are mind-boggling.’
—Ralph Edwards, who died 16-Nov-05

‘Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important.’
—Eugene McCarthy, who died 10-Dec-05

‘There’s a thin line between to laugh with and to laugh at.’
—Richard Pryor, who died 10-Dec-05

‘Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.’
—William Proxmire, who died 14-Dec-05

Lost in '05: Hunter S. Thompson

The year that was: « Goodbye Hunter S. Thompson »:

‘‘Politics is the art of controlling your environment.’ That is one of the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard way. Anybody who thinks that ‘it doesn’t matter who’s President’ has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid War on the other side of the World — or been beaten and gassed by Police for trespassing on public property — or been hounded by the IRS for purely political reasons — or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish you had voted.’
—Hunter S. Thompson via John Cusack in the Huffington Post

Asi es Nuevo Mexico

Stuff like « this » makes me wonder if my desire to return to my home state is really all that wise of an idea:

‘An essay contest at a New Mexico high school asks students to explain why preserving marriage between men and women is vital society and why unborn children merit respect and protection. The contest, at Farmington’s Piedra Vista High School, is being held in connection with an essay contest sponsored by United Families International, an organization whose primary mission is “to strengthen the family by promoting marriage between one man and woman and the protection of human life, including unborn children.” The students were given the option of either writing a response to two questions about preserving marriage and the protection of the “unborn” or submitting a personal narrative.’
—365Gay.com

I wonder … what would the parents have done if the questions were about granting constitutional marriage equality to all and preserving a woman’s right to reproductive choice? I think I already know the answer. Yet another reason to erect not only a wall of separation between church and state in the schools, but also between politics and state in the schools. And yes, there is a difference.

Courage and Conviction vs. Cowardice and Coercion

“Rabbi Yoffie! You’re my new hero!”

We need more courageous heroes like « Rabbi Eric Yoffie » to speak more truth to power:

‘The leader of the largest branch of American Judaism blasted conservative religious activists in a speech Saturday, calling them “zealots” who claim a “monopoly on God” while promoting anti-gay policies akin to Adolf Hitler’s. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, said “religious right” leaders believe “unless you attend my church, accept my God and study my sacred text you cannot be a moral person.” “What could be more bigoted than to claim that you have a monopoly on God?” he said during the movement’s national assembly in Houston, which runs through Sunday. …
‘He used particularly strong language to condemn conservative attitudes toward homosexuals. He said he understood that traditionalists have concluded gay marriage violates Scripture, but he said that did not justify denying legal protections to same-sex partners and their children. “We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations,” Yoffie said. “Yes, we can disagree about gay marriage. But there is no excuse for hateful rhetoric that fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry.”’
—Associated Press

Amen, Rabbi Yoffie! You’re my new hero.

Meanwhile, Fascist FunDumbMentalist leader Jerry Falwell announced he’s starting « a religious holy war against anyone who won’t say ‘Merry Christmas’ », complete with McCarthyite snitches in the public schools:

‘Falwell has put the power of his 24,000-member congregation behind the “Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign,” an effort led by the conservative legal organization Liberty Counsel. The group promises to file suit against anyone who spreads what it sees as misinformation about how Christmas can be celebrated in schools and public spaces. The 8,000 members of the Christian Educators Association International will be the campaign’s “eyes and ears” in the nation’s public schools. They’ll be reporting to 750 Liberty Counsel lawyers who are ready to pounce if, for example, a teacher is muzzled from leading the third-graders in “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” An additional 800 attorneys from another conservative legal group, the Alliance Defense Fund, are standing by as part of a similar effort, the Christmas Project. Its slogan: “Merry Christmas. It’s OK to say it.”’
—SF Gate

Rabbi Yoffie … Jerry Falwell … not much of a contest as to which one is closest to G-d, eh?

Paradox? Or Hypocrisy?

“Jesus, save us from your followers!”

I’ve been meaning to blog this for weeks, to read it into the record, so to speak. But what with grad school hell, I just haven’t had time.

I’ve long thought that we need to take Jesus back from his followers. And Bill McKibben wrote up « some persuasive arguments » last August in Harper’s:

‘Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.
‘Asking Christians what Christ taught isn’t a trick. When we say we are a Christian nation—and, overwhelmingly, we do—it means something. People who go to church absorb lessons there and make real decisions based on those lessons; increasingly, these lessons inform their politics. (One poll found that 11 percent of U.S. churchgoers were urged by their clergy to vote in a particular way in the 2004 election, up from 6 percent in 2000.) When George Bush says that Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher, he may or may not be sincere, but he is reflecting the sincere beliefs of the vast majority of Americans.
‘And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. That paradox—more important, perhaps, than the much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate and cheese—illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture.’
—Harper’s

McKibben goes on to sum things up nicely in a way with which I wholeheartedly agree:

‘But straight is the path and narrow is the way. The gospel is too radical for any culture larger than the Amish to ever come close to realizing; in demanding a departure from selfishness it conflicts with all our current desires. Even the first time around, judging by the reaction, the Gospels were pretty unwelcome news to an awful lot of people. There is not going to be a modern-day return to the church of the early believers, holding all things in common—that’s not what I’m talking about. Taking seriously the actual message of Jesus, though, should serve at least to moderate the greed and violence that mark this culture. It’s hard to imagine a con much more audacious than making Christ the front man for a program of tax cuts for the rich or war in Iraq. If some modest part of the 85 percent of us who are Christians woke up to that fact, then the world might change.’

To which I can only add, ‘Amen!’

City Beneath the Sea

I’m melancholy tonight, listening to « Harry Connick Jr.‘s » Way Down Yonder in New Orleans, Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?, Basin Street Blues and, especially, City Beneath the Sea, his love song to New Orleans, which is one of a handful of my favorite cities on the planet. Tears my heart out, but I needed to hear them (and my boy Harry) tonight.

Approval from Jerry Falwell

Gosh. I feel so … honored. « Jerry Falwell now approves of me getting my master’s in elementary education », as long, of course, as I don’t ‘recruit’ the little buggers … whatever that means:

‘“I don’t think homosexuals should be granted a special minority status,” he told the paper. However, he said that gays, including teachers, should not be denied jobs solely because of their sexuality. “As long as a person obeys the law and doesn’t recruit a student to a certain lifestyle, they shouldn’t be prevented from teaching,” Falwell said. “Every American should be allowed to work wherever he or she wishes as long as they obey the law.” He has a caveat for that too, though. He said he is not going to hire gays for teaching positions at Liberty Christian Academy or Liberty University. “Our doctrinal belief is that homosexuality is wrong,” he said. “We also believe heterosexual promiscuity is wrong. Those have been standards since the beginning.”’
—365Gay.com

Well, okie dokie then. I need to look up the law that says ‘gay teachers can’t recruit students to a certain lifestyle,’ and then we’re good to go. I’m so relieved.

We Are All Londoners

Just as on 11-Marzo, we were all Madrileños and on 11-September we were all New Yorkers, as of 7-July we are all « Londoners ».

LondonLogo ‘Once the shock had settled, I started to feel immense pride that the LAS, the other emergency services, the hospitals, and all the other support groups and organisations were all doing such an excellent job. To my eyes it seemed that the Major Incident planning was going smoothly, turning chaos into order. And what you need to remember is that this wasn’t a major incident, but instead four major incidents, all happening at once. I think everyone involved, from the experts, to the members of public who helped each other, should feel pride that they performed so well in this crisis. London won’t be beaten, we spent 20 years under the shadow of the IRA, and are used to terrorists. The medical staff at the BMA building did their best to save their ‘civilian’ staff from looking at the carnage that was left from the bomb on the bus.’

The Intelligently Designed Four

So. « Ayn Clouter writes movie script treatments ». Who knew?

‘What is really needed to refresh the medium is to bring in, not “politically correct” references to current society, but real down-and-dirty politics filled with Red State values. Hence this treatment for a much better remake of the original material, meant to be financed by a Scaife grant and subject to oversight by Medved and Dobson. (Yes, I switch the starting jobs for the future “thing” and “torch”. That’s prosaic license.)’
Ayn Clouter

Ayn rocks the place.

