Sunday, December 28, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
An insult, indeed...and bad judgment
Here's what Katha Pollitt writes in today's Los Angeles Times about Obama's choice of Warren to participate in his inauguration. I think she's "spot on" :
To understand how angry and disappointed many Democrats are that Barack Obama has invited evangelical preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inaugural, imagine if a President-elect John McCain had offered this unique honor to the Rev. Al Sharpton -- or the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. I know, it's hard to picture: John McCain would never do that in a million years. Republicans respect their base even when, as in McCain's case, it doesn't really return the favor.
Only Democrats, it seems, reward their most loyal supporters -- feminists, gays, liberals, opponents of the war, members of the reality-based community -- by elbowing them aside to embrace their opponents instead.
Most Americans who've heard of Warren know him as the teddy-bearish, Hawaiian-shirted head of the Saddleback megachurch in Orange County and the author of "The Purpose Driven Life." Perhaps they also know he's the rare right-wing Christian pastor who sometimes talks about poverty and global warming and HIV. His concern for those issues has given him a reputation as a moderate and has made him the darling of Democratic Party think tanks, ever hoping to break the Republican lock on the white evangelical vote.
But on the signal issues of the religious right he is, as he himself has said, as orthodox as James Dobson.
And as inflammatory. Warren doesn't just oppose gay marriage, he's compared it to incest and pedophilia. He doesn't just want to ban abortion, he's compared women who terminate pregnancies to Nazis and the pro-choice position to Holocaust denial. (Hmmm ... If a fertilized egg is as precious as a born Jewish human being, does that mean a born Jewish human being is only as valuable as a fertilized egg?)
Speaking of Jews, Warren has publicly stated his belief that they will burn in hell, presumably along with everyone else who hasn't accepted his particular brand of Christianity (i.e., the vast majority of people in the world). And forget about evolution -- the existence of homosexuals, he's argued, disproves Darwin. And while we may not know how old the Earth is, the Saddleback website assures us that dinosaurs and humans coexisted.
Warren claims that his views are mainstream, pointing out that in 30 states, the majority of voters have banned gay marriage. Popular doesn't mean right, of course, but regardless of what Americans think about gay marriage, on other so-called social issues, he's way out in far-right field.
Take abortion. Most Americans, whatever their personal feelings, are pro-choice. On election day, anti-choice initiatives went down to defeat in all three states where they were on the ballot. Most Americans do not think the one-third of American women who terminate a pregnancy are running a concentration camp in their wombs, and would have no trouble choosing between saving a Jew from a gas chamber and a fertilized egg from a fire at the clinic.
Or take marriage. At his Saddleback Church, wifely submission is official doctrine: The church website tells women to defer to their husband's "leadership" even when he's wrong on important issues, such as finances. Never mind if she's an accountant and he flunked long division, or if she wants to beef up the kids' college fund and he wants to buy shares in the Brooklyn Bridge. The godly answer is supposed to be "yes, dear." Is elevating this male chauvinist how President-elect Obama thanks women, who gave him more than half his votes?
Or take foreign policy. In electing Obama, Americans overwhelmingly rejected President Bush's Wild West approach to foreign policy. Apparently Warren didn't get that memo either. Unlike many evangelical preachers, he issued a statement against torture, but despite his access to Bush, he told Beliefnet.com that he never raised the subject of torture with him. ("I just didn't have the opportunity," he said -- although he apparently found plenty of time to lecture Obama about abortion.)
On "Hannity & Colmes," he agreed that the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, should be killed because "the Bible says God puts government on Earth to punish evildoers." Really? The Bible says the United States should murder the leaders of other sovereign states? How many other heads of state does Warren want to do away with? If Ahmadinejad, who is, after all, a more-or-less democratically elected leader, had shared his inauguration with an imam who had called on national television for the assassination of President Bush, Americans would be calling for the nuking of Tehran.
In a news conference Thursday, Obama defended the choice of Warren: "It is important for the country to come together even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues." That's all very well, but excuse me if I don't feel all warm and fuzzy. Obama won thanks to the strenuous efforts of people who've spent the last eight years appalled by the Bush administration's wars and violations of human rights, its attacks on gays and women, its denigration of science, its general pandering to bigotry and ignorance in the name of God.
I'm all for building bridges, but honoring Warren, who insults Obama's base as perverts and murderers, is definitely a bridge too far.
Katha Pollitt, a poet, essayist and critic, writes the "Subject to Debate" column in the Nation.
