Oh, no! Not again!

Déjà vu all over again

Most of us in the teaching profession like to get to know our students and try to find ways to kickstart the process at the beginning of each new school term. One of my colleagues hands out a questionnaire. Another has the students take turns introducing themselves to the class. I usually give an e-mail assignment, which I call a quiz. The instructions are simple: send me a message that (a) includes the name of the class on the subject line (no blank subjects, please!), (b) tells me why you're taking the class in question, and (c) includes your full name (in case I can't tell who you are from the hell-girl-666@inferno.net e-mail address). Since it's a “quiz,” they get points for it.

Like I said, it's simple. I get some useful contact data and a perspective on what my students are looking for (although I can't be much help to those who are taking the class “because the voices in my head told me to”). I also find out which of my students are capable of following instructions, which happens to be an extremely important survival skill in any college class, but perhaps to an even greater degree in math.

Every semester, of course, there's a few students who just can't be bothered to earn a few easy points by sending their instructor a short e-mail message. I presume their lives are full of fun, excitement, and distractions. (I'm envious.) I reply to each message individually and then, after the submission deadline, send out a global message to the entire class roster: “If you didn't get an individual response from me with your quiz score, that means I didn't get an e-mail from you!”

I repeated that message in one of my classes this week. One of my students raised his hand. It was “Stan,” an apparently smart but disorganized student who was repeating the class, having flunked out the previous semester. He had earnestly assured me that this semester would be different.

“Dr. Z, I didn't get an e-mail from you.”

“Right, Stan. That's because I didn't get a message from you. Did you follow the quiz instructions and send me an e-mail message with the requested information?”

Stan paused for a moment before giving me a tentative answer.

“Yeah, I did. I sent you a message.”

“Okay, Stan. When did you send it? Before the deadline? It's possible it got sidetracked by the spam filter and I can search for it in my trash bin.”

“Um, last time. I sent it last time.”

I was confused for a moment, then figured out what he meant.

“Oh, you mean last semester?”

Stan nodded his head. I bit my lip.

“I think we have a problem, Stan. Doing it last semester doesn't exempt you from doing the assignment again this semester. You also took exams last semester, right?”

I let that sink in. Stan achieved enlightenment.

“Oh, so I should do all the assignments this semester even if I already did them before?”

Oh, yeah.

God is bread

Dough, ducats, shekels, moolah, ...

It was mostly a mistake. The new semester had just begun and I was adjusting to a new early-rising regimen. I clicked on the television as I dug bleary-eyed into my cereal. The screen lit up with what seemed to be a news broadcast, with a talking head reading off a sequence of headlines. I looked up from the morning newspaper and realized why the television broadcast sounded a little strange. The talking head belonged to Terry Meeuwsen, a pioneer in the now-common practice of former beauty queens becoming spokespersons in right-wing media.

The television station was broadcasting The 700 Club in this early morning time-slot. My hand reached out for the remote control, but then I paused. I had not seen Pat Robertson's program in many years—with the exception of certain choice excerpts featured on the YouTube channel of Right Wing Watch—and I was curious what would pop up next. The program had already caught my attention with its sudden segue from headline news to a hand-wringing statement that the sad state of the world was due to insufficient devotion to the message of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (You can always hear the capital letters.)

I was rewarded with a teaser for a segment on financial success. Not exactly a grabber at the hour of dark o' clock, but no waiting was required. A woman appeared to give her testimony that God had showered her family with success. Her husband appeared, looking a bit chastened, as he admitted that he had initially resisted his wife's God-inspired counsel. He was now, however, a firm believer in the magical power of tithing.

Yes. The happy couple had successfully bribed God with a tenth of their income. In return, God had given them financial security for their retirement. I guess it was supposed to be a miracle. The details, however, were less than fully compelling. They had been struggling to make ends meet when the wife suggested to her husband that they were not meeting their obligation to give the Lord ten percent of all they earned. As the husband admitted, he had argued that it made no sense to try to live on ninety percent of an income that was already marginal, but his wife had argued forcefully that ten percent was God's by right. She smiled for the camera, looking smug.