Next Up: They Dig Up the Body and Re-Enact the Resurrection

Undaunted by the « autopsy »,

Terri ‘Schiavo’s brain damage “was irreversible … no amount of treatment or rehabilitation would have reversed” it, said Jon R. Thogmartin, the pathologist in Florida’s sixth judicial district who performed the autopsy and announced his findings at a news conference in Largo, Fla. Still unknown is what caused Schiavo, 41, to lose consciousness on a winter morning in 1990. Her heart beat ineffectively for nearly an hour, depriving her brain of blood flow and oxygen. A study of her organs, fluids, bones and cells, as well as voluminous medical records, failed to support strangulation, beatings, a drug overdose, complications of an eating disorder or a rare molecular heart defect. All had been offered as theories over the past 15 years. Thogmartin said the cause will probably never be known. … The autopsy was performed the day after Schiavo died. It included 72 photographs of the outside of her body; 116 photographs of internal organs; 58 X-ray views before the autopsy and 28 during and after it — 274 images in all.’

« the Fascists refuse to give up the woman’s dead body », preferring to continue to use it as a political football.

‘Jeb Bush said Friday that a prosecutor has agreed to investigate why Terri Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago, citing an alleged time gap between when her husband found her and when he called 911. Bush said his request for the probe was not meant to suggest wrongdoing by Michael Schiavo. “It’s a significant question that during this ordeal was never brought up,” Bush told reporters.’

Of many outrages perpetrated in the last four-plus years, this ranks right up at the top. If there is a God, may He harshly judge these shameless, self-promoting, ignorant and hollow human beings. And I use that last term loosely.

On Memorial Day

On Memorial Day, I always think back to 1989, when as a newspaper reporter, I was privileged to meet a great group of heroes:

Memory Of WWII Still Vivid For Vets
(Part I of the Wake Island Story)

‘Considering the power accumulated for the invastion of Wake Island and the meager forces of the defenders, it was one of the most humiliating defeats the Japanese Navy ever suffered.’
—Masatake Okumiya, commander, Japanese Imperial Navy

By Steve Pollock
The Duncan (OK) Banner)
Sunday, August 13, 1989

MARLOW – It all came back to them this weekend – the stark terror of facing death while kneeling naked on a sandy beach the stinking hold of the prison ship; the brutality of the Japanese; the obliteration of youthful innocence.

They fought and bled for a two-and-a-half-square-mile horseshoe of an atoll in the midPacific called Wake Island. They were United States Marines and they did their duty.

There were 10 men of that Wake Island garrison at the Marlow home of John Smith this weekend. With Smith, they talked, drank and smoked their way through the weekend, laughter masking deeper emotions of brotherhood, camaraderie and painful memories.

In the Smith kitchen, their wives continued the latest of an ongoing series of therapy sessions, attempting to exorcise some of the demons of the last 44 years of their lives with the hometown heroes.

———

In 1941, with war inevitable, the U.S. government began construction of a series of defensive Pacific Ocean outposts, including Wake, designed to protect against Japanese aggression. They were a little late.

Little Wake atoll, with some 1,616 Marines and civilians huddled on its three islands, was attacked at noon, Dec. 8, 1941, several hours after Pearl Harbor.

The Marines knew war was possible, but “didn’t think the little brown guys had the guts to hit us,” one of them said.

———

Jess Nowlin’s hearing aid battery is getting a little weak as the afternoon wears on, but his memory and sense of humor are still sharp.

He said the Marines were going about their business when they heard the drone of approaching aircraft.

“We thought they were B- 17’s out of Pearl coming in to refuel. They weren’t. They broke out of a cloud bank at about 1,800 feet, bomb bay doors open. They tore us up,” Nowlin said.

The Japanese attacked from sea and air, but the Marines held out until Dec. 23; only 400 remained to defend 21 miles of shoreline from 25 warships and a fleet of aircraft. Surrender was inevitable.

Through a haze of cigarette smoke, Robert Mac Brown, a veteran not only of World War II, but of Korea and three tours of duty in Vietnam, remembers the post-surrender scene on the beach.

“We were stripped naked and they hog-tied us with our own telephone wire. A squall came through, but lasted only about 10 to 15 minutes. One of my clearest memories of the whole operation is of watching the water run down the bare back of the guy in front of me,” Brown said.

Japanese soldiers lay on the sand in front of the prisoners, swinging machine guns back and forth. The click of rounds being loaded into chambers was ominous. Fingers tightened on triggers.

“There was an argument between the landing force commander and a guy with the fleet. They screamed at each other in Japanese, arguing about whether to kill us or not,” Brown said.

The Marines made their peace and prepared to die.

The argument to make prisoners of the Marines and civilians won the day. The prisoners were allowed to grab what clothing they could to cover themselves.

And then a living hell began which would only be ended by the birth of atomic stars over southern Japan nearly four years later.

———

Taken off the island on small ships, the prisoners were forced to climb up the side of the Nittamaru, a former cruise ship pitching about on rough seas.

As the men walked back through the ship and down to the hold, the crew beat them with bamboo sticks, in a gauntlet of brutality.

Packed in the stinking hold, several hundred Marines and civilians had only one five-gallon bucket per deck to hold human waste. For the 14 days of the Nittamaru’s passage from Wake to Shanghai, they could barely move.

The cold of Shanghai was felt through their thin tropical khaki. It was January 1942. Robert Brown was to have married his girl on January 12. She married someone else.

“I thought you were dead,” she later told him.

———

From Shanghai, through Nanking, Peking, Manchuria and Pusan, Korea, the group journeyed in packed cattle cars to their eventual destination, a coal mine on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, where they dug in the shafts alongside third-generation Korean slave labor.

They were slaves themselves until August 1945.

“Thank God for Harry S. Truman and the atomic bomb,” several survivors said, as the others echoed that prayer.

They went home to heroes’ welcomes, but the public ”’never fully appreciated or understood what we did,” Nowlin said.

———

They’re much older now — in their 60’s and 70’s — and it was a family reunion of sorts; they claim to be closer than brothers. They don’t miss their “get-togethers” for anything in the world; Robert Haidinger traveled from San Diego with a long chest incision after recently undergoing a major operation.

As they gazed through the Oklahoma sunshine, they didn’t see the cow bam beyond the lovegrass rippling in the August breeze; it was a Japanese destroyer was steaming close in to end their lives all over again.

“It was awful, terrible; I wouldn’t have missed it for anything; you couldn’t get me to do it again for a billion dollars,” Nowlin summed it up.

———

The men: Tony Obre, Fallbrook, Calif; Robert Haidinger, San Diego, Calif.; Robert Murphy, Thermopolis, Wyo.; Dale Milburn, Santa Rosa, Calif.; George McDaniels, Dallas, Texas; Jess Nowlin, Bonham, Texas; Jack Cook, Golden, Colo.; Robert Mac Brown, Phoenix, Ariz.; Jack Williamson, Lawton; Paul Cooper, Marlow, and John Smith, Marlow.

The cost of the defense of Wake Island, from Dec. 8 to 23, 1941: Americans: 46 Marines, 47 civilians, three sailors and 11 airplanes; Japanese: 5,700 men, 11 ships and 29 airplanes.

Holding Down the Home Front

Wives Cope With Husband’s Memories
(Part II of the Wake Island Story)

By Steve Pollock
The Duncan (OK) Banner
Sunday, August 13, 1989

MARLOW – It all came back to them this weekend – fists lashing out during nightmares, the traumatic memories, the attempts to catch up on lost time.

The wives of 10 Wake Island survivors met in Marlow with their husbands this weekend for reasons of their own.

“We go through therapy every time we get together. We help each other with problems,” they said.

The wives: Florence Haidinger, Maxine Murphy, Opal Milburn, Irene McDaniels, Sarah Nowlin, Betty Cook, Millie Brown, Jo Williamson, Juanita Cooper and Marie Smith.

———

They did their own bit during World War II: The Red Cross, an airplane factory in Detroit, North American Aviation in El Segundo, Calif, Douglas in Los Angeles, the Kress dime store.

They married their men after the long national nightmare was finished, and their lives became entwined by one event: the Japanese attack on Wake Island Dec. 8-23,1941.

Since the first reunion of Wake survivors and their spouses in 1953, these women have been like sisters.