To understand how angry and disappointed many Democrats are that Barack Obama has invited evangelical preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inaugural, imagine if a President-elect John McCain had offered this unique honor to the Rev. Al Sharpton -- or the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. I know, it's hard to picture: John McCain would never do that in a million years. Republicans respect their base even when, as in McCain's case, it doesn't really return the favor.
Only Democrats, it seems, reward their most loyal supporters -- feminists, gays, liberals, opponents of the war, members of the reality-based community -- by elbowing them aside to embrace their opponents instead.
Most Americans who've heard of Warren know him as the teddy-bearish, Hawaiian-shirted head of the Saddleback megachurch in Orange County and the author of "The Purpose Driven Life." Perhaps they also know he's the rare right-wing Christian pastor who sometimes talks about poverty and global warming and HIV. His concern for those issues has given him a reputation as a moderate and has made him the darling of Democratic Party think tanks, ever hoping to break the Republican lock on the white evangelical vote.
But on the signal issues of the religious right he is, as he himself has said, as orthodox as James Dobson.
And as inflammatory. Warren doesn't just oppose gay marriage, he's compared it to incest and pedophilia. He doesn't just want to ban abortion, he's compared women who terminate pregnancies to Nazis and the pro-choice position to Holocaust denial. (Hmmm ... If a fertilized egg is as precious as a born Jewish human being, does that mean a born Jewish human being is only as valuable as a fertilized egg?)
Speaking of Jews, Warren has publicly stated his belief that they will burn in hell, presumably along with everyone else who hasn't accepted his particular brand of Christianity (i.e., the vast majority of people in the world). And forget about evolution -- the existence of homosexuals, he's argued, disproves Darwin. And while we may not know how old the Earth is, the Saddleback website assures us that dinosaurs and humans coexisted.
Warren claims that his views are mainstream, pointing out that in 30 states, the majority of voters have banned gay marriage. Popular doesn't mean right, of course, but regardless of what Americans think about gay marriage, on other so-called social issues, he's way out in far-right field.
Take abortion. Most Americans, whatever their personal feelings, are pro-choice. On election day, anti-choice initiatives went down to defeat in all three states where they were on the ballot. Most Americans do not think the one-third of American women who terminate a pregnancy are running a concentration camp in their wombs, and would have no trouble choosing between saving a Jew from a gas chamber and a fertilized egg from a fire at the clinic.
Or take marriage. At his Saddleback Church, wifely submission is official doctrine: The church website tells women to defer to their husband's "leadership" even when he's wrong on important issues, such as finances. Never mind if she's an accountant and he flunked long division, or if she wants to beef up the kids' college fund and he wants to buy shares in the Brooklyn Bridge. The godly answer is supposed to be "yes, dear." Is elevating this male chauvinist how President-elect Obama thanks women, who gave him more than half his votes?
Or take foreign policy. In electing Obama, Americans overwhelmingly rejected President Bush's Wild West approach to foreign policy. Apparently Warren didn't get that memo either. Unlike many evangelical preachers, he issued a statement against torture, but despite his access to Bush, he told Beliefnet.com that he never raised the subject of torture with him. ("I just didn't have the opportunity," he said -- although he apparently found plenty of time to lecture Obama about abortion.)
On "Hannity & Colmes," he agreed that the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, should be killed because "the Bible says God puts government on Earth to punish evildoers." Really? The Bible says the United States should murder the leaders of other sovereign states? How many other heads of state does Warren want to do away with? If Ahmadinejad, who is, after all, a more-or-less democratically elected leader, had shared his inauguration with an imam who had called on national television for the assassination of President Bush, Americans would be calling for the nuking of Tehran.
In a news conference Thursday, Obama defended the choice of Warren: "It is important for the country to come together even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues." That's all very well, but excuse me if I don't feel all warm and fuzzy. Obama won thanks to the strenuous efforts of people who've spent the last eight years appalled by the Bush administration's wars and violations of human rights, its attacks on gays and women, its denigration of science, its general pandering to bigotry and ignorance in the name of God.
I'm all for building bridges, but honoring Warren, who insults Obama's base as perverts and murderers, is definitely a bridge too far.
Katha Pollitt, a poet, essayist and critic, writes the "Subject to Debate" column in the Nation.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Missing the point
This morning the LA Times editorialized Obama's choice of Rick Warren to offer the invocation at his inauguration, saying something to the effect that it's just a prayer.
The Times missed the point. This is a missed opportunity, and it's a bad choice. While it may certainly be true that a president and her pastor may disagree on all sorts of issues, the historical record to which the Times turns does not include clergy people who are fresh off an anti-human rights campaign. Warren actively campaigned for proposition 8. That's his right, of course. But by choosing Warren to play a very public role in his inauguration, Obama cast doubt on his own rhetoric.
