I am Barack's bitch

Can't help loving that man of mine

Obama owns me. Perhaps he suspects and is taking advantage of it. In recent days he's pissed me off a few times, but signed, sealed, delivered—I'm his!

This FISA crap? Maybe the statute needs revision and updating, but any version that pleases George W. Bush is guaranteed to be bad. We should have let it wait until we have someone in the White House who regards the U.S. Constitution as more than a scrap of disposable tissue. I'm sure, however, that Sen. Obama wants it off the table so that Republicans can't point at him and scream that he doesn't want to protect our nation. (He should protect it from George!) Obama's cover story is that he promised to oppose an earlier version of the FISA bill, not this new improved “compromise” version that's on its way to the president for his signature. Sorry, senator. That fig leaf is way too small. You are showing, bro!

Faith-based initiatives? It all deserves to be swept away with a broad broom. In case no one has noticed, nearly eight years of church-state entanglement has done nothing to bring God's blessings showering down upon our nation. Quite the opposite, in fact. If God exists (perhaps with the sort of twisted sense of humor that would explain George Bush), then he must support separation of church and state. Otherwise why would he smite us with fires in California, floods in the Midwest, home foreclosures across the nation, sky-high gas prices, and surging unemployment?

But Barack says he plans to mend it rather than end it. Oh, sorry! That's Bill Clinton's line about affirmative action. When Bill used it, it made sense. When Obama applies it to Bush's faith-based initiatives program, it doesn't.

It's absolutely inevitable that the mass media will fall in love with whatever narrative they enjoy the most. In 2000 it was mocking Al Gore as a liar and serial exaggerator just because they didn't like him. (Thanks a lot, guys! You stuck us with Bush!) In 2004 it was reporting the allegations of the Swift Boat liars without noting that none of them had actually served with John Kerry or had any first-hand information about Kerry's service in Vietnam.

Precisely what the agreed-upon narrative for 2008 will be we don't know yet. Presumably the press will shy away from anything too overtly racist. Those subterranean rumbles must be discreetly coded rather than broadcast in the clear. We can be sure, however, that the old reliable flip-flopping charge will get another lap around the track. It certainly applies to McCain, though he's been getting off pretty easy so far. Obama has made it easier for the media to latch onto the flip-flop meme because in his case he's actually changed his positions in some bad directions, as noted above. Now he'll be pilloried for changing his position even when he doesn't, as with Iraq. (He's being accused of backing off his 16-month timeline for withdrawal even though he's long been on record as saying it would be done carefully and in consultation with military commanders. How dare he! Obama should commit to a plan that he will follow no matter what!)

In brief, Obama has disappointed me in a few ways, some significant, others not. But he hasn't come anywhere close to turning me away from him. I supported Hillary throughout the primary season and I followed her into her rival's camp last month. Virtually all of Sen. Clinton's supporters did the same thing and are now lined up behind Obama. (The noisiest Hillary holdouts are, in fact, most likely frauds. You can tell from their websites, which exhort dispirited Clinton supporters to vote for McCain, but also sport links to www.gop.com. Ha! You GOP shills aren't Democrats at all!)

Hillary Clinton made the point that it's time to end divisions in the Democratic ranks and devote ourselves to electing Sen. Obama in November. She's absolutely right. Our second choice is now the only choice. There is no alternative.

What? Did you say Nader? (Are you an idiot?) McKinney? (Yeah, you are stone-cold crazy—unless you mean Mark, but he's Canadian.) Barr? (I just want him to do well enough in Georgia to deny McCain the state.) Grownups understand that either Barack Obama or John McCain will be the next president of the United States. The fringe candidates are protest votes, and I have no interest in being a smug loser whose political purity is greater than that of the major parties. (Yeah, being purer than the major political parties is such a challenge.)

People have a right to cast a protest vote in some grand political gesture, but that's what helped George Bush claim the presidency despite losing the popular vote to Al Gore by half a million ballots. The whole nation has been a loser ever since. I want to win!

And it's not just winning for the sake of winning. There are big issues at stake. For me, one of the biggest is the Supreme Court. I don't want a court that will accept Bush administration policies on executive privilege, warrantless wiretapping, Guantánamo, executive signing statements, intelligent design creationism, gay rights, reproductive freedom, and habeas corpus. If Sen. Obama wants to lose my vote, all he has to say is, “You know, I think we need more Supreme Court justices like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.” That's what it would take to drive me screaming away and gibbering in my safe place until the election season is over. No more Republican appointments to the Supreme Court! If Obama can save us from that, a lot of the rest is mere detail.

It's that important. I'm voting for Obama. (I hope he doesn't kick me too often.)

Taste and see the goodness of the Lord

But Jesus sticks to the roof of my mouth

I was six years old when I was inducted into the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist with my first Holy Communion. After that traditional rite of passage, I was then entitled to participate in communion at all subsequent Catholic services. I was twenty-eight when I suddenly realized that I was no longer willing even to go through the motions. I was actually on my way to church at the time. Instead of attending mass, I walked past the church, stopped at a news rack to pick up a copy of the combined Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner, and paged through it while having breakfast at the counter of a nearby restaurant. Scrambled eggs and bacon replaced my Sunday morning snack of tasteless communion wafer.

As the dutiful son of a devotedly Catholic family—and, significantly, a person who falls naturally into a routine—I had picked up the habit of weekly mass attendance and reception of communion. When I was young, communion was the only opportunity to stick your tongue out at Monsignor. In those pre-Vatican II days, receiving the host on your tongue was the only permissible way to take communion.

I wasn't rigorous about it, but I certainly received communion at most of the masses I attended. With 52 Sundays in each of 22 years, I undoubtedly came close to consuming a thousand communion hosts, ranging from the dry wafers of my childhood to the torn bread loaves of the trendy Newman chapel where I went to grad school. (I'm not even trying to factor in the additional six “holy days of obligation” observed in the United States or the miscellaneous family weddings.) I've eaten a lot of Jesus.

No one will be particularly surprised to hear that Catholics have a smug attitude toward other Christian sects. How can one not feel superior to the tens of thousands of constantly splitting denominations of those parvenu Protestants? I suspect this attitude makes it a lot easier for Catholics to accept or ignore the Church's centuries of accumulated excrescences. Quite apart from the faith in things unseen (e.g., gods, angels, and demons), which is the legacy of virtually all religions, Catholics have a generous collection of traditions, some of which are officially sanctioned by the hierarchy and many others that survive as robust folklore. What Catholic kid hasn't heard one of the stories (there are several) from some priest, nun, or maiden aunt about the communion host that bled real blood, grotesque testimony to the honest-to-God real flesh-and-blood transubstantiation of the wafer into a scrap of Christ's body?

For Catholic youngsters, the ritual cannibalism of the eucharist ceremony is one of the creepy-cool aspects of the religion. Protestants, after all, think the communion bread is just symbolic. How lame! If the bread is only symbolic, then the communion service is not the intimate connection with Jesus that it is for Catholics. That's God himself you're noshing on, so don't anybody go messing with it!