“We love each other, we’re closer than family,” Jo Williamson said.

In Marie Smith’s kitchen, therapy was doled out in a catharsis of talk little different from that of the men gathered on the patio. Talk is said to be good for the soul; these women heal great tears in theirs every time they see each other.

According to the wives, the men came home from the war, married, had children and tried to pick up where they left off.

They wanted to take care of their families and try to catch up. They were robbed of the fun times of their late teens and early 20’s, the women unanimously agree.

“They have also lived every day as if it were their last,” Sarah Nowlin said.

———

The men needed some help after their harrowing battle and brutal three -and-a-half-year captivity.

According to the women, doctors never realized therapy was in order: “They never got anything.”

One man lashed out with his fists during nightmares; after a few pops, his wife learned to leave the room. Another would slide out of bed and assume a rigid posture on the floor, arms and legs folded. Yet they have all been gentle men.

“I’ve never seen my husband harm or even verbally abuse anyone,” a wife said Reunions such as this help the men and women deal with life as they age. The youths of 16-22 are now grandfathers and grandmothers in their 60’s and 70’s.

———

Life today is a bit baffling to them.

Extremely proud of their men, the women have no patience with draft dodgers, flag burners, Japanese cars or foreign ownership of America.

They didn’t agree with the Vietnam war policy, but duty to country should have come first, they said.

“I didn’t want my son to go to Vietnam, but I would have been ashamed of him if he hadn’t,” one said.

The issue of flag burning stirs violent protest and emotion in the group: “Made in America”’ labels are on everything they buy.

And the younger generation does not enjoy the women’s confidence: “I don’t think they could do what we were all called on to do,” they agreed.

And as Marlow afternoon shadows grew longer, the women of Wake continued to cleanse their souls.

Remembering Kent State

Author Philip Caputo had an interesting interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that I caught the other day at lunch. And the NPR website has « an interesting section featuring Caputo’s writing on the Kent State shootings » on the 35th anniversary:

‘The hill slopes down in a sweep of green to a green field. That must be the practice field where the Guardsmen knelt and fired with their World War II M-1 rifles. It is quite peaceful today, empty, banal. Below, I spot what appears to be a marker, walk to it, and discover that it’s merely a piece of sculpture. Somewhat frustrated, I climb back up and ask a student, “Is the memorial around here?” “Right over there,” he says, pointing at a clump of trees. It is unobtrusive to say the least, almost covert, hidden under a grove of oaks and maples: a marble tablet set in the ground near some marble slabs that, I guess, serve as benches. The sole decorations are a few artificial flowers bound with pink and purple ribbon, a foil pinwheel that turns lazily in the breeze, the blades silver on one side, painted with the stars and stripes on the other. Its modesty seems deliberate, as if it commemorated a dark secret, like the gravestone of a relative who shamed the family. The tablet is covered with dead leaves, which I brush off to read the chiseled legend:

IN LOVING MEMORY
Allison Krause
Jeffrey Miller
Sandra Scheuer
William Schroeder

RESPECTFULLY REMEMBERED
Alan Canfora
John Cleary
Thomas Grace
Dean Kahler
Joseph Lewis
Donald Mackenzie
James Russell
Robby Stamps
Douglas Wrentmore

‘For all its uninspiring nature, it is a kind of war memorial, honoring the casualties of the day when the Vietnam War came home.’

It’s a fascinating look at a period which is still a fresh wound on the nation’s soul.

V-E Day Video

Here on the 60th anniversary of VE Day, I’m watching two films, Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph des Willens and the Criterion version of the French film Nacht und Nebel.

The first is the face that the Germans wanted to present to the world, the second is of the reality. Both are quite shattering, especially Nacht und Nebel, which pulls no punches in its imagery and which is not for the faint-hearted or weak-stomached.

Both documentaries should be viewed by all for purposes of ‘never again!’

But we live in an empire where our fellow citizens are being purged from churches because of political dissent.

Humans never learn. Never again? No.

Inevitably again.

Church Purge Confirmed

And now there’s confirmation in the mainstream press about a « North Carolina church’s purge of Democrats »:

‘Some in Pastor Chan Chandler’s flock wish he had a little less zeal for the GOP. Members of the small East Waynesville Baptist Church say Chandler led an effort to kick out congregants who didn’t support … Bush. Nine members were voted out at a Monday church meeting in this mountain town, about 120 miles west of Charlotte. … “He’s the kind of pastor who says do it my way or get out,” said Selma Morris, the former church treasurer. “He’s real negative all the time.” … 40 others in the 400-member congregation resigned in protest after Monday’s vote. During the presidential election last year, Chandler told the congregation that anyone who planned to vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry should either leave the church or repent, said former member Lorene Sutton. Some church members left after Chandler made his ultimatum in October, Morris said.’

I’m no lawyer, but I’d say this church will stand on the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Boy Scouts to exclude whoever they want under freedom of association and that no one will challenge their tax-exempt status (or at least be successful at it).

It will be interesting to see if this spreads. If it does, we’ll at least be able to see which churches walk the walk of Christ and which ones walk the walk of the Pharisees.

Democrats Purged From North Carolina Church

« WLOS », an ABC affiliate in western North Carolina, is reporting interesting news:

‘Religion and Politics Clash: Religion and politics clash over a local church’s declaration that Democrats are not welcome. East Waynesville Baptist asked nine members to leave. Now 40 more have left the church in protest. Former members say Pastor Chan Chandler gave them the ultimatum, saying if they didn’t support George Bush, they should resign or repent. The minister declined an interview with News 13. But he did say “the actions were not politically motivated.” There are questions about whether the bi-laws were followed when the members were thrown out. (posted at 7:30am, 5/6/05)’

Unconfirmed, unsubstantiated talk on the ‘net is that WLOS produced a report in which ‘several elderly church members’ were interviewed and that they ‘all confirmed that the preacher has been after them to support Bush since October and that if they voted for John Kerry they supported abortion and gay marriage.’

We’ll see if this one gets better sourced later today.

Soulforce for Good

Every once in a while, there’s a ray of sunshiney hope that pierces the gathering gloom that is life in the Christo-Fascist Empire. This time, it’s « Soulforce’s Mel White and 500 others protesting at the gates of the citadel of Fascist FunDumbMentalism »:

‘At least 500 people braved spitting snow showers and cutting wind Sunday outside Focus on the Family’s headquarters to protest the group’s campaign against homosexual rights and same-sex marriage. “We are here to say, Jim, we love you enough to stop you from doing the damage you are doing to families across the nation,” said Mel White, executive director of Soulforce, a national interfaith organization that supports gay rights and is supported by roughly 100 churches and groups. White was referring to James Dobson, leader of Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian ministry group that actively campaigns against homosexual rights. Speaking to the crowd that included gay and lesbian couples, families and children, White called Focus on the Family “a toxic religion zone.”’

Amen! Thank you, Mel White and all the others who dared to stand up to the FFs and call them on their hatred and un-Christian fascism.

Still, things did get extremely weird, apparently:

‘A small group from the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., protested Focus on the Family for being gay-friendly because it encourages gays and lesbians to become heterosexual.’

Good lord. Maybe I should say something about the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ but … well, ick.

But good on yer, Mel White!

Heil Benedict!

So, a few days after the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Konzentrationslagers Ravensbrueck and Buchenwald, and on the anniversary of Waco and Oklahoma City, 117 men in red dresses have decided to elect as Pope a former member of the Hitler Jugend who also helped man Volksturm anti-aircraft batteries at the end of World War II.

But it’s all apparently okay, ‘cause everybody was doing it, they had to, don’tchaknow, and he just had to, and besides he was signed up without his knowledge and then he refused to go to meetings and well, firing Krupp cannon at American Eighth Air Force B-17s in order to protect a BMW plant which used slave labor from Kl Dachau was just apparently a youthful indiscretion and maybe there was some big ol’ nasty Nazi holding a gun to his head, making him aim right. Oh and then there is that rabbi who was trotted out to proclaim that the good Cardinal had worked miracles for Jewish-Catholic relations over the last few decades (Pope Pius XII’s reign wasn’t brought up).