It's a shame. There are many of us who were hoping for change. There are many of us who are disappointed.
As for Warren...give me a break. The guy agrees with James Dobson on just about everything. He just does it in sheep's clothing.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
UGH! What's he thinking?
So, is this part of that "crossing boundaries" thing that the President Elect spoke of? Because if it is, it may be a boundary that's not worth crossing.
This morning it was announced that Rick Warren, Senior Pastor at an Orange County (CA) megachurch, would be offering the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration. Interesting.
Yes, he hosted Obama and McCain during the election for what some say was a move at inclusion. And yes, he's been moving his church toward the center--at least when it comes to certain issues. But what is also true is that his church was part of the "Yes on 8" campaign that recently voted to strip millions of Californians of their right to marry.
It's no small issue, and there are a lot of people who aren't very happy.
I can understand that, given that there are hundreds of qualified clergy out there who haven't confused their personal religious beliefs with the "will of God" and recognized that treating people differently under the law for whatever reason is not the American way. Why not choose one of them?
Or why choose anyone, for that matter? Are we really still in a place where we have to have someone stand and mumble some words that most people will ignore to invite and/or placate a God about whom we do not agree? What's the point?
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
The worst invention EVER.....
OK, so maybe I'm just venting after driving the freeway on this rainy day...but maybe it's more than that.
I think the automobile is the WORST invention ever, and here's why:
1) It creates the illusion that we are our own little islands. Cars give us the feeling that we're independent of others, and that we have control. Cars create the illusion of autonomy and exacerbate the ludicrous American notion of independence.
2) The automobile keeps us so separate from the humanity of other people that we somehow feel free to cuss out total strangers, say things about their mothers that probably aren't true, blurt out expletives that we would NEVER say were anyone listening, and in general behave badly.
3) The automobile is built around the illusion that we are separate from the environment and that this separation has no cost. But it has a HUGE cost. Cars are destroying our environment. To build them we rob the earth of resources. To run them we rob the earth of resources. To build them we pollute the environment. To run them we pollute the environment. And when we're done with them, we somehow believe that they just magically go away...but they don't...they rust and rot and pollute even more!
4) The automobile is created by an industry that is now in jeopardy of failing, possibly causing great economic harm to many many people. In other words, the automobile is responsible for building an economic house of cards that's built on non-sustainability. It's all about to come tumbling down, and there's not a lot we can do about it.
5) The automobile is a killer. That's right, a killer. Think about all the gruesome highway deaths that have been the result of the need for each of us to have our own, independent way of getting around. Sure, people die on trains and planes too...but check the percentages...it's SO much safer to take the train or fly...
6) And while I'm ranting about mass transit, the automobile killed that too. LA and environs was home to one of the finest mass transit systems in the country...that is until the automobile killed it. The rights of way are still there for the most part...but will we use them? Not while we keep deluding ourselves into thinking that cars are a good thing!
7) The automobile has us over a barrel--and not just an oil barrel. (Prices have come down, for now, but how long will that last? And even if the price stays low, what part of LIMITED SUPPLY are we missing?????). The OTHER barrel is the one that has many of us living in places that are only habitable because we own cars. Too far from a store, or anything else that represents civilization, there are an awful lot of folks who will be S.O.L. on the day there are no longer cars to drive. We call them "suburbanites."
I'm done for now...but I don't think the conversation is over. In fact, I think it's only just begun.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Saturday, December 6, 2008
The Real Crisis in America
Here's the sad reality of American consumerism: a death all too real--and symbolic of what things have come to:
"A Wal-Mart employee in Long Island, New York died after being trampled to death by a mob of
shoppers on Friday, the traditional first day of the holiday shopping season. The 34-year-old worker Jdimytai Damour was killed after a crowd of 2,000 broke down store doors and ran over him shortly before the store"s schedule 5 a.m. opening. Four shoppers were injured in the stampede. Nassau County police were trying to determine what happened during the stampede, but said it was unclear if there would be any criminal charges." (from Democracy Now website: democracynow.org)
No matter how you paint the current economic crisis in America, the corpse of a Walmart worker bears the truth: it's all been built on a platform of consumer spending, artificial hype and a false assumption of "value." What else could account for the fact that a horde of shoppers (who probably all think of themselves as very nice people...some of them probably even go to church!) could trample to DEATH a human being so that they could get a blender for $5? (a blender just like the one they could have purchased at their neighbor's yard sale last week for $2!).