It happens, though. Webster Cook of the University of Central Florida took advantage of the current Catholic practice of receiving communion in the hand, instead of on the tongue, to pocket a consecrated communion wafer and take it back to his seat to show to a curious friend. His failure to consume the host was observed, and he suddenly found himself under physical assault.

As Cook explained it in a comment posted on the Orlando Sentinel blog:

I was going to show it to my non-Catholic friend and then consume it. Although my friend attended the mass, non-Catholics are prohibited from receiving communion, explaining the need to delay consumption. According to the organization, the Catholic Church mandates this policy of using physical intervention against people who fail to immediately consume the holy wafer. Therefore, the individuals who attacked me were enforcing the policies of their organization.

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Getting roughed up at mass was not the end of Cook's travails. He made his escape with the wafer still in his possession and held it captive for a while in a Ziploc bag.

Webster Cook learned to his dismay that the incident would not be quickly forgotten. Shrieks of outrage came from many Catholic quarters, including demands for his expulsion from the University of Central Florida and the occasional death threat. Professional Catholic advocate and thug Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights declared Cook's action was “beyond hate speech.” Thoroughly lacking in imagination, Donohue opines that “It is hard to think of anything more vile” than deliberately desecrating a wafer. A minor infraction, apparently involving neither ill intent nor actual defacement of the communion wafer, had now become a heinous crime, a sacrilegious assault on all that is holy. Cook later returned the host and is now hunkered down in the hopes that his assailants will manage to remember their ostensible Christianity.

Piling Pelion on Ossa

The reaction to Webster Cook's eucharistic faux pas strikes me as second-order irrationality. The first irrationality is religion itself, treating as real something that has failed time and again in all of its aspects to deliver any tangible results. If you pile the null hypothesis atop Occam's razor, it might occur to you to conclude that the best reason for a lack of compelling evidence for God is a lack of God. The most efficient explanation of why the world rolls along as if there is no God is that the world is right.

When religious people take the shaky foundations of their faith and build huge structures on top of it (the Catholic church being a case in point), heroic efforts are needed to keep things from toppling over. Doubt must not be permitted to enter the sanctuary. The wafer looks like bread and is bread, but it's the actual flesh of Jesus Christ, so death to those who don't worship it! Although it may sit like a scrap of food in a Ziploc bag, don't be fooled. It's God in there!

The overreaction begs for mockery, but it's dangerous territory. Ever willing to stick his thumb in the eye of those who believe without evidence, PZ Myers suggested on his blog Pharyngula that he might like to have fun with a few communion wafers of his own. Silly Professor Myers! Now he's getting his own deluge of abuse and death threats from hyper-religious correspondents who actually believe PZ has nothing better to do than perform rituals of desecration on tiny bits of dried-out bread. PZ is nothing if not obstreperous, and being treated like a Danish cartoonist has gotten his back up. If people are going ballistic anyway, he might as well go ahead and toss some wafers into one of his zebrafish tanks. Or subject one to DNA testing to see if Jesus was actually an XY male or perhaps a cross-dressing XX female parthenogenetically born of a virgin; that latter case would make more sense than most Bible stories! So many possibilities!

But not going to happen.

It seems likely to me that PZ will, in fact, receive a number of communion wafers in the mail. They're not that difficult to obtain. A slight sleight of hand suffices. But I predict the loony religionists are going to be disappointed that Professor Myers will deny them the opportunity to plunge themselves into a further lip-frothing frenzy by conducting an elaborate public desecration of anything. Don't you get it? In his own special undiplomatic way, PZ has been expressing his utter contempt for people who attack and threaten living human beings on behalf of stale food fragments. If you're in this category, you are the target. Not your holy bread. Sheesh!

My recommendation to the offended faithful is simple:

1. Act like the Christians you purport to be and follow the teachings of your ever-loving messiah, who told Peter in Matthew 18:22 to forgive his brother not seven times, but seventy times seven times. So get with it and obey Jesus.
2. Get on your knees and pray ceaselessly to God to save the soul of Paul Zachary Myers. Pray for me, too, while you're at it. Why the hell not?
3. Keep praying. I'm very much in favor of prayer by the devout. You don't cause anyone else any trouble while you keep praying. It lets the rest of us go about our business without your interference. Pray more. Prey less.
   

Amen.

We the sheeple

A pseudo-scholarship vignette

The July issue of Acts & Facts is out from the Institute for Creation Research. Since ICR includes “Research” in its title, you know those folks must be serious, painstaking scholars. Here's one of them in action, Henry M. Morris IV, namesake and scion of Henry Morris the so-called flood theorist:

When the United States of America was founded on July 4, 1776, the signing of the Declaration of Independence was preceded by prayer at the urging of Benjamin Franklin, the senior statesmen of the fledgling nation. It was certainly no coincidence, then, that the very first sentence of this historic document acknowledged God as Creator (“nature's God”).

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There are only a few small problems with Morris's account. First of all, it was during the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, not the Declaration of Independence, that Franklin reportedly suggested that the convention begin each day's business with prayer. The tale has grown in the telling.

James Madison took notes during the constitutional convention and recorded Franklin's motion: “I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that Service.” Madison also reported that Franklin's motion died without action. After some discussion, the prayer proposal was superseded by a motion to adjourn, which carried.

In addition to misplacing Franklin's motion in time, Morris also assumes it was adopted and that our founding fathers quickly bowed their heads in prayer. We know that several of the founders were religious (a few were even clerics), but others were known to be dubious about traditional Christianity, with Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson leading this list. Morris thinks nothing of the fact that Jefferson chose the phrase “Nature's God” when he penned the Declaration. (What would Morris think if he knew that Jefferson wrote both words in lowercase as “nature's god” in his rough draft?) By relegating God to a possession of nature, Jefferson was most likely employing a bit of deistic finesse, citing a deity to assuage the knee-benders among the founding fathers without any genuflection on his part.

Of course, if I were an ICR scholar, I could just state it as fact. It's easier that way.

The good news!

I would be remiss if I failed to note that there are opportunities for people with academic degrees to be ICR “scholars.” To emphasize its devotion to academics, ICR never fails to cite the degrees of its writers and staff. If an ICR employee holds a doctorate or a master's degree, you can be certain that it will be appended to the end of his or her name at every opportunity. Even Henry M. Morris III gets into the act, listing “D. Min.” after his name. After all, what's better than a degree in ministry to establish your credentials in scientific research? (On the other hand, poor Henry M. Morris IV is—except for the Roman numeral—suffix free.)

The July issue of Acts & Facts calls for people to join the ranks of ICR's crack team of creation researchers, but those who answer the call need to understand that their conclusions have already been conveniently provided by the biblical account in Genesis. That makes it all much easier!

ICR is growing! We now need additional Ph.D. science faculty and researchers in geology (both soft-rock and hard-rock), astronomy/cosmology, paleontology, and science education. Thankfully, our life-science faculty is strong (and young), but we need to recruit and train those who will be the creationist scientists for the coming decades. The basic qualifications are: Ph.D. from a reputable school in the desired field, complete agreement with the ICR tenets (both biblical and scientific), and a “fire in the belly” for the creationist ministry. If you are such a person—or if you know such a person—get a resumé to us soon. We are ready to hire and are diligently looking for God’s warriors to “stand in the gap” (Ezekiel 22:30).