And then this hardline orthodox Catholic ex-Nazi who has since 1981 headed up the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known until 1908 as the Holy Office of the Inquisition, chose the name ‘Benedict’ in homage to a Pope who tried to soften the strictures of his predecessor, who had declared war on ‘Modernism.’

Then to top things off, we hear that 24 hours before becoming Pope, he declared war on any ‘isms’ (although Fascism wasn’t mentioned) which state that truth is relative:

‘On Monday, Ratzinger, who was the powerful dean of the College of Cardinals, used his homily at the Mass dedicated to electing the next pope to warn the faithful about tendencies that he considered dangers to the faith: sects, ideologies like Marxism, liberalism, atheism, agnosticism and relativism — the ideology that there are no absolute truths.’

San Francisco Chronicle

A question, sir: If there are only absolute truths, were you, Pope Benedict XVI, a Hitler Jugend or not? According to history, you joined the HJ, you took the oath to Hitler. And what’s this Inquisition business?

Unfortunately, I think it’s too late to ask the Pope, now that he’s Pope, if he swore an oath of personal allegiance to Adolf Hitler.

That would be a faux pas and simply isn’t done. It’s kind of like asking Justice Scalia if he sodomizes his wife.

Oh well. Let’s look on the bright side. Now we can call the Pope a Nazi and it’s neither mere hyperbole nor verboten under that ridiculous Godwin’s Law.

Could be fun.

Deathbed Dollars

While we’re all a bit tired of poor Terri Schiavo (let her rest in peace), I say we keep screaming about this one and hang it squarely on the Fascist FunDumbMentalists’ heads … like a flaming rubber tire. They are, after all, not shy about using a vegetable for their political purposes, as we’ll see in a moment.

But it’s important to note first that Chief Florida Fascist Jeb Bush’s own DCF produced report after report that found « no evidence of vegetable abuse »:

‘In the four years after Michael Schiavo won the right to remove his wife’s feeding tube, the state’s social welfare agency investigated 89 complaints of abuse but never found that he or anybody else harmed Terri Schiavo, records released late Friday show. The state Department of Children and Families repeatedly concluded that Michael Schiavo ensured his wife’s physical and medical needs were met, provided proper therapy for her and had no control over her money. They also found no evidence that he beat or strangled her, as his detractors have repeatedly charged. The 45 pages of confidential abuse reports made public by court order show that despite the litany of complaints, investigators never found that Terri Schiavo had been abused. That raises what Michael Schiavo’s attorney said is a key question: Why, during her last weeks of life, did DCF twice try to intervene in the seven-year dispute between Terri Schiavo’s husband and her parents?

’”The answer is obvious,” said attorney Hamden Baskin III. “From the get-go, this was nothing but a political intervention. There was and continues to be no reason for them to have been involved.”

Washington Post [Emphasis added]

Of course it was a political intervention. In fact, « it’s simply a case of using someone’s deathbed to beg for dollars »:

‘During the weeks preceding Terri Schiavo’s death, a number of radical right wing Christian fundamentalist groups stepped up to take full advantage of what the Traditional Values Coalition’s (TVC) Rev. Lou Sheldon characterized as a “blessing…to the conservative Christian movement in America.” Established organizations like the TVC, relative newcomers like RightMarch.com, and newly formed coalitions, like Voice for Terri, had their Web sites sizzling with news of the case and extensive fundraising appeals. Prior to Terri’s death on Thursday, March 31, her parents had apparently agreed to sell the names and e-mail addresses of donors to and supporters of their daughter’s case to Response Unlimited, a right wing direct mail house. However, within 20 hours of David Kirkpatrick’s March 29 New York Times piece exposing the arrangement, Response Unlimited withdrew Schindler’s list from its catalogue. Before removing the list from its web site, the Waynesboro, Virginia-based Response Unlimited (website) headed by Philip Zodhiates, was asking $150/month for 6,000 names and $500/month for 4,000 e-mail addresses of people who responded last month to an e-mail plea from Terri Schiavo’s father, the Times reported. Advertising the list’s availability and fundraising potential on its website the firm said: “These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward Bob Schindler’s legal battle to keep Terri’s estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri.” The selling point was that the people on the list “are passionate about the way they value human life, adamantly oppose euthanasia and are pro-life in every sense of the word!”

’… In a few months, when the Terri Schiavo case has drifted into the ether inhabited by such cultural cataclysms as the Elian Gonzalez case, those who sent money or a supportive message to the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation will discover that they’ve made Schindler’s list. Their e-mail boxes and snail-mail boxes will be stuffed by a host of appeals from organizations pushing everything from the privatization of Social Security to school vouchers to an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the constitution.’

Media Transparency

Truly a sordid, disgusting and black time in the Empire.

Sad thing is, it’s only the beginning.

Duly Noted

According to World Health Organization figures, on the same day that Terri Schiavo died and so-called Christians mourned her so-called ‘murder,’ 6,000 other human beings died from vaccine-preventable diseases including diphtheria, measles, polio, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, Hib and yellow fever, because they and the countries they live in are too poor to afford the vaccines.

RIP Teresa Wright

PicOfTeresaWright

Truly terrible and depressing news: one of my all-time favorite actresses, « Teresa Wright, passed away Sunday »:

’« Teresa Wright », the willowy actress who starred opposite Gary Cooper and Marlon Brando and won a supporting Academy Award in 1942 for “Mrs. Miniver,” has died. She was 86. Wright died Sunday of a heart attack at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, her daughter, Mary-Kelly Busch, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

‘Wright’s career skyrocketed after her first film, “The Little Foxes,” which brought her an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress of 1941. The following year she was honored with two nominations: lead actress as the wife of Lou Gehrig in “The Pride of the Yankees” and supporting actress as Greer Garson’s daughter-in-law in the wartime saga “Mrs. Miniver.” She also starred in three other classics: Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt” in 1943; Brando’s first film, “The Men,” in 1950; and the multiple Oscar winner “The Best Years of Our Lives” in 1946.’

She was one of the main reasons Mrs. Miniver, Shadow of a Doubt and The Best Years of Our Lives are three of my all-time favorite movies. TBYOOL is, in fact, my favorite movie of all-time, period. I shall have to watch all three tomorrow night, in a Teresa Wright Memorial Requiem Marathon. (Yes, I’m a sentimental old fool.)

It’s very sad that all of the Golden Age’rs are passing, leaving us with the talentless, vapid, ignorant and self-absorbed near-’hos that pass for Hollywood ‘talent’ these days.

I’ve said several times lately that there is no justice in the world (or maybe I was just born like 40 years too late): Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant and now Teresa Wright are dead, but Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tom Cruise and Jude Law are still running around loose.

Wherever you are, Ms. Wright, thank you for your wonderful work. You will be sorely missed. Rest in peace.

Air Jesus Drops Bombs on Tolerance

Media Transparency has a fascinating, interesting and ultimately pretty frightening expos´ posted — « Air Jesus: The Evangelical Air Force »:

‘For five days inside the Anaheim Convention Center, from February 11-16, the NRB’s attendees conducted business as if they were huddled in the catacombs of Rome rather than welcomed guests at a self-contained suburban city of paisley-carpeted hotels, all-you-can-eat buffets and climate-controlled conference halls directly across the street from Disneyland. Indeed, when McDonald asked attendees for a show of hands in affirmation of his question, nearly every hand in the room shot up.

‘It might seem ironic for McDonald to invoke the spectre of persecution at the convention of a group that represents the interests of 1700 broadcasters and which enjoys unfettered access to congressional Republicans and the White House. The NRB’s influence was best summarized by its new CEO, Frank Wright, who, in describing a recent lobbying excursion to Capitol Hill, said, “We got into rooms we’ve never been in before. We got down on the floor of the Senate and prayed over Hillary Clinton’s desk.” Wright went on to rally support for the NRB’s handpicked candidate for FCC commissioner, whom he refused to name, and rail against federal hate crime legislation because, “Calls for tolerance are often a subterfuge when everything will be tolerated except Christian truth.” [Emphasis added]

Media Transparency

Further down in the article, there’s a passage about the evil, power-hungry genius behind it all:

‘On Friday evening a crowd of a few dozen fawning followers and activists gathered to meet Dobson and his 20-something son, Ryan, in a stuffy conference room decked out like a VFW hall, replete with red, James Dobson and his son Ryan prepare for Ping Pong battle at the National Religious Broadcasters’ confereence in Anaheim white and blue ribbons and furnished with ping-pong tables and a hot dog stand. The only thing that kept me from believing I had walked through a time warp to the 1950s was an announcement by a guy in a striped referee jersey that Dobson and son would give iPods to the two contestants deemed suitable to face them in ping-pong. Before the games began, the referee sat on a stool next to Dobson and son for an informal discussion of some of their favorite topics: family, culture, and the homosexual agenda. Dobson was uncharacteristically reticent during the event, seated in a hunched posture and speaking only when spoken to.