The husband picked up the story by recounting their first windfall after he and his wife began to send more money to The 700 Club. Their insurance company contacted them to report an error in the computation of their premiums; it had resulted in a significant overcharge and the company was giving them a big refund check. God is great! (He can even create an honest insurance company.)

The next miracle was the husband's promotion at work. His new position and salary brought them a level of income and security they had never experienced before. Good work, Jesus! Also, they could now send even more money to The 700 Club.

A pitchwoman came on camera to exhort viewers to join The 700 Club for only twenty dollars a month—“only sixty-six cents a day!”—and to reassure indigents in the television audience that making a sacrificial offering would be more than offset by God's future blessings. The most important thing was to scrape up some dough and ship it off to Pat Robertson's money-handlers. Amen!

I punched the button on the remote control and the television winked off, sparing me any further nauseating exposure to the conscienceless money-grubbing of Robertson's minions. To be sure, there have been more overt examples of televangelist cupidity (like Robert Tilton or Mike Murdock), but the smooth come-on from The 700 Club is particularly noisome. Given the program's reach, I'm sure they have very little difficulty combing through their correspondence for testimonial letters from folks with strokes of luck that can be conveniently attributed to divine intervention—even in the case of such mundane examples as a promotion at work. I'm certain they ignore the letters and e-mails from those sinking ever deeper into poverty. Or, worse, they reply to those people with faux concern and suggestions that they aren't sending in enough money.

Televangelism is a transparent con, but it still hooks those too blind to see. My brief exposure to The 700 Club reminded me what a disgusting spectacle it is. I had mercifully forgotten just how much.

An angelic experience

Learning on the wing

Like a moth to a flame (or an archangel to a young Jewish virgin), I was drawn irresistibly to the opportunity to attend a faculty training event on the existence of angels. When it first came to my attention, I was initially struck by how inappropriate it seemed as a topic for a professional development activity. While not quite as bad as giving nurses continuing education credit for attending a Catholic indoctrination session, the angel seminar simply seemed irrelevant and beside the point. Where was scholarship in this? What useful lessons might I learn?

The presenter was TM, a young woman who holds a doctorate from the California Institute of Integrated Studies. She is an alumna of the CIIS program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness, but I suspect “cosmology” in this context has very little to do with what science-types consider to be cosmology. That's just a guess, of course. You can visit the program webpage and consider the course content for yourself.

To give credit where it's due, Dr. TM declared in her opening remarks that she did not expect attendees to change their opinion about the existence (or non-existence) of angels as a result of her 90-minute presentation. That demonstrated TM's connection to reality, recognizing that the material she would present lacked the evidentiary weight necessary to persuade non-believers. Among the two dozen attendees were several who nodded their heads in sad acknowledgment that some people just aren't open-minded enough to embrace the reality of God's messengers. Others, like me, sat still, resisting the impulse to roll our eyes. It was prudent of TM to allow for our skeptical presence. We were, however, very well behaved throughout the event.

TM was much enamored of Carl Jung's notion of synchronicity, a concept I have never been able to take seriously. As TM explained, a synchronicity occurs when a strong interior impulse, condition, or sensation is reinforced by an exterior manifestation that generates a transformative moment of understanding. Jung's own favorite example, according to TM, was the appearance of a beetle at the window during a psychotherapy session with a female patient who was telling him about a dream about a golden Egyptian scarab. Since the beetle at the window was the nearest local analog to Egypt's golden scarab, Jung deemed it a synchronicity—an acausal simultaneity between his patient's inner life and the external world. (J. B. S. Haldane might have preferred to regard it as a manifestation of God's inordinate fondness for beetles, having scattered hundreds of thousands of species of beetle throughout the world.)

As TM hastened to explain, “Synchronicities are not just happy coincidences!” In response, one of my neighbors muttered, “No. Synchronicities are happy coincidences which people invest with heavy significance.” Only the closest people heard the riposte, but a couple of us nodded. (I was one of them.)