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My favorite part is the comment that applicants should have degrees from a “reputable school.” I guess that leaves out “Dr.” Kent Hovind. Or, for that matter, any graduate of ICR's unaccredited graduate school.

Messages from beyond

Cashing in on End Times

You've undoubtedly already seen the bumper stickers announcing that irresponsible Christians are ready to abandon their vehicles at a moment's notice, putting the rest of the population at risk. And, of course, there's the stacks of books from the Left Behind series that used to clutter bookstores and now litter the ten-cent table at library sales. (The movie version features Kirk Cameron!) Cashing in on the apocalypse is big business.

Somehow, however, I missed the news item earlier this year that we can now leave messages to our earthbound family and friends after soaring to meet Jesus up in the sky. Mark Heard is a supermarket shelf-stocker from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a region that undoubtedly abounds with the unsaved. According to the Bible in the News segment of today's Southwest Radio Church broadcast, Mark was fiddling with his on-line stock investment portfolio when it occurred to him that his wife would be unable to access his account after the rapture.

Apparently Mark is “unequally yoked” with a nonbeliever, but he still loves her enough to want her to have enough money to survive the tribulation period and the terrors of Satan's seven-year rule over the unraptured. That's when Mark had the idea (undoubtedly put in his head by God, probably by the Holy Spirit third of the Trinity) that he should stash important information where his wife could obtain it. While most people might then go out and buy a fireproof bedroom safe, stuff it with documents, and give the wife a key, Mark was not willing to settle for such a mundane solution. (Besides, his wife is unsaved. She'd open the safe the first time he turned his back and rob him blind. Right?)

Instead Mark cleverly created youvebeenleftbehind.com, a website that promises to sprinkle your loved ones with electronic manna after your rapture departure. It “gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends For Christ.” (Why the “for” is capitalized is one of God's little mysteries.) You can store up to 250 megabytes of crucial information your loved ones will need after you are snatched from the bosom of your family. Imagine writing long, detailed, I-told-you-so screeds from which they can take spiritual comfort as Satan's minions rampage all about them. You can convey messages to as many as 62 e-mail addresses, which will be delivered approximately six days after the rapture occurs. The triggering mechanism is a kind of dead man's switch. Five members of the youvebeenleftbehind.com team have been scattered about the globe as we await the second coming of Jesus. If three days pass without at least three team members logging in, the clock starts ticking. In the absence of intervention, the messages go out three days later.

I presume that Mark Heard must be one of the five team members and I'm guessing that all of the team members are confident they'll be raptured up. Even if they're wrong, would they be disgruntled enough upon being left behind to continue to log in and thus hold back their clients' archived messages? That would not be a Christian thing to do, would it?

This service is available for only $40 for the first year of enrollment. If the Lord tarries—as he has been wont to do for nearly two thousand years now—renewal fees “will be will be reduced as the number of subscribers increases. Tell your friends about You've Been [sic] left behind.”

But presumably not with a left-behind message.

Heads of the class

Cultivating the mind

Teachers can count on book companies to flood our mail boxes with promotional materials. Full-color fliers and review copies of textbooks pour into our offices. Unfortunately, the books are often difficult to distinguish from each other and the promotional pitches all contain the same breathless prose about pedagogical breakthroughs and “student success.”

However, sometimes—and I admit this is rare—something breaks away from the pack and catches your eye. One such example was unearthed during a recent archaeological dig in my school archives, the stacks of material that clutter the drawers and shelves (and many other flat surfaces) of my office and home. This item had originally come into my possession over ten years ago and I was struck by its imaginative visuals. Decapitated students!


Not really, of course. But Quant Systems made a splash with its bizarre agricultural metaphor. My students, I'm sure, would hasten to add details about appropriate fertilizing materials.


The 800 number in the advertisement, by the way, still works. Although Quant Systems has since been transformed into Hawkes Learning Systems, the company survives. It was a leader in educational courseware and stylish fashions for math teachers, as well as one of the first to recognize the importance of the equation c² = 4d² + x³ + 7.

Excuse me, I have to go water my students now.

Manchurian candidate redux

Want to go there?

Did you know that a major political party's presumptive nominee for president of the United States is a stealth candidate? The nets are buzzing with rumors about the “Manchurian candidate” aspects of this man, who is suspected to be hiding dark secrets about his personal history and political agenda.

I am, of course, speaking of John Sidney McCain III. Who else did you think it could be?

Yes, I know. I've seen the quotes, too. You mean stuff like this:

“In 1991 a young Muslim Harvard Law College graduate named Barack Hussein Obama (who has denied his Islamic past and Muslim roots for as long as he has been a public figure) became a civil rights community activist working out of the Trinity United Church of Christ.” —Jon Christian Ryter

“In Arab culture and under Islamic law, if your father is a Muslim, so are you. And once a Muslim, always a Muslim. You cannot go back. In Islamic eyes, Obama is certainly a Muslim.” —Debbie Schlussel

“You can't trust anybody these days, so who's to say [Obama]'s not a terrorist and we just don't realize it yet?” —Kirstie Hartle

Yes, the right-wing noise machine is pumping out lots of smears against Barack Obama. But do Obama's opponents really, really want to go there? The stealth candidate game is not one skewed in their favor. After all, the only genuine alternative to Obama is the presumptive Republican nominee, J. Sidney McCain III (and if you believe that Ralph Nader and Bob Barr are also alternatives, go jump off the roof of a tall building while flapping your arms; I'm sure you can fly if you just believe hard enough).

As McCain never tires of mentioning, he is a former prisoner of war. While Wesley Clark correctly pointed out that being a POW does not automatically qualify anyone for the presidency, it's at least a calling card that bespeaks fortitude and endurance. And when I say “calling card,” I certainly don't mean to imply anything about the queen of diamonds.

Unless you want to go there.

No one can gin up fanciful tales about Barack Obama without opening the door to similar attacks on John McCain. When it comes to McCain, there's a lot more to work with. Think about it. Is McCain a stealth candidate? Who has repeatedly been denounced as a RINO (Republican In Name Only) for his positions on immigration reform, campaign finance, windfall profits, and tax cuts (despite his convenient election year capitulation to President Bush's agenda)? Who is a mole working to destroy the conservative agenda from within?

Well, who was in the hands of communist interrogators for five years during the Vietnam war? Is there anyone who wouldn't say, “John McCain is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life”? And McCain exudes Christian charity, too, as when he cuddles up with former North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, the man who ran the infamous “Hanoi Hilton,” the prisoner-of-war camp in which McCain was interned for over five years.