‘He did not seem anything like the kingmaker who answered a post-election thank you call from the White House by demanding that Bush get “more aggressive” or “pay a price in four years.” Nor did he seem like the draconian uber-dad who, in his best-selling parenting handbook, “Dare to Discipline,” advised parents to spank their children with “sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely.” One of few times Dobson spoke out of turn was to make a clarification he had apparently wanted to issue for some time. “I did not say SpongeBob was gay,” Dobson told the crowd, responding to media ridicule of his attack on the popular cartoon character: “All I said was he was part of a video produced by a group with strong linkages to the homosexual community that’s teaching things like tolerance and diversity. And you can see where they’re going with that. They’re teaching kids to think different about homosexuality.”’

Of course, ‘think different’ means ‘don’t beat, bash, stone, kill, torture, discriminate against, use as political pawns or otherwise molest gay and lesbian Amurricans,’ but poor Jimmy D. thinks that’s all okay. It is, after all, supposedly in the Bible.

And it is, after all, part and parcel of the next big Culture War « battle on tolerance and diversity — UNC Front »:

‘A federal court has ordered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to reinstate a Christian fraternity which had been denied recognition because its officers refused to sign the university’s nondiscrimination policy requiring the group to allow homosexuals to join. The preliminary injunction, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Frank W. Bullock Junior, will permit Alpha Iota Omega access to student funds and university facilities, like other fraternities on campus. The order will remain in force until the issue of compliance with the university’s policy against discrimination is settled, most likely in court. “This is the first battle in the lawsuit, and we are victorious in that sense,” said Joshua Carden, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, the Arizona-based organization representing the fraternity.’

— Pandagon.net

Hey, how ‘bout that Activist Judge Legislating from the Bench? [crickets chirping]

Update: « Alternet has an extensive investigative piece » on a shadowy group, the Council for National Policy, which features all the usual suspects from Pat Robertson to Tom Delay, that is at the forefront of the Culture War. If the Anaheim meeting mentioned above represented the Air Jesus Air Force, the CNP can certainly be characterized as the Black Ops Army.

The ONE Campaign

New on the blogroll: « The ONE Campaign »:

‘The ONE Campaign is a new effort to rally Americans to fight the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty. Through The ONE Campaign, each ONE of us can make a difference. Together as ONE we can change the world.’

Go and sign the petition and help out in any way you can.

Disclaimer and Copyright

Except where noted by quotes and italics, all content is written, edited and issues forth from the feverish and fertile mind of AirBeagle. © 1999-2005, Some Rights Reserved. Licensed under a Creative Commons licensing scheme.

Eric Blair, Laughing His Ass Off in His Grave

Yeesh. I go away for awhile and come back just in time to read « the most hypocritical, outrageous lies ever spoken by the Boy Emperor »

‘Referring to Putin’s recent steps to consolidate power, roll back democratic reforms and curb press and political freedoms, Bush said: “We must always remind Russia that our alliance stands for a free press, a vital opposition, the sharing of power and the rule of law. The United States should place democratic reform at the heart of their dialogue with Russia,” he said in his speech.’

SF Chronicle

Actually, Amurrica’s ‘free press’ consists of bribed propagandists and closeted fascist homosexuals who would have made Ernst Roehm blush; the opposition’s vitals are hanging out all over the place; power is hoarded not shared; the rule of law means nothing in the face of Konzentrationslagers Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and the ascension of torture-apologists and enablers Alberto Gonzalez and John Negroponte; and democratic reform will not begin until the moment in 2009 when the Emperor shuffles off to Crawford for a permanent brush-clearing gig (or at least we can still hope).

Note to the Emperor: Christ (you know the one … Jesus, the hero who changed your heart) said not to try to take a speck out of your neighbor’s eye when you’ve got a board in your own. Let’s tend to the veritable forest in our own baby blues and leave Pooty-Poot alone, shall we? There’s a good lad.

Blows Keep Falling

Sad news tonight: Following the deaths of « Arthur Miller », « Sandra Dee » and « John Raitt » comes the biggest blow: « Hunter S. Thompson » apparently shot himself:

‘Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, fatally shot himself Sunday night at his home, his son said. He was 67. “Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family,” Juan Thompson said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News. Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, a personal friend of Thompson, confirmed the death to the News. Sheriff’s officials did not return calls to The Associated Press late Sunday. Juan Thompson found his father’s body.’

SF Chronicle

The loss of Raitt and even Dee is sad, but the losses of Miller and Thompson are simply huge.

But that’s life in the Empire these days: Towering figures of great value like these two, not to mention Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, etc., are all dead and we’re left with the likes of Judith Miller, that Guckert/Gannon fellow and Nicole Kidman and Johnny Depp.

In other words, as they said in August 1914: ‘The lights are going out all over [America]; I’m afraid they won’t be lit again in our lifetime.’

R.I.P.

Spongedob Stickypants Strikes North

Not content to run roughshod within the Empire, « jack-booted Fascist FunDumbMentalists are mounting a hard-core press to export hatred and discrimination to Canada »:

‘American evangelists are urging Canadians to oppose same-sex marriage. The anti-gay groups are using Christian broadcasters to spread the message. Earlier this week, James Dobson, chairman of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, in a broadcast heard on 130 radio stations across Canada denounced the government of Prime Minister Paul Martin which will bring in a same-sex marriage bill next week. “Your prime minister, Paul Martin, has recently done things to subvert the will of the people,” Dobson said. “It is clear here in the United States that the American people do not want same-sex marriage,” Dobson continued. “I would hope that Canadians who also do not want same-sex marriage would be encouraged by what has happened down here.” Dobson told listeners that same-sex marriage is not a human rights issue and that passing such a law would destroy the institution of marriage and undermine society. Dobson concluded his broadcast by calling on Canadians to pray on the issue and to donate money to Focus on the Family.’ [Emphasis mine]

365Gay.com

Note that key last sentence there: Evil Dr. Dobson, known around the blogosphere as SpongeDob Stickypants, is exporting good ol’ American imperial fear and ignorance to Canada in order to soak up more money.

What a greedy, avaricious, disgusting, evil and immoral jackass.

Hey, Canada! Amurrica may be permanently asleep, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t wake up and recognize the menace on your southern border.

The empire has people like Spongedob and Ann Coulter, who recently said that Canadians ‘better hope the United States doesn’t roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent.’

Wake up, Maple Leaf! You have a very serious problem on your southern flank.

RIP Shirley Chisholm and Robert Matsui

The bad news continues to pour in as the Republic lay dying: « Shirley Chisholm passes at age 80 »:

‘Chisholm, who took her seat in the U.S. House in 1969, was a riveting speaker who often criticized Congress as being too clubby and unresponsive. An outspoken champion of women and minorities during seven terms in the House, she also was a staunch critic of the Vietnam War. Details of her death on Saturday were not immediately available. She was 80. … “My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn’t always discuss for reasons of political expediency,” she told voters. … “She was a mouthpiece for the underdog, the poor, underprivileged people, the people who did not have much of a chance,” 88-year-old Conrad Chisholm told the AP early Monday from West Palm Beach. Once discussing what her legacy might be, Shirley Chisholm commented, “I’d like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That’s how I’d like to be remembered.”’

AP

Speaking from one big mouth to another: God rest you, Ms. Chisholm; your kind will be sorely missed.