And what's worse....people didn't stop. When it became clear that something had gone terribly wrong (hmmm...what gave it away, the fact that the crowd ripped the door off the store and shattered the glass? Or maybe it was the fact that there had been an attack on that line earlier, one for which the police had to be called?) they just kept on pushing. That cheap TV, that blender, that toaster, that WHATEVER, was more important than a human life. Even when it became clear that the store had become a crime scene, people continued to rush around looking for bargains.
Have we no shame?
It is the marketplace at work. It is profits before people. It is senseless global profit-seeking on behalf of absentee stockholders. It is "trickle down" economics in all its naked glory.
It is insanity.
"A Wal-Mart employee in Long Island, New York died after being trampled to death by a mob of
shoppers on Friday, the traditional first day of the holiday shopping season. The 34-year-old worker Jdimytai Damour was killed after a crowd of 2,000 broke down store doors and ran over him shortly before the store"s schedule 5 a.m. opening. Four shoppers were injured in the stampede. Nassau County police were trying to determine what happened during the stampede, but said it was unclear if there would be any criminal charges." (from Democracy Now website: democracynow.org)No matter how you paint the current economic crisis in America, the corpse of a Walmart worker bears the truth: it's all been built on a platform of consumer spending, artificial hype and a false assumption of "value." What else could account for the fact that a horde of shoppers (who probably all think of themselves as very nice people...some of them probably even go to church!) could trample to DEATH a human being so that they could get a blender for $5? (a blender just like the one they could have purchased at their neighbor's yard sale last week for $2!).
And what's worse....people didn't stop. When it became clear that something had gone terribly wrong (hmmm...what gave it away, the fact that the crowd ripped the door off the store and shattered the glass? Or maybe it was the fact that there had been an attack on that line earlier, one for which the police had to be called?) they just kept on pushing. That cheap TV, that blender, that toaster, that WHATEVER, was more important than a human life. Even when it became clear that the store had become a crime scene, people continued to rush around looking for bargains.
Have we no shame?
It is the marketplace at work. It is profits before people. It is senseless global profit-seeking on behalf of absentee stockholders. It is "trickle down" economics in all its naked glory.
It is insanity.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Really, Mr. Goldberg?
Nice try....no, really.In case you haven't seen it, this morning's LA Times (December 2, 2008) printed a column by the venerable Jonah Goldberg in which he likens an anti-prop 8 ad that featured Mormon missionaries to antisemitism and anti-Muslim propaganda. In the column, he lambastes "gay-rights groups" for running a "scorched-earth campaign." (link: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg2-2008dec02,0,6411205.column).
Of course the problem with Mr. Goldberg's argument is that, somehow, we're supposed to muster sympathy for the Mormons and agree with him that the gay community is liberal, white, and wealthy (ie, not really the underdog). The elusive truth (at least to conservatives, it seems) is that the gay population of the United States is not representative of "Hollywood liberals" (that's right, whenever you want to win popular opinion to your side, start talkin' 'bout them thar Hollywood types!), can hardly be described as wealthy (another stereotype...studies have shown that the gay community is not wealthier than average, nor does it have power elites in its pocket, as has been suggested). True, the emerging voice of the pro-gay agenda (which, arguably, is pro-everyone, because it represents equality for ALL citizens, no matter what their religious conviction or affiliation), has been represented by white people with money. But is that any different than in any OTHER part of the socio-political sphere?
It seems that Mr. Goldberg has managed to turn this whole thing around and point fingers at those whose rights were being attacked in the first place. It wasn't the anti-prop 8 people who put this question before the voters. It was, in actuality, people (including Mormons) who hoped that, by simple majority, the rights of the minority could be removed. Tsk, tsk....
History has proven, over and over, that the majority will not necessarily do the "right" thing, that progress toward "liberty and justice for all" does not necessarily happen in the voting booth. When the gauntlet is thrown down, what else can those who are threatened with second-class citizenship really do but fight back?
It's true, the ad that parodied Mormon missionaries wasn't really fair. But would anyone really say that all those ads from the pro-prop 8 campaign (funded, in good measure, by Mormons whose church TOLD them how to vote!) were FAIR?
I'd agree, Mr. Goldberg, that "gay marriage is likely inevitable." I also know that it won't happen if those whose rights are being trampled upon don't rise up and fight. It's easy for those who enjoy the full rights and freedoms of their citizenship to somehow make this about themselves. But no matter how much those on the conservative side of things might wish to be defined as the victims, it just ain't so.
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