The people who are working so hard to smear Barack Obama should take a moment to think (not that that's likely to happen). Right-wingers churned up a lot of mud against John McCain when they wanted to discredit him as a candidate for the conservative cause. Despite their opposition, he is now their standard bearer. Perhaps they'll hold their noses and vote for him now because they have no good alternatives. Maybe they'll find satisfaction by ignoring McCain and concentrating instead on tearing down Obama. But their yeoman work in savaging McCain is still out there. It ensures that McCain's campaign will be no garden party.

So don't go there.

Christ on a cracker

Come and get it!

My colleague's brow clouded up as he recalled his outrage: “I was about as angry as I've ever gotten. I couldn't believe the rudeness of it!” The event had been his son's wedding, and the incident that had sparked his indignation was being denied communion.

“When they told me I couldn't participate, I almost did it just to spite them!”

Ah, yes. That's certainly the spirit of communion, all right.

His son had agreed to his fiancée's desire for a church wedding. She was a Roman Catholic, so the ceremony was one of those hour-long rituals, complete with nuptial mass and Holy Communion. The groom's side of the family was not Catholic, so the guests in attendance were a decidedly mixed group. Under such circumstances, the celebrant normally speaks the words prescribed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to introduce the communion service when non-Catholics are present:

“We welcome our fellow Christians to this celebration of the Eucharist as our brothers and sisters. We pray that our common baptism and the action of the Holy Spirit in this Eucharist will draw us closer to one another and begin to dispel the sad divisions which separate us.... Because Catholics believe that the celebration of the Eucharist is a sign of the reality of the oneness of faith, life, and worship, members of those churches with whom we are not yet fully united are ordinarily not admitted to Holy Communion.”

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In other words, don't get in the bread line. Stay seated and mutter your Protestant prayers, if you wish. My colleague described it as a slap in the face, especially when he realized that his son was also denied communion.

I tried to hide my amusement at my colleague's reaction. Most Protestants seems to pride themselves, at least a bit, for belonging to Christian sects that have supposedly cast off the superstitious excesses and mummery of Roman Catholicism. Frankly, though, once you cross the line to talking to an imaginary friend and expecting him to listen to you, any ancillary mumbo-jumbo doesn't seem to me like a major distinction. In particular, I was puzzled that my colleague didn't recoil from participating in the formal cannibalism of the Catholic rite, since Catholic dogma stipulates quite seriously that the communion wafer become actual human flesh through the miracle of transubstantiation. He wanted his share of cracker-barrel Christ and was damned if he would take its denial lightly.

Reading James Wolcott's blog post about Tim Russert's funeral put me in mind of my colleague's close encounter with Catholic communion. Wolcott described how a clueless Sally Quinn marched up to participate in the communion service during Russert's requiem mass in some kind of wacky tribute to the late journalist:

I wanted to see what it was like. Oddly I had a slightly nauseated sensation after I took it, knowing that in some way it represented the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Last Wednesday I was determined to take it for Tim, transubstantiation notwithstanding. I'm so glad I did. It made me feel closer to him.

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If you're not familiar with Sally Quinn's work, don't worry. Her specialty is superficiality. While she has a certain entertainment value, as in this comic communion story, Quinn's special talent lies in projection. She, for example, likes to hector people for perceived failures to adhere to high moral standards. Quinn can do this because she, at least, has risen above her tawdry origins as a non-writer who became a Washington Post reporter as well as the mistress (and later wife) of Post editor Ben Bradlee. Was that social climbing or merely job advancement?

When she's not presiding as arbiter of D.C. social standards, Quinn devotes time to her new hobby of being religious. She is a leading contributor to On Faith, the Washington Post blog devoted to religion. Fortunately for Quinn, just as she didn't need to know much about writing to become a Post journalist, she apparently doesn't need to know much about religion to be a Post religion blogger. Good for her!

Fact or fiction in Zimbabwe

Not all black and white

Rhodesia was a British colony in 1965 when its prime minister, Ian Smith, unilaterally declared its independence. Britain had been pressuring its African colony to begin a transition from white minority rule and allow Rhodesia's black majority to participate in the colony's governance. Smith responded with the paternalistic argument that black Rhodesians were not prepared for self-governance and remained at the head of a white minority government for another fourteen years.

Since 1980, Robert Mugabe has done his best to prove that Ian Smith was right (as least in the case of a nation led by Mugabe), turning the prosperous food-exporting Rhodesia of forty years ago into the impoverished and starving Zimbabwe of today. Mugabe is back in the news, of course, prating about his God-given mission to rule Zimbabwe and promising to defy any defeat at the ballot box. Although he came in second in the recent presidential election, Mugabe has since driven his rival to withdraw from the June 27 run-off election and to seek political asylum in the Dutch embassy in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital city. Mugabe likes elections only if he wins them.

Mugabe's Zimbabwe is a fertile ground for mischief-making, even if it's no longer fertile for raising crops. While Rhodesia's white farmers raised enough crops to allow the nation to export them, the disproportionate white ownership of arable lands was a vestige of the colonial era and an unsolved problem for the new successor nation of Zimbabwe. But “land reform” proved elusive and its abuse led to outright expropriation of white-owned farms. Eric Harrison, one of the dispossessed white farmers, describes the outcome of land reform: “They gave it to party members. Some of the party members and politicians had more than one farm.”

Harrison has written his memoirs of his life in Rhodesia-Zimbabwe. They've been published in a book titled Jambanja. Harrison was featured on KSFO's weekend talk show hosted by Barbara Simpson, who styles herself as “The Babe in the Bunker.” As right-wing talk-show hosts go, Simpson is no Melanie Morgan. Since Morgan was cashiered earlier this year (ostensibly for budgetary reasons), Simpson holds up the distaff side of KSFO's rant-radio format. She's pretty far to the right, but occasionally lapses into periods where she emulates a broadcast journalist. Simpson was in this mode on Saturday, June 21, when she had a live on-air interview with Eric Harrison, who was on the phone from Zimbabwe.

Despite his grievances against the current government of his homeland, Harrison was remarkably forthright and balanced in his observation. Speaking about the controversial period of Rhodesia's white-minority rule, he said, “There's two sides to the story. And I'm sure that if I had been born black I would have been on the opposition side.“

Simpson asked him about one of the favorite talking points of the paranoid right-wing when discussing Zimbabwe: “Is there any truth to what I've read and heard that in fact some of the farmlands were given to—I know to the party members—but also to Chinese people and to people from Libya and government officials from those countries? Have you heard of that at all?”

Harrison didn't quite shoot it down, but he pulled it down several notches when he replied, “I've heard of it but I can't verify it.” A lifelong resident of Zimbabwe has heard the rumors about Red China moving into his country, but he hasn't seen it for himself. Will American conservatives ease up on this claim and look for some substantial evidence before they again assert it as fact?

Of course not.

Less than an hour after hearing part of Simpson's interview with Harrison, I punched the buttons on my car radio (it's not healthy to listen to KSFO for very long) and found myself listening to Dr. Stanley Monteith. “Dr. Stan” is a right-wing loon who loves conspiracy theories (9/11, AIDS, fluoride, New World Order, etc.). He was chatting with a South African correspondent who was sharing the “truth” about Zimbabwe. I didn't catch the fellow's name, but he was assuring Dr. Stan that the Chinese communist takeover of Zimbabwe was well advanced. In proof of this, he offered the observation that Chinese consumer goods were available throughout Zimbabwe. (It appears that China is making great progress in taking over the United States, too, then.) And, as the cherry on the sundae, Dr. Stan's interlocutor noted that “China is taking over Zimbabwe's farms.”