Also passing this weekend: « California Congressman Robert Matsui », a survivor of America’s WWII konzentrationslagers:

‘Matsui, who headed his party’s unsuccessful campaign to retake the House in the November election and who was expected to play a key role in debates on changing Social Security in the new Congress that opens Tuesday, died Saturday night at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., a Washington suburb. … Matsui, a slight, soft-spoken and affable native of Sacramento born just 2 1/2 months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, had entered the Bethesda hospital on Dec. 24 with pneumonia. One of the nation’s most influential Asian American politicians, he had kept publicly quiet about his illness and had been active in the Social Security debate until his hospitalization. … The third-generation American’s concern with helping the marginalized probably stemmed from his experiences as an infant, when he was sent to the Tule Lake camp in far Northern California along with his family. His father was forced to give up his produce business in Sacramento when the family was interned for more than three years.”

SF Chronicle

Meanwhile, Social Security destruction is on the Emperor’s agenda and shrill fascist voices on the right are calling for American muslims to be rounded up into 21st century American konzentrationslagers.

Shirley Chisholm and Bob Matsui are dead and the fat, happy, snarky and bribed uber-fascists still infest the Congress. There is no divine justice on this earth.

Sad. Two more nails in the coffin of the Republic.

Northwest 33, Service From Amsterdam to … Hell!

The airline industry’s … further descent into anarchy, let’s say … continued this week. This time, a « 28-hour ordeal on Northwest flight 33 » shows that things are all higgledy-piggledy in the air:

‘In an ordeal that made some passengers feel like hostages, about 300 people aboard an Amsterdam-to-Seattle flight were delayed for 18 hours on the ground, unable to leave the plane for much of that time, as food and water ran out and the toilets stopped working. Northwest Airlines Flight 33 finally arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Wednesday morning, 28 hours after takeoff, after being held up by a nightmarish combination of fog, work regulations and mechanical trouble.’

Oh well, Amurrican Imperial in-’security’ efforts already made the passengers feel like criminal-terrorists, so they might as well have added ‘hostage’ to complete the experience.

The details of NW33 aren’t pretty:

‘Heavy fog had prevented the flight from landing in Seattle as scheduled Tuesday afternoon, forcing the pilot to circle the airport until fuel ran low. The plane was then diverted to an airport in Moses Lake, Wash., where it sat on the runway for hours as another crew was sent from Minnesota. The airline has regulations on how many consecutive hours crew members are permitted to work. The flight from Minnesota was delayed because of mechanical problems. After the new crew arrived, Flight 33 had to wait again because of bad weather. Food and water ran short, and the toilets stopped working as the hours dragged on.’

Notice that little phrase ‘the airline has regulations’ about crew rest. The truth is that it’s the FAA (not the airlines and not the unions/workers that the media loves to bash these days whenever anything goes wrong up there) that sets crew rest requirements. It usually takes the unions keeping after the FAA to make the airlines live up to their legal obligations.

And now Northwest will certainly be foisting off responsibility for this one on the evil, evil workers who made the poor, poor passengers sit there for 18 hours so the crew could go off to a hotel and drink and have illicit sex.

Okay, so they don’t say that, but that’s the subtext of these things.

It’s like the other day when Imperial Transport Minister Mineta announced the feds would investigate airlines to see if they were living up to the promises they made five years ago (of course they’re not) … the media, within just a few hours, turned that into ‘the feds will be investigating all those commie bastard USAirways workers in Philadelphia who called in ‘sick’ and screwed Christmas up for everyone.’

Ain’t the 21st century grand?

On the Casualty Lists

I don’t have a content management system for airbeagle.org, which is where I keep a tally of those sacrificed to the extremist political ideology of the Bush administration. So there is no way to leave comments over there. (You can certainly leave them here on airbeagle.us, however, if you have something to say about the lists. You can also « use the Contact page » to send me an e-mail.)

In the year-and-a-half I’ve been following the casualty lists, I have received many e-mails and comments which are unanimously supportive of keeping a list of the casualties, including several from family and friends of slain soldiers. I have never received a negative comment or e-mail.

Tonight, however, I received an e-mail from a grieving mother, whose fear, anger and bitterness shines between the lines.

Interestingly, for a mother who just lost a son in the mess in Iraq, she, unlike other families who write me, is an obvious Bush fan and, just as obviously, is one of the crowd that, just as during the Vietnam War, believes dissent is treason and that soldiers died to protect lazy hippies’ right to protest. What is implied by that kind of statement is, of course, a certain bitterness that a soldier would die on a foreign battlefield so that a disgusting subhuman back home could express an odious and unAmerican opinion.

My position is that I appreciate the sacrifices of all soldiers in America’s wars over the last two centuries. And I firmly believe that when they sign up for the armed forces, they know that their job is to fight and possibly die for ALL Americans, even those who are beneath contempt, for minorities, for those with unpopular views, for all races, for all creeds, for all religions, for all social classes.

As a soldier, you don’t get to pick the speech you fight and die to protect. You don’t get to say, “I’m a Republican, so I’m here in Vietnam only to fight for the rights of Republicans to support Richard Nixon.” Nope. You’re there for the naked gay hippies smoking crack in Golden Gate Park who will vote for George McGovern too.

And if you and your family can’t accept that reality, perhaps, well, perhaps you should consider a different line of service to your country. One of Bush’s faith-based charities, for instance.

I realize, of course, I’m sounding a bit harsh. But I’m a bit tired of the snarkiness in that kind of attitude, to be perfectly honest.

Look folks. We are ALL Americans. We are ALL equal. We pay taxes that support things we don’t necessarily agree with. My home-schooling sister’s family pays taxes to support public education, which is full of satan worshippers in her opinion. I pay taxes which get squandered for corporate welfare for the likes of Halliburton and SBC and Wal-Mart and Boeing, and I hate that.

But guess what. That’s America. Out of many, one. Live and let live. It’s far from perfect, but better than anything else that’s been tried.

Some would say a casualty list shouldn’t be politicized. I’m always gobsmacked by that concept. People! Terrorism and war ARE political! They are the ultimate politics!

3,000 died on 11-Sep-01 because of a combination of politics and negligence. And thousands more are dead in Iraq because of politics, ignorance, neglect and willful malevolence.

The casualty lists ARE political, regardless of what we might wish them to be. It’s that simple.

Having said that, I grieve for Ms. Barkey. The loss of her son certainly must be leaving a huge hole in her life.

Which is sort of my whole point in keeping up with the casualties. These are men and women who were valuable and irreplaceable, both to the nation and to their families and friends. And while it’s too early to determine if they died in vain, we DO know they died for a lie told in the pursuit of an extremist political agenda.

And that’s wrong. It’s indecent. Immoral. Sinful. Wasteful.

Ms. Barkey and I certainly agree on one thing: her son was a hero. He had a job to do and he did it. More could not be asked of him.

I wish her peace and rest and healing and relief from her bitterness. And forgiveness for those who sent her son to his death with a callousness and disregard for him and his mother.

For the record, here’s her original e-mail and my reply:

On 21 Oct, 2004, at 23:20, Julie Barkey wrote:
‘My son was KIA on July 7th in iraq. His name was Michael C. Barkey. I don’t consider him part of Bush’s body count. He was a hero who died for your right to have this website
‘Freedom isn’t free. I would be terribly afraid for our country if John Kerry is elected.
‘Just thought I’d voice my own freedom of speech.
‘The biggest deterent to terroism is to give them a taste of freedom. That’s what the historic election in Afganistan has done and the what the Iraq election will do.
‘God Bless our Nation.
‘Julie Barkey’

And my reply:

‘Ms. Barkey,
I’m sorry for your loss and thank your son for his sacrifice. He was indeed a hero. Thank you for your comment.
‘Steve Pollock
‘AirBeagle.org
’”The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
’- Franklin Delano Roosevelt’

Good night, y’all. Peace.

Same Old Story

« As news comes along that the first of several repressive anti-gay-family state amendments are already bearing fruit for the Fascist FunDumbMentalists », here’s an interesting article being reported tonight on the BBC:

‘American divorce reform planned
‘Changes in the law are opposed by the Republican party

‘The U.S. government says that it is planning to make changes in the country’s marriage laws to give women the right to divorce.

‘Under existing Christian Old Testament family and marriage laws, only men have the right to initiate divorce proceedings.

‘The Health and Human Services secretary said he was consulting other departments to make the changes.