So, where were angels in all of this? As you might suspect, angels are implicated in synchronicities, especially when they manifest as exterior confirmations (i.e., as if they exist in the physical world) of interior emotions or yearnings. The archetypal example is The Annunciation. TM asked the attendees if anyone recognized this special event. I helpfully raised my hand and offered a description: “That's the event reported in the Bible of the archangel Gabriel appearing to Mary and announcing that she was to bear a son who would be the savior.” TM beamed at me and added some details. First of all, the yearning of the Jews for the coming of their messiah would be manifested in the hopes of young Jewish maidens to become the savior's bearer. Second, it didn't matter whether Mary was pregnant or not when Gabriel made his announcement. Either way, Mary would have a deep interior desire or anticipation that was acausally linked with the archangel's appearance.

TM was particularly interested in the parallels between synchronicities and annunciations. The incident with Mary and Gabriel is the most famous, but angels were also reported to have advised Joseph not to divorce Mary and later to flee to Egypt to avoid Herod's slaughter of the innocents. In her dissertation research, TM made the case that annunciations in religious history (by no means limited to Judeo-Christian sources) were anticipations of Jung's theory of synchronicity and fit well into the Jungian model. Furthermore, the parallels remain even if the angels did not actually exist. (Surprise!) That's because it's not strictly required that the coincidental confirmation of the interior sensation be an actual event in the physical world. The angels could, in fact, be confirmatory figments of the imagination.

At this point, I got to learn something—and by this I do not mean that I learned there's a lot of silliness in this field. After all, who should be surprised that there are parallels between supposedly different forms of delusion? No, in this case I learned a bit of Bible lore that I had not heard before, and which I found interesting and intriguing. According to TM, Gabriel does not appear in the earliest Bible texts. His role is magnified by redactors who found fault with Mary's inner conviction that she was indeed fated to become the mother of the messiah. If this is correct, then Mary's synchronicity was a progression from “I want to bear the messiah” to “I will bear the messiah.” That's pretty thin gruel. Having an archangel with a name showing up to put his stamp of approval on Mary's inner yearning makes the story much more satisfying.

A few of us got fidgety near the end of the event as some of the attendees hastened to offer personal examples of synchronicities. My inner yearning for it all to end was confirmed by the external manifestation of a yawn, but I'm afraid it lacked the acausal quality that would have classified it as a synchronicity.

Teenage sex fiend!

Dear Abby says, “Flee!”

Jeanne Phillips received an urgent query from a distraught teenage girl. What will Dear Abby advise a 14-year-old who discovers that her boyfriend is an addict? In this case, the boy is an addict to ... Internet pornography!

Dear Abby: I have been dating “Kyle” for more than six months, but I have loved him for more than two years. I always thought we had a wonderful relationship and that Kyle was a sweet, innocent guy. Well, he just confided to me that he has an Internet porn addiction! I'm very hurt by this and don't want to lose him. What should I do? (By the way, we're both 14.) —Innocent Teen in Michigan

Dear Innocent Teen: You should urge Kyle to get help for his addiction. Addiction, by definition, is behavior that is compulsive and out of control.

The problem with teenage boys getting involved with Internet porn is it gives them an unrealistic expectation of how regular, normal women look and act. Although you don't want to lose him, becoming more involved could lead to his wanting to try out his sexual fantasies with you—and if you go along with it, it will land you in a world of trouble. The smart thing to do is end this relationship now.

(The emphasis is Abby's own.) Okay, perhaps Dear Abby has more information than we do, but the evidence she provides us is scanty. All we really know is that a 14-year-old girl reports that her 14-year-old boyfriend admitted to being an “addict” to Internet porn. What does that actually mean? Even assuming that Innocent's report is accurate, what did her boyfriend Kyle mean by his confession? What constitutes “addiction”? Does he spend twelve hours a day sitting in front of a computer monitor with his pants down around his ankles? That seems rather unlikely.