A white farmer from Zimbabwe may not be able to confirm the rumor from within the country itself, but it's self-evident when viewed from South Africa. And it's hawked as confirmed fact on right-wing radio.

Barbara Simpson had better get with the program and stop asking questions. Otherwise, KSFO may have to lay her off, too.

Lucky thirteen

What do you believe about nonbelief?

Yoo Chung of Yoo's Ramblings has tapped me on the shoulder and suggested I take a crack at the Atheist Q&A meme, recently seen hanging around at ERV. Nullifidian calls it the Atheist Thirteen, most likely because it consists of ten questions followed by “Tag, you're it!” to three other atheist blogs. Yoo included Halfway There on his list of three nonbelieving blogs, so here I am taking a look at the ten questions and mulling my answers.

1. How would you define “atheism”?

Let's keep it simple. To me, atheism means that you don't believe in God. There are more elaborate definitions, such as the version that applied to the late geometer Edwin Moise, who was asked why he believed there was no God. Moise is reputed to have replied, “You have to have faith!” That's a more robust form of atheism: actually believing that God does not exist, instead of merely lacking faith in his existence. I guess that's why I don't kick too much when people describe me as agnostic. They're trying to be “nice” by soft-pedaling my disbelief, as if that makes me more palatable to the general public. Frankly, though, folks like that make me increasingly inclined to get more militant. God? Hell, no!

2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?

God, yes! My family to this day remains devotedly Catholic and I was raised in that tradition. It's a smug sort of Christianity when you belong to the oldest sect of Jesus followers. I attended mass every Sunday (even serving as an altar boy for a time), spent a couple of years in Catholic school, and was cajoled throughout my adolescence by a grandmother who hoped I would become a priest. (When you sacrifice a son to Rome, you get lots of indulgence points up in heaven.) Despite total immersion in Catholicism, it didn't take. Praise the Lord.

3. How would you describe “Intelligent Design,” using only one word?

Cant. As in “empty, hypocritical talk.” Intelligent design is very thinly veiled creationism and represents merely the latest evolution of the campaign by religionists to annex some scientific territory to their god-ridden realm. But they can't.

4. What scientific endeavor really excites you?

It's difficult to keep this down to one answer. I follow developments in medicine because one day they may add some years to my life or those of family members or friends. I've had young, vibrant friends pass away at ridiculously young ages and I yearn for solutions. I am also fascinated with astronomy, astrophysics, and astronautics and am frequently aggravated that telescopes and satellites and space probes and spacecraft have to fight over the measly handful of dollars we allocate to such efforts. If NASA got as much money as the Pentagon loses in Iraq in sloppy accounting practices every year, we'd be able to fund all the robotic and manned space travel anyone could ever want.

5. If you could change one thing about the “atheist community,” what would it be and why?

Community? What community? Although not being religious really makes one stand out in our knee-bending society, it doesn't ensure having much else in common. If I were to try to be less dismissive and more constructive, I'd suggest that atheists would probably help themselves and the country by being more forthright. The unwillingness of the “new atheists” to mutter consoling platitudes about the value of religion is a step in the right direction.

6. If your child came up to you and said “I'm joining the clergy,” what would be your first response?

I don't have any children, but a plethora of nieces and nephews (and their offspring) have sprung up in the family. If one of the younger family members told Uncle Zeno that they were planning to go off to the seminary or convent, I'd wish them good luck. And then I'd ask, “What persuaded you that this is a good idea? How sure are you about committing yourself to this for life?”

7. What's your favorite theistic argument, and how do you usually refute it?

The Bible quote from Psalms 14:1: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Christians have cited this to me a few times. I like to point out it's in the Old Testament, which Christians consider to be superseded by the New Testament. Funny thing: Instead of reaching for God-affirming quotes from the New Testament, they invariably defend the Old Testament by declaring that Christians believe in the whole Bible. When I ask them about the Mosaic dietary laws (like not drinking milk while eating veal), they quickly say those laws have been superseded. This typically leads into a frustrating attempt (on their part) to explain how they know what parts of the Bible to believe and what parts to dismiss. The discussion peters out inconclusively.

8. What's your most “controversial” (as far as general attitudes among other atheists goes) viewpoint?

Not sure. It may be that I don't balk at the implication that same-sex weddings will clear the way to polygamy. I have no problem with that. It's not a deal breaker. Bring on the n-partner unions.

9. Of the “Four Horsemen” (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and Harris) who is your favorite, and why?

Dawkins has the qualities I most value in a role model or spokesman: articulate, magisterial, erudite, and serene. Hitchens, on the other hand, is often uncouth. That leaves room in the middle for Dennett and Harris.

10. If you could convince just one theistic person to abandon their beliefs, who would it be?

Think big. I'd choose Benedict XVI. If the pope were to abjure his faith in God, it would be delightfully cataclysmic. I'd pick the Dalai Lama as my second choice. It seems that having people address you as “Your Holiness” is a sure-fire way to get on my list.

Tag? No

The last time I tagged other bloggers with a meme, my buddy Zrk (of Live from Zi) replied, “that reminded me that I need to shut it down.” And a moment later it was gone. Zap!

I will spare others the stress of my regard.

Student: Ready to learn

Teacher: Wish you were here

Sometimes you run into eager students who contact you even before the first day of class. They typically say that they intend to hit the ground running. This particular fellow seemed to fit the mold:

Hello Professor Zeno,

I have enrolled in your calculus class for the summer session. I had a few questions before the course began. I have never been at your school before, so I wanted to ask about how the reading material for the class. Is it possible to purchase the reading material outside of the school? I know school bookstores are a little overpriced, and that I could find a better deal elsewhere. Can you provide me a list of what books we'll need for the course? Also, if you had a syllabus on hand, could I look over it ahead of time? Thank you!

Looking forward to learning from you,

DS

---

I replied cheerfully with the information DS requested:

Thanks for your message, DS. I think most of your questions will be answered by the attached pdf of our syllabus. It includes the ISBN of our textbook, which is the only book required for the class.

You're right, of course, about the prices of books in the college bookstore. You can often get a better bargain elsewhere. One possibility is Off-Campus Books, which is right next to the campus. You might be able to find a better price on-line, but at Off-Campus Books you can have the book in your possession immediately.

See you next week.

ZF

---

Soon my in-box contained another message from DS:

Thanks for the info Professor. I have one last question. Do you know if there's an abridged version of the book? Also, how different is the new edition from the previous edition? Is it possible to work out of the old edition one?

Thanks Again,

DS

---

We all know that new editions of textbooks seldom have significant changes. They're mostly designed to purge the used book pipeline. However, the changes are usually sufficient to make it difficult to bridge the gap. I gave DS due warning.