‘The move has been strongly opposed by Christian parties and clerics and could face opposition within the government.

’”I have talked to the attorney general …,” HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson said, “and I am hoping that we would be able to make changes soon.”

‘America is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, relating to the rights of women and children rights.

‘Jerry Falwell, chief of the Moral Majority – a partner in the governing coalition – said the divorce change proposals would be contrary to Christianity.

’”This would be totally against the spirit of the Bible,” he said, “we will oppose this and all Christian pastors will oppose this.”

‘Mr. Falwell says that according to Christian law a woman can express her desire to her husband if she wants a divorce.

’”But it depends on the man whether he would allow his wife to get that divorce,” he said.

‘Mr. Falwell also said that they would resist any move to bring amendments to the family succession laws that could give equal rights to men and women over family property.

‘The BBC’s Shahriar Karim in Washington, D.C., says that those laws favour men over women after a parental death.

‘Our correspondent says that the government is not considering changes to family succession laws because existing Old Testament law is an obstacle.

‘Mr. Thompson said that successive governments had avoided tackling the issue for fear of hurting the religious sentiments of the majority Christian population.’

So much for separation of church and state, huh?

Oh.

No, wait … my mistake.

« Actually, the article says this »:

‘Bangladesh divorce reform planned
‘Changes in the law are opposed by Islamic parties

‘The government of Bangladesh says that it is planning to make changes in the country’s marriage laws to give women the right to divorce.

‘Under existing Islamic shariah family and marriage laws, only men have the right to initiate divorce proceedings.

‘The Women and Children Affairs minister said she was consulting other ministries to make the changes.

‘The move has been strongly opposed by Islamic parties and clerics and could face opposition within the government.

‘’Contrary to Islam’

’”I have talked to the law minister and also the social welfare minister,” the Women and Children Affairs Minister, Khurshid Jahan Haque said, “and I am hoping that we would be able to make changes soon.”

‘Bangladesh is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, relating to the rights of women and children rights.

‘Moulana Fazlul Huq Amini, chief of Islami Oikya Jote [IOJ] – a partner in the governing coalition – said the divorce change proposals would be contrary to Islam.

’”This would be totally against the spirit of Koran,” he said, “we will oppose this and all Islamic clerics will oppose this.”

‘Mr. Amini says that according to Islamic law a woman can express her desire to her husband if she wants a divorce.

’”But it depends on the man whether he would allow his wife to get that divorce,” he said.

‘Mr. Amini also said that they would resist any move to bring amendments to the family succession laws that could give equal rights to men and women over family property.

‘The BBC’s Shahriar Karim in Dhaka says that those laws favour men over women after a parental death.

‘Our correspondent says that the government is not considering changes to family succession laws because existing shariah law is an obstacle.

‘Ms. Haque said that successive governments had avoided tackling the issue for fear of hurting the religious sentiments of the majority Muslim population.’

Christian America. Still #2 behind Islamic Bangladesh in enforcing FunDumbMentalist law. But we’re trying ever so hard …

Compare/Contrast Time

As seen on « Daily Kos »:

What was on John F. Kerry’s chest:

KerryMedals5KerryMedals3
KerryMedals4KerryMedalsKerryMedals9
KerryMedals8KerryMedals7KerryMedalsb
KerryMedals6KerryMedals2KerryMedalsa

What was on the Boy Emperor’s [sullied] uniform:

BushMedalsBushMedals2

What was on the Dick Cheney’s uniform:

ZILCH

And for those of you, like me, who don’t know what they mean:

Kerry:
• Silver Star
• Bronze Star
• Purple Heart
• Combat Action Ribbon
• Presidential Unit Citation
• Navy Unit Commendation
• National Defense Service Medal
• Vietnam Service Medal
• Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross Unit Citation
• Republic of Vietnam Civil Actions Unit Citation
• Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal

The Boy Emperor:
• Air Force Outstanding Unit Award
• Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon

The Dick Cheney:
• He got zilch ‘cause he got five deferments and ‘had other priorities’ and didn’t have a uniform to put it on.

Kerry’s medals are verified by his official service records. The Boy Emperor’s appear in a photograph of him wearing his uniform; there is a great deal of confusion about what he should or should not have been wearing. But, IF he was wearing them properly, it meant simply that he belonged to an outstanding unit and could shoot a gun. Wow.

Bob Dole (and you other Fascists): Bite me.

The Rock on Which It Was Built

From The Reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch:

‘They had no chance of knowing the strange tangled history of the Christian Church: how a small Jewish sect had separated from all the other Jewish identities of first-century Palestine after it proclaimed its founder, Jesus, to be the Messiah whom all Jews sought. Over four centuries the little sect had grown into the Mediterranean-wide community that was Christianity, and after 312 C.E. it had grown powerful when it allied with the emperors of Rome. Judaism and Christianity were fully distinct from the end of the first century C.E., and their relationship thereafter was tangled and often bitter. Though Christians shared with the Jews a sacred book of Hebrew Scripture they called the Old Testament, and they could never forget their debt to the Jews, they frequently resented it and turned their resentment into condemnation of the parent religion. They borrowed from the law contained in the Hebrew Scripture to suite themselves: They invented a distinction between moral, judicial, and ceremonial law that was wholly absent from the intentions of the writers, labeling what they wanted to use as moral law, selecting at will from what they defined as judicial law, and relegating ceremonial law to Jewish history.’
[Emphasis added.]

‘Borrowed,’ ‘invented,’ ‘wholly absent from intentions of writers, ‘selected at will.’ Sounds familiar.

Up to Speed

Bought a cheap little odometer for the Bobcat that works really well and was easy to install. Nothing fancy or expensive, just a way to tell how far I’ve gone …

Northwest Threatens Employees


‘Northwest Airlines is threatening to discipline, and possibly fire, union employees if they proceed with picketing that questions the safety and security of Northwest flights, according to a letter the airline sent to the mechanics union. “It seems like pure intimidation,” said Jim Atkinson, president of Local 33 of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association. The mechanics and the Professional Flight Attendants Association had planned to conduct informational picketing on July 2 at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

‘The union members planned to picket to raise awareness of the company’s practice of having overseas and third-party repair stations do maintenance on Northwest aircraft. They say maintenance performed in other countries poses a security risk. “Any suggestion that safety or security has been compromised at Northwest is both false and highly damaging to Northwest’s business,” Northwest labor relations Vice President Julie Hagen Showers said in a June 18 letter to the mechanics union, which was posted on the union Web site Wednesday.’

Well, that’s one way to shut down unions and intimidate workers … claim that workers’ exercising their constitutional rights is detrimental to business. Way to go, Northwest! Yeesh.

Like the New Spiffiness?

So how do you like our new clothes? Much better, I hope. Here are some notes about the new design/location:

  • You might not have noticed, but our URL is now airbeagle.US; thanks to our new Textdrive hosts, I can finally, without extra cost, use the .us domain I’ve been paying for for two years. Since most of our journals are really not commercial endeavours, they belong on .us and .net. Hence the change. Feel free to either update your bookmarks or continue to visit the old site; I’ll keep a redirect going there for quite some time.
  • AirBeagle, as always, looks the very best in Firefox or Safari on both windoze and Mac platforms. If you’re still using that abomination known as Internet Explorer by those complete idiots in Redmond, well, then you pretty much deserve what happens to you. Or was that too harsh? Seriously, the best browsing of any site is with a web standards-compliant browser and Firefox is the best. Some IE issues do exist with this new design: the rollovers of the nav bar won’t work in IE for windoze and there may be some spacing issues. Again, use something other than IE to see asquared or miss out. So sorry; it’s just that every time lately I’ve designed a web standards-compliant site, IE can never render it correctly. And, frankly, I’m fed up with it. Thanks for your understanding.
  • The two archives links at left aren’t quite working yet. I still have to restore some old content from the old hosting provider. I should be able to get that working this week. Commenting and permalinking and category archives are working just fine, however.
  • Some of the ‘Explore’ links at left won’t work yet because those new journals haven’t been built. I’m working on it as fast as I can and they will all be finished by the time I start grad school for real next Tuesday.
  • Thanks, as always for reading us and supporting us with link-backs. We’re happy to be here!