We can fairly safely conclude (again, assuming Innocent isn't exaggerating) that her boyfriend confessed to masturbating to on-line images or videos. However, I have heard—and vaguely recall—that masturbation is a common—and damned-near universal—hobby among teenage boys. In fact, Seinfeld would go further, omitting the age qualification: “We have to do it. It's part of our lifestyle.”

Unless Kyle's “addiction” has (shall we say) gotten out of hand, it's really a non-issue. Nevertheless, Dear Abby goes off half-cocked and advised Innocent to drop her boyfriend now. In the absence of more substantive information, this is clearly an example of premature consultation.

Demon sheep haunt Romney

The ghost of Fiorina past

Marty Wilson was a strategist for Carly Fiorina's ill-fated attempt to oust Barbara Boxer from the U.S. Senate in 2010. He was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle by staff writer Joe Garofoli in an article on the current presidential race. Wilson is concerned that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is about to run afoul of the same problem that dogged Fiorina's candidacy:

“You've got to adequately answer the questions that voters may have about your business record,” said Marty Wilson, a chief strategist for Fiorina's campaign. “We didn't have the resources to do that, and the Boxer campaign did a good job of exploiting that.”

That can be a problem when your corporate career consisted of raising profits by stripping companies of assets and firing employees. It also doesn't help when a tin-eared Romney tells voters that “corporations are people” and “I just like being able to fire people.” (Make all the arguments you like about context, Mitt, but producing sound-bites like that suggests you lack a certain self-awareness.)

Reporter Garofoli's choice of Fiorina as a cautionary example for Romney is a good one in most ways. Her supposed business acumen did not recommend itself to a California electorate hoping for better economic times. Instead Fiorina was viewed as the modern incarnation of the robber baron—someone who reaps benefits for herself and her associates, but at the expense of the poor wage earners—many of whom no longer earned wages after she got through with them. It also helped that Fiorina made stupid campaign decisions while Boxer did not. Fiorina approved the ridiculous “demon sheep” political spots that drew mocking reactions during the primary campaign. In some respects, Fiorina never recovered from that initial appearance of goofiness.

I do, however, take issue with one of the points stressed by Garofoli in his article:

Boxer, a three-term incumbent who at one time held a 9-1 edge in fundraising, got TV commercials on the air early enough to define Fiorina as an out-of-touch CEO and defeated her by 10 percentage points.

That makes it sound entirely too much as if Fiorina was swept away in a tsunami of Democratic campaign cash. Garofoli's one-point datum misses the big picture. In aggregate, Boxer spent $28 million and Fiorina spent $22.6 million. Even if you subtract the $5.5 million that Fiorina spent in the contested Republican primary (while Boxer won renomination without real opposition), the net tally is still only $28 million to $17.1 million. That's a lot closer to 5 to 3 than 9 to 1. It also doesn't take into account Fiorina's big edge in “independent” money, which involved millions of dollars of GOP campaign funds spent on TV ads attacking Sen. Boxer.

The bottom line—as business-types would say—is that Fiorina was a lackluster product in the political market. When Romney looks in the mirror, he might see Fiorina looking back at him, demon eyes and all.

Religion is bliss

Because of the ignorance thing

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. (Gen. 3:7)

It must help to lack self-awareness. Surely self-awareness is a trait that would severely handicap the helpful god-botherers who manage to peer past the beams in their eyes while seeking motes in their neighbors'. A perfect example of this blinkered perspective showed up in an anti-abortion flier that came into my possession. It contained an account of its diligent distributor's efforts to paper high school and college campuses with her “pro-life” literature. It also contained an example of her poetry. Her rhyming isn't particularly bad (of course it rhymes; poetry has to rhyme!) and the message isn't especially insipid for a composition of this kind. Not especially. No, just the usual level of insipidity: an anti-Obama rant that equates him to a “king.” This is nothing more than your typical modern-day right-wing hand-wringing.