Don't get the old edition. Although the old and new editions are not dramatically different in content, it'll cause you nothing but trouble. The page numbers and exercise numbers are all out of sync. You'd need access to a copy of the current edition to know which exercises you're supposed to do. We're already going to have a very busy time with the course compressed into the abbreviated summer session. Anything that makes it even more complicated should be avoided if at all possible.

ZF

---

The first day of class arrived. Surprisingly, several of my students hadn't acquired the textbook yet. They were at a handicap as we promptly plowed through the first two sections of the text. Summer session doesn't dawdle. It wouldn't be a problem for DS, though, would it? Except he didn't respond when his name was called during the roll. Where was DS?

He wasn't there the second day either. But then a new message popped into my in-box:

Hi Professor Zeno,

I am attending my brother's graduation on Thursday and Friday, and will be gone those two days. I will be back for Monday's exam, as listed in the syllabus you sent me. I just wanted to let you know I was going to be gone those two days. I am not asking for dates to make up the homework assignments or quiz, I just wanted to inform you I was going to be away. Is there anything I need to have or bring on the date of the exam besides calculator, and pencil? Thank You,

DS

---

Naturally I was delighted to hear from him:

Thank you for your message, DS. We seem, however, to have a problem. I have yet to see you in class and I dropped you as a no-show. There were students on the waiting list eager to add the class and I signed them up, giving them the spots that had been allocated to students who did not attend class yesterday. It's not reasonable to assume you can miss the entire first week and still be retained on the roster. I'm sorry if you assumed this was the case.

ZF

---

DS was contrite and prepared to wiggle a bit:

I understand. If I set aside the graduation, and show up for the class at the end of the first week, is there still room? Or is the class filled to capacity? I was just wondering if it was possible to re-add if there was room. Thanks!

DS

---

I send him one last message:

The class is filled to its capacity, DS. Enjoy your brother's graduation. Better luck next time.

ZF

---

Why not Feinstein?

Not quite a rhetorical question

The Democratic National Convention was held in San Francisco in 1984. Presumptive nominee Walter Mondale, former vice president under Jimmy Carter, was going to have an uphill battle in his effort to oust incumbent president Ronald Reagan. In an attempt to capture the imagination of the American electorate, Mondale decided to name a woman as his running mate. The choice fell to U.S. Representative Geraldine Ferraro, a congresswoman from New York state. Despite some initial hopes that Mondale-Ferraro could upset President Reagan and Vice President George Bush in the general election, the Democrats never gained much traction. The incumbents enjoyed a landslide victory while the Democratic ticket carried only Minnesota, the home state of its presidential nominee, and the reliably Democratic District of Columbia.

Everyone knew that Mondale had narrowed his list of potential running mates to two names by the time of his party's convention. He had also seriously considered Mayor Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco, who had hosted the national party's convention with aplomb and was widely regarded as a Democrat with a bright future. Mondale balked, however, at the prospect of enduring constant scrutiny over the financial involvements of Feinstein's spouse, investment banker Richard C. Blum. While critics continue to harp on Blum's potential conflicts of interest with his wife's votes as a U.S. senator, Feinstein and Blum have weathered such accusations without visible political or financial damage to either.

Mondale might have hoped for such resilience when it turned out that Ferraro's husband, real estate agent John Zaccaro, had some problems with his tax returns. Or perhaps he wished that he had chosen Feinstein instead. In any case, the first rule of running mates is the same as the cardinal rule for doctors: “do no harm.” Actually benefiting the ticket is a pure plus. Ferraro failed that test in 1984 (just as Quayle did in 1988, but not fatally that year), and today both Obama and McCain are looking for vice-presidential candidates that will, at the very least, not hurt their campaigns and might, in the best case, actually help a little.

Sen. Obama is said to be reviewing prospective running mates with the objective of shoring up his support among potentially disaffected Democratic constituencies: women, Jews, and Hispanics. While Hillary Clinton's strong endorsement at the time of her suspension of her campaign has accelerated the process of reuniting internal factions in preparation for the fall election, an apt choice of vice-presidential candidate could perhaps seal the deal.

Several names have been bruited about. Sen. Clinton is the obvious possibility, but there's the question whether she would settle for the proverbial “bucket of warm spit” (in John Nance Garner's likely bowdlerized description of his job during the first two administrations of Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and whether Sen. Obama would want to offer it to her in the first place. Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico could potentially bring in the Latino voters with his Hispanic heritage and Spanish language skills; Spanish-speaking voters stuck with Hillary throughout the long primary battles and Obama would like to have them on board. Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas is also certain to be on Obama's short list of prime prospects for a running mate. Sebelius is a popular and successful Democrat in a state dominated by Republicans and she would likely appeal to women and Midwestern voters. A Roman Catholic, Sebelius has been chastised by clerics in Kansas for refusing to sign into law anti-abortion measures that she says would unduly restrict women's freedom of choice.

No one is really talking about Dianne Feinstein as a possible vice-presidential nominee and no one has suggested that she is on Obama's list. Perhaps she should be. Feinstein made presidential campaign news recently when she played host to Obama and Clinton's end-of-campaign powwow. A strong Clinton supporter who had signaled it was time to close ranks behind Obama, Feinstein has good relations with both camps. While one might wish (as I do!) that Feinstein were less inclined to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt on his judicial appointments or to be more suspicious of the White House position on FISA, Sen. Feinstein has a well-established record of working effectively with both sides of the senate aisle. Her diplomatic skills are significant.

If Obama were to pick Feinstein, she could bridge the gap between his original supporters and those in Hillary's brigade. Feinstein is Jewish and could strengthen Obama's support among her coreligionists, many of whom seem to find him insufficiently pro-Israel and are being eagerly courted by McCain. Unlike Sebelius, Feinstein would not be seen as someone whom Obama was setting up to preempt Clinton's future as a national politician (whether Hillary has one is another question). Feinstein, after all, turns 75 this year and could run as a senior stateswoman. (Surely the McCain campaign would hesitate to try to use age as an issue.)

Of course, this notion that Feinstein could be a good running mate for Obama runs horribly aground on a terrible reality. The governor of California would appoint her successor in the event she is elected to the vice presidency. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a Republican and no one in the Democratic ranks would want to surrender a prized seat to the opposition. Fortunately, however, there is a simple solution:

Strike a deal with Arnold.

Schwarzenegger has a good working relationship with Feinstein and would undoubtedly relish the prospect of having a friendly voice inside the White House (assuming that his preferred candidate John McCain does not win). To hedge his bets by making a side deal with the Democratic ticket, Arnold could ensure his ready access to the federal executive branch no matter what the outcome of the election. The state of Wyoming provides a useful example. When an incumbent Repubican senator died in office, the Democratic governor of Wyoming was required by state law to choose a replacement from the late incumbent's political party. California has no such law, but there is no reason that Feinstein and Schwarzenegger could not strike a similar deal. If Arnold were to pledge to appoint Feinstein's successor from a list of three names that she would provide in the event of her election as vice president, her senate seat would not switch parties. Schwarzenegger would have no particular reason to balk at such a deal and every reason to avoid reneging and poisoning his future relations with the opposition party (which dominates the California state legislature).