66 For The Gipper

He’s gone; I’m sorry I voted for him, but admire his commitment to public service; my extreme sympathies to Nancy (and every other family who has to deal with Alzheimer’s like my family did); and sure, he was likable and funny and a good story teller and all, but get a grip people, separate the person from the president and look at what that president did.

« David Corn summed it all up for us » way back in ‘98:

• The firing of the air traffic controllers
• Winnable nuclear war
• Recallable nuclear missiles
• Trees that cause pollution
• Elliott Abrams lying to Congress
• Ketchup as a vegetable
• Colluding with Guatemalan thugs
• Pardons for F.B.I. lawbreakers
• Voodoo economics
• Budget deficits
• Toasts to Ferdinand Marcos
• Public housing cutbacks
• Redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement
• James Watt
• Getting cozy with Argentine fascist generals
• Tax credits for segregated schools
• Disinformation campaigns
• ‘Homeless by choice’
• Manuel Noriega
• Falling wages
• The HUD scandal
• Air raids on Libya
• ‘Constructive engagement’ with apartheid South Africa
• United States Information Agency blacklists of liberal speakers
• Attacks on OSHA and workplace safety
• The invasion of Grenada
• Assassination manuals
• Nancy’s astrologer
• Drug tests
• Lie detector tests
• Fawn Hall
• Female appointees (8 percent)
• Mining harbors
• The S&L scandal
• 239 dead U.S. troops in Beirut
• Al Haig “in control’
• Silence on AIDS
• Food-stamp reductions
• Debategate
• White House shredding
• Jonas Savimbi
• Tax cuts for the rich
• ‘Mistakes were made.’
• Michael Deaver’s conviction for influence peddling
• Lyn Nofziger’s conviction for influence peddling
• Caspar Weinberger’s five-count indictment
• Ed Meese (‘You don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime’)
• Donald Regan (women don’t ‘understand throw-weights’)
• Education cuts
• Massacres in El Salvador.
• ‘The bombing begins in five minutes’
• $640 Pentagon toilet seats
• African-American judicial appointees (1.9 percent)
• Reader’s Digest
• C.I.A.-sponsored car-bombing in Lebanon (more than eighty civilians killed)
• 200 officials accused of wrongdoing
• William Casey
• Iran/contra.
• ‘Facts are stupid things’
• Three-by-five cards
• The MX missile
• Bitburg
• S.D.I.
• Robert Bork
• Naps
• Teflon

Voices


‘The first sight I got of the beach, I was looking through a sort of slit up there, and it looked like a pall of dust or smoke hanging over the beach.’
Lt. Ray Nance, Executive Officer, 116th Infantry Regiment, US 29th Division

’…we were hearing noises on the side of the landing craft like someone throwing gravel against it. The German machine gunners had picked us up. Everybody yelled, ‘Stay down!’… I noticed the lieutenant’s face was a very gray color and the rest of the men had a look of fear on their faces. All of a sudden the lieutenant yelled to the coxswain, ‘Let her down!’ The ramp dropped. … ’
Pvt. H. W. Schroeder, 16th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 1st Division

’… the craft gave a sudden lurch as it hit an obstacle and in an instant an explosion erupted. … Before I knew it I was in the water. … Only six out of 30 in my craft escaped unharmed. Looking around, all I could see was a scene of havoc and destruction. Abandoned vehicles and tanks, equipment strung all over the beach, medics attending the wounded, chaplains seeking the dead.’
Pvt. Albert Mominee, 16th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 1st Division

‘There were… men there, some dead, some wounded. There was wreckage. There was complete confusion. I didn’t know what to do. I picked up a rifle from a dead man. As luck would have it, it had a grenade launcher on it. So I fired my six grenades over the cliff. I don’t know where they went but I do know that they went up on enemy territory.’
Pvt. Kenneth Romanski, 16th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 1st Division

‘Face downward, as far as eyes could see in either direction, were the huddled bodies of men living, wounded, and dead, as tightly packed together as a layer of cigars in a box. … Everywhere, the frantic cry, ‘Medics, hey, Medics’ could be heard above the horrible din.’
Maj. Charles Tegtmeyer, Surgeon, 16th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 1st Division

’…I crawled in over wounded and dead but I couldn’t tell who was who and we had orders not to stop for anyone on the edge of the beach, to keep going or we would be hit ourselves. … I ran into a bunch of my buddies from the company. Most of them didn’t even have a rifle. Some bummed cigarettes off of me. … The Germans could have swept us away with brooms if they knew how few we were and what condition we were in.’
Pvt. Charles Thomas, 16th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 1st Division

—National D-Day Museum, New Orleans

Save Us, Jesus, From Your Followers

Finally, some religious leaders state the obvious … the Boy Emperor has little moral authority in spite of waving bleedin’ Jesus on the cross around like a billyclub, « and the doin’s in Iraq make it worse »:

‘The abuse of Iraqi prisoners by some U.S. soldiers points to the danger of [the Boy Emperor] describing the occupation of Iraq and the war on terror as battles between forces of good and the “evildoers” of the world, religious leaders say. Even before compromising photos of nude and hooded prisoners surfaced in the news media, some mainline Protestant and American Muslim leaders had criticized the president for a series of speeches that appeared to say that God was on the side of America. “We question that kind of theology—putting ‘good’ on us and ‘evil’ on the other,’’ said Antonios Kireopoulous, the associate general secretary for international affairs at the National Council of Churches, the major ecumenical agency in the United States. “Seeing these photos of prisoner abuse puts the lie to that,’’ he said in an interview Thursday. “It shows the crack in that kind of thinking.”’

‘Cracked thinking’ is exactly right, and thank you so very much for finally saying it.

Even so, Fascist FunDumbMentalists continue to have the blinders on; whenever the Boy Emperor bows his head and prays to his hero, Jesus, the ‘faithful’ practically fall over in a swooning faint and praise George and Jesus … even as they « overlook George’s … human failings »

‘Bush’s appearance at the prayer event in the East Room came just minutes after he apologized for the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers—a statement he made standing side-by-side with the king of Jordan, part of the Arab community outraged by photographs taken of the abuse. “We cannot be neutral in the face of injustice or cruelty or evil,” Bush said in his prayer day remarks, without specifically referring to the war in Iraq. “God is not on the side of any nation, yet we know he is on the side of justice. And it is the deepest strength of America that from the hour of our founding, we have chosen justice as our goal.” “Our greatest failures as a nation have come when we lost sight of that goal: in slavery, in segregation, and in every wrong that has denied the value and dignity of life. Our finest moments have come when we have faithfully served the cause of justice for our own citizens and for the people of other lands.”’

Wow. I have to admit, I didn’t think he was capable of telling the truth. And yet, straight from the horse’s mouth comes the admission that his administration is perpetrating one of our greatest failures. After all, the Cabal every day denies the value and dignity of life (unless it’s still in the womb; once that life has been slapped into breathing, look out!).

The whole National Day of Prayer thing was repeated in the Imperial Provinces and, like the national event, was little more than a Repugnant-ican political rally, « as was noted by a Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter »:

‘Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar, who limped into the breakfast on crutches (she recently underwent surgery to repair some cartilage). Klobuchar said she thought she had been invited to a nonpartisan, nonsectarian prayer breakfast. But she was the only DFLer on display and the prayers seemed tailored for a very Republican God. Hennepin County District Judge Catherine Anderson offered a prayer so long that the faithful who held their hands high to support her with outstretched arms had to go to a one-hand system and switch arms from time to time. But if her prayer was lengthy, it was also fervent, especially when she asked God’s blessings on George W. Bush, Tim Pawlenty, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, all of their advisers, staff and Cabinet members and a long list of mostly Republican officials. … Poor Klobuchar. When breakfast ended, a man named Richard Johnson came over and asked her to call him up and pray with him sometime. “I didn’t know any Democrats are Christian,” Johnson said. He makes his living selling Noni Juice, a bitter potion that cured his back pain and rejuvenated his skin and can cure any disease, unless maybe you are an infidel or a chronic Democrat. “I assumed that Christians have been driven out of the Democratic Party,” Johnson told Klobuchar, “but I pray to the Lord Jesus, and I’d like to pray with you.”’

Big of him, wasn’t it?