But read to the end. That's where the pay-off is:

HUMPTY OBAMA

Humpty Obama sat on a wall;
Humpty Obama had a great fall;
All the “king's” media and all the “king's” men
Can't put Obama together again.

Polls in the thirties predict his demise;
People now see through the maze of his lies;
All broken promises—Obama's schemes
Fell on a people to shatter their dreams.

God will be with us to keep us from fear:
Let's look at a hero of yesteryear!
Washington crossing the Delaware—
Hope to a people in dark despair.

Crossing the Delaware of broken schemes,
Someone will rescue our broken dreams;
Humpty Obama in November will lose;
Out by a people with power to choose.

Read that last line again. The anti-abortion activist is singing the praises of people having the “power to choose.”

I swear. No self-awareness at all.

A seraphic school seminar

Guardian angel

John Vasconcellos was a well-known figure around the State Capitol. A big teddy bear of a man, his rumpled figure had all the debonair flair of an unmade bed. He briefly achieved national fame when his “self-esteem” initiative drew mocking attention from the Doonesbury comic strip. John himself, however, was unfazed, even if his more substantive contributions to the state of California passed unremarked.

Anyone who serves in a California community college tends to associate the name of John Vasconcellos with his landmark education reform bill, AB 1725, which in 1988 rewrote the sections of the state education code dealing with our schools. One legacy of that legislation is a greater emphasis on professional development for faculty members. On most community college campuses, professional development opportunities are embodied in various seminars and training programs, especially on “flex days” when faculty assemble in the absence of students to rack up their required hours. The flex days, how ever many there are, are ordinarily scheduled at the beginning of each semester. We hear talks, participate in meetings, attend panel discussions, enroll in training sessions, or watch subject-specific demonstrations.

Some flex sessions are great. Most are okay. A few have been dreadful enough to be entertaining. (I recall one in which a colleague quipped—but was it a quip?—that he was thinking of killing himself and several people in the room offered to help. Now that is supportive!) In other words, flex is like any other activity, with its ups and downs, successes and failures. In general, though, we all give it the good old college try and make the most of it.

However, sometimes you run into professional development opportunities that strain credulity just a teensy-tiny little bit. In looking at the flex program books posted on various California community college websites, I have encountered seminars that strike me as, well, odd. Do teachers really need an introduction to “qigong breathing techniques”? I suppose it could be lumped in with those other activities involving movement and health activities, although yoga and various stretching routines seem to be more popular options. No doubt the “Happy Fanny” workshop announced at one school is one of those feel-good PE-type sessions—especially with that Middle Eastern dance component.

But qigong and fannies cannot compete with my favorite among all of the spring sessions I perused. The angel seminar wins it going away:

An Inquiry into the Existence of Angels

There are many who claim that any lingering belief in angels is merely the residue of imaginary wishful thinking. There are others who hold that angels (wings, halos, harps) literally exist. How is one to reconcile such contradictory beliefs? In this session, you will discover how C.G. Jung’s theory of synchronicity provides a vehicle for the exploration and possible reconciliation of this question. Rather than echoing the skeptic who says angels cannot exist or the religious enthusiast who affirms their immanence, this study asserts that by expanding our understanding of both synchronicity and angels, we might be able to resolve the conflict.

It may well be that you are having an uncharitable reaction to the description of this 90-minute program, indicating that you are one of those anti-angel skeptics. If so, how close-minded of you! Are you not open to the possibility of a synchronicitic reconciliation of (A) angels don't exist and (B) sure they do! (Synthesis: Angels maybe exist!)

I confess that I am one of those cynics who has been known to remark that a good course in probability is the best cure for folks who cannot stop seeing significance in random occurrences and coincidences. Still, I must admit that it behooves one to examine carefully the credentials of the seminar leader. Perhaps there might be some substance here:

The faciliator earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy and Religion from the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at California Institute for Integral Studies.