Is any of this going to happen? I certainly don't think so. But I've heard much worse suggestions.

Please lie for me!

The truth is out there

It was a surprise, but not a novelty. I'd had students do this before. They vanish for a couple of weeks, then suddenly reappear in class. Usually there are elaborate excuses, but sometimes they slip back in as if they hope I don't notice they're back (or were ever missing in the first place). This student, however, was not following the typical script. “Gee” came charging right up to me in front of the prealgebra class. I assumed, however, that I was ready for her.

“Well, hello, Gee. May I ask why you're here?”

She had been missing for four weeks. Students don't usually bother coming back after that long an absence.

“I need you to tell my sister I'm enrolled in your class.”

Okay. This was new.

“Actually, it's none of your sister's business, although I dropped you from class for excessive absences.”

“But can you tell her I'm in the class?”

“If your sister asks me, all I can say to her is that I'm not permitted to talk about a student's status.”

“Yeah, that's good! Can you tell her that?”

“I have to tell her that. Our students have privacy rights and we faculty members cannot ordinarily discuss our students with third parties. I can't tell your sister anything.”

“Oh. All right. Is it okay if I sit down?”

“There are desks to spare. Knock yourself out.”

She hustled over to a corner of the classroom and sat down. If Gee was pretending to be a student, she was doing a fairly bad job of it. She had no textbook, no writing implement, and no notebook or paper. She did have her cell phone, of course, which she promptly began to check for messages. It was like old times, before she stopped bothering coming to class.

The rest of the class was unremarkable. We worked over the new material, answered several questions, and assigned some homework. The class period ended and my students began to flow toward the door. Uncharacteristically, Gee stayed put at her desk. I understood why when a woman worked her way into the room against the flow of traffic. She looked like a slightly older version of Gee. The new arrival came bustling up to me just as her younger sister had an hour before. They were very alike, although the older sister had a very serious expression.

“Is my sister in your class?”

“Excuse me? I don't know who you are.”

She pointed at Gee, who was sitting there with an innocent expression on her face.

“That's my sister. Is she in your class?”

“I'm sorry, but that's privileged information. The school's privacy rules don't allow me to discuss my students with outside parties.” Actually, Gee wasn't my student anymore, but I was pretty sure the privacy rules applied to former students, too.

The sister looked unhappy and prepared to argue. Gee sauntered up and proceeded to put her foot right in it:

“You can see I'm right here. Dr. Z told me I had been dropped from the class by accident.”

Stupid girl. Her older sister turned toward her.

“You said you were enrolled. You didn't say anything about being dropped!” She turned back to me. “Is that right? Was Gee dropped by accident?”

“Again, I'm sorry. You'll have to discuss that directly with your sister.”

The older sister was exasperated. Gee had recovered her composure after her flub, smirking slightly when I did not rat her out. Clearly her older sister was the family enforcer and was checking up on her spoiled kid sister. Perhaps Gee was living rent-free at home because she was supposedly going to school. I didn't know the whole story, but I knew that Gee was shirking and her sister was trying to get the goods on her. I decided to be more helpful, while punctiliously observing the privacy rules. I addressed the older sister:

“If you need to know the details of Gee's student record and you don't want to just take your sister's word for it, there's an easy way for Gee to document it for you. All she needs to do is take you with her to the counseling office and ask her counselor to share her academic record with you. If she gives her counselor permission to share her information with you, then the counselor can tell you anything you need to know.” Of course, I could have asked Gee to waive her privacy rights right there and give me permission to clue in her sister, but I was eager to get them out of my classroom. I also figured that Gee's counselor would have a treasure trove of fascinating information, whereas all I knew about was Gee's behavior in prealgebra.

Gee's face went suddenly blank. Her sister brightened.

“Oh! Thank you, professor. Come on, Gee, we need to go to counseling.”

She grabbed her younger sister by the wrist and dragged her out of the classroom.

John McCain's secret plan

Dark victory

I know that people feel an obligation to predict a close presidential race, but all signs point to a blow-out for Obama. Only an excess of complacency and a string of egregious errors would be likely to usher McCain into the White House and so far Sen. Obama has shown no inclination to crack under pressure. Nevertheless, people must give lip service to the notion that McCain has a fighting chance and the Republican election machinery is grinding its gears and trying to shift out of neutral.

This weekend I received a message about the 2008 Victory Plan that will supposedly propel the GOP nominee toward electoral triumph. According to the National Black Republican Association, the 2008 Victory Plan is elegant in its simplicity: To win, all John McCain has to do is win 25% of the black vote.

Excuse me? Twenty-five percent?. Did someone forget a decimal point between the two and the five? Hillary couldn't rack up 25% against Obama. In what alternate universe can J. Sidney McCain III dream of such a feat?

The delusion known as the 2008 Victory Plan has four steps:

• Recruit and train black church and community leaders to spread our conservative Republican message
• Script, produce and air our hard-hitting radio and TV ads for black radio and TV outlets
• Put up MLK billboards across America
• Publish and distribute our very effective magazine, The Black Republican

---

MLK billboards? That's right. They claim that Martin Luther King, Jr., was a registered Republican. While that sounds weird today, it shouldn't be that surprising if it were true. Although no one has turned up a GOP registration card signed by Martin Luther King, Jr., we know his father was a member. After all, the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln, the president who issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The Democratic Party was the party of Jim Crow and the Solid South. Black voters had every reason to sign up with the GOP.

The National Black Republican Association is nostalgic for the good old days and argues that African Americans should come home to the Republican Party. As cited approvingly by NBRA chair Frances Rice, “the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S's: Slavery, Secession, Segregation and now Socialism.” What the NBRA seems to have missed, however, is that Richard Nixon's deliberate “Southern strategy” brought the Republican Party electoral victories in the short term at the cost of abandoning the black voter. Nixon embarked on a campaign to attract the votes of Southern whites who were disaffected by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Those measures were pushed by President Lyndon Johnson, a Southern Democrat who broke with his party's racist heritage.

Once established in the White House, Nixon began to pay off his political debts to his Southern supporters with such actions as the Supreme Court nominations of Clement Haynesworth and G. Harrold Carswell. Both nominations were defeated when the former turned out to be insufficiently careful about recusing himself in cases where he had a financial interest and the latter was shown to be an utter mediocrity who had defended segregation. In response to Nixon's solicitous pandering, white voters in the Solid South began to build today's GOP domination of their politics. Local politicians adapted to the trend. Although he had been a protege of Lyndon Johnson, leading Southern Democrats like John Connally abandoned the Democratic Party and signed up with the GOP.

While the Republican Party now holds sway over the Solid South, it's paid a steep price in terms of the African American vote. The party of Lincoln now commands the allegiance of approximately 4% of black voters. In arguing that African Americans should cling to their Republican heritage, the National Black Republican Association is stuck with such ancient talking points as Democratic opposition to civil rights. The NBRA cites such examples as Sen. Robert Byrd's former membership in the Ku Klux Klan, as if his mistakes of many decades ago have any significance in 2008, a time in which Byrd enjoys a 100% rating from the NAACP and is on record as a supporter of Sen. Obama's presidential campaign.

The Republican Party's 25% pipe dream isn't even new. In 2004 Ed Gillespie was chairman of the Republican National Committee and he was touting the GOP's plans to make inroads into the minority community. What was the result of that earlier strenuous effort? George W. Bush's share of the black vote rose from a minuscule 8% in 2000 to an anemic 11% in 2004. The 2008 Victory Plan envisages Sen. McCain more than doubling President Bush's 2004 share of the black vote in a campaign against Sen. Barack Obama. Is this a realistic prospect?

I'm sure I don't need to tell you the answer.

The rise of the Bene Gesserit

They're already here

The phone next to Dad's recliner rang. He picked it up. After saying hello he switched to Portuguese for a few sentences. It was probably family. He switched back to English:

“It's for you.”

That was a surprise. I had recently “gone away” to college. Who knew I was home?

“It's your cousin Maria,” added Dad.

Oh, like that was a big help.

“Which one?” I asked.

I wasn't kidding. If you're Portuguese, then all of your female relatives are named Maria (or Mary or Marie). There's no help for it. Maria may be their first name, middle name, or confirmation name, but it's always in there somewhere.

“Maria Anna,” he replied.

What the heck was she calling me for? I couldn't keep track of the family bloodlines like some of my relatives could, but I seemed to recall that we had grandfathers who were first cousins, so Maria Anna and I would be third cousins. Anyway, what did she want with me? I took the phone from my father.

My cousin and I chatted in English. Her Portuguese was more fluent than mine (she had lived in the Old Country for a while), but her English was fine. She came to the point quickly:

“There's a Grand March the night of the festa and I need an escort. Would you go with me?”

Think fiesta when you see festa and you'll be all right. You won't pronounce it right unless you've heard someone say it aloud (or unless you're Portuguese) because we say it as if it's spelled feshta. (Don't ask me why.) Portuguese communities like to have a festa or two each year (there's always one near the time of Pentecost). There'll be a big informal banquet and perhaps a parade. Sometimes a dance. The Grand March was a kind of processional that preceded a dance.

“I wasn't planning to go, Maria Anna. Can't you get someone else?”

The negotiations began. She was obviously scraping the bottom of the barrel if she was resorting to inviting blood kin (although, when you get right down to it, all Portuguese seem to be nth cousins, sometimes m times removed). There would be goodies at the festa, including massa sovada and filhozes. Yum! Then the deal clincher:

“You don't have to dance with me. Just escort me till the Grand March is done and then you're on your own.”

Anyway, it was a good deed for my loser of a cousin. I felt virtuous.

A few minutes later the phone rang again. Dad picked it up. A moment later he yelled for my kid brother:

“Tim, it's for you! It's your cousin Maria!”

My brother yelled back from the next room: “Which one?”

This time it was Maria Amelia. She's Maria Anna's kid sister. She made exactly the same deal with my kid brother as her sister had with me. My brother and I were both roped into going to the Grand March, but we were allowed to cut loose the moment it concluded.

The Coven

Tradition is persistent in Portuguese communities in the U.S. It lingers today and it was even more robust in the 1970s. Portuguese women encase themselves in black when their husbands die. Mourning becomes their vocation for the rest of their lives. They travel in packs, too, like a murder of crows. There's nothing like a festa for sightings of the black-clad flock.

Portuguese velhinhas (little old ladies) or viúvas (widows) cluster in little groups in the corners of the hall, muttering together. Some of them compulsively click rosary beads, but all of them are watchful. They love festas because their principal hobby is matchmaking. Widowhood frees them up to spend time swapping information about family bloodlines: His father has a drinking problem; he's no catch. Her family's dairy is failing; no dowry there. She has a twin brother; no doubt she'll be infertile. That one is the town whore, but she might be good enough for him, since he's the fourth son in his family and has no prospects at all.

They gossip with their heads together, occasionally chuckling quietly. All the heads snap up when fresh flesh appears on the scene. I created a bit of a stir. Although I had grown up in the county, I had never been to a Grand March before. Who is that boy with Maria Anna?

As the couples strolled in, arm-in-arm, the anemic little band struck up the only tune they knew that they thought was a march: When the Saints Go Marching In. They played it several times while the procession snaked about the hall and eventually everyone was inside and had paraded in front of festive family members and friends. The parents of Anna and Amelia beamed at us. The heads of the little old ladies swung back and forth, checking out the teens and tweens. Eventually they pegged me.

Aha! See the boy with Maria Amelia?

Sure, sure. Timoteo. He's the grandson of Old Man Ferox.

Ha! He's marching with his cousin!

Yes, yes. So that's probably his big brother Zeno marching with Maria Anna!

The college boy? So that's what he looks like.

The bookworm has come to a Grand March!

Poor girls. With their cousins! Couldn't they find real dates?

No, no, it's all right. Third cousins. Old Man Ferox is first cousin to the girls' grandfather.

That's right! That's right! Still ... not the best.

The band gave up on When the Saints Go Marching In and the Grand March ground to an end. My brother Tim was gone like a shot, Maria Amelia spinning like a top in his wake. I took my leave of Maria Anna more politely and made a bee-line to her parents (where Maria Anna was sure not to follow); I knew I could chat innocuously for a few minutes and practice my Portuguese. They asked about college and I inquired solicitously after their health (which was bad, as I found out in detail; indeed, they lingered in robustly horrible health for decades thereafter and were always happy to tell you about it).

The Bene Gesserit were undoubtedly dismayed that the Ferox boys had gone stag so abruptly, bringing their speculations on degrees of incest to a premature conclusion. Fortunately, there were dozens of other boys and girls in the hall. The old ladies watched as people paired off for the dancing, nodding or shaking their heads in swift judgment of each couple.

After a decent interval, I found my brother at the concession stand, pouring Coke down his throat and hanging out with guys he knew from school or 4-H. Tim wanted to stay for a while and go back to the dance floor once our cousins were out of circulation. We negotiated a deal: He could amuse himself for ninety minutes and then we were out of there. It was approximately eighty minutes more than my original offer, but Tim was actually a rather sociable person and didn't regret being at the festa. I got some munchies from the concession stand and settled in for my vigil.

It was not the greatest ordeal of my life. Not too many people knew me, but a few came over to chat and ask me about college. Was Cal Poly a good school? Yeah, I think so, but I'm at Caltech. Do they have a good ag program? That's up at UC Davis; I'm a math major down in Pasadena.

Good times.

My pact with my kid brother soon unraveled. He returned to me and begged for an extension, which I reluctantly granted. Tim kept going back dance after dance to partner with the same girl. The ninety minutes eventually turned into three hours. Even then I was practically dragging my brother to the car so we could get the hell out of there.

Within two years my brother and that girl were married.

Don't mess with the Bene Gesserit.