Whoa! “Cosmology”? (Of course, angels are indeed reputed to hang out in the heavens.) What exactly is this peculiar doctoral program? Here's the on-line description:

Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness (PCC) graduate programs in San Francisco are dedicated to re-imagining the human species as a mutually enhancing member of the Earth community.

They attract intellectually engaged individuals who are in varying degrees dismayed by what they see happening in industrial societies and who are striving to find meaningful ways to develop their gifts to serve the future of the world.

We support those called to meet the Earth community's unprecedented evolutionary challenge by offering students a challenging and supportive learning community in which to find their voice and vision as leaders.

Please return to the links on the upper left of the screen to explore the PCC mission, faculty, curriculum (including our Integral Ecology track), current students, alumni and community, as well as how to apply to the program.

Okay! That's clear enough, isn't it? Well, I don't know about you, but my doubts are completely assuaged. Perhaps I should write the angel-seminar school and suggest a topic for a follow-up seminar next year. I hear that business about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin is still outstanding.

Broken engagement

Pining after the “old” atheists

The National Catholic Register is a century-old newspaper that was recently acquired by the Eternal Word Broadcasting Network (EWTN): “The acquisition of the Register is the latest in EWTN's efforts to expand its news presence in the global Catholic digital and multimedia market.” As a result, EWTN Radio has added Register Radio to its broadcast schedule, a weekly program hosted by Thom Price and Tim Drake. On January 6, 2012, Register Radio featured the observations of Father Robert Barron on its “Media Watch” segment, wherein mass media treatment of the Roman Catholic Church is examined (and usually found wanting).

Father Barron and his hosts focused their particular disdain on an editorial column penned by New York Times executive editor Bill Keller. Back in August of last year, Keller considered the religious beliefs of the Republican presidential candidates. His words did not please the Register Radio commentators:

Tim Drake: In this August 25 editorial—it was titled “Asking Candidates Tougher Questions About Faith”— New York Times executive editor Bill Keller scrutinized the religious beliefs of the different GOP presidential candidates and he touched on Mormonism, evangelical Christianity, and Catholicism. And in the editorial he likened Catholics' belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist to belief in aliens. He wrote, “If a candidate for president said he believed that space aliens dwell among us, would that affect your willingness to vote for him?” And he later wrote, “Every faith has its baggage, and every faith holds beliefs that will seem bizarre to outsiders. I grew up believing that a priest could turn a bread wafer into the actual flesh of Christ.” And so we thought we would bring on Father Robert Barron with us today to kind of tackle this. Father Barron heads up the “Word on Fire” ministry of the archdiocese of Chicago and is also the creative director behind the new “Catholicism” series, which will be airing on PBS starting September 22. So, Father Barron, thanks for being with us.

Father Barron: Gentlemen, good morning. Thanks for having me on this morning.

Tim Drake: So, first of all, Fr. Barron, what was your reaction to Keller's comments, specifically his description of the Catholic belief in the real presence as baggage?

Father Barron: Yeah, well, it was sadly typical, as you were saying, not just of the New York Times but a lot of the mainstream media. Something I've noticed—you know, I've been following media for a long time—and there's this extraordinary uptick after September 11, I would argue, in anti-religious rhetoric, a tendency to mock religion rather than seriously engage it. I mean, go back to the early twentieth century, and you have the great atheists like Sartre and Camus and company. Well, they engaged religion seriously. They knew they were up against a serious opponent and they disbelieved in God and they didn't like the Church particularly, but they didn't mock it. But now you see after September 11, and the rise of the Hitchens and Dawkins and Bill Mahers and Sam Harrises, you find a shift in tactics. Not even an attempt to understand what the Church means by its teaching, but simply to mock it in the most sort of juvenile way. Sadly, you see it in all the comment boxes and all that on the Internet. People have taken their cues from Hitchens and Dawkins and company and they just sort of dismiss religion with the back of the hand. It's really sad that it's come into, you know, much of the leading mainstream media in the same way. So I'm not really surprised by it. I see it all the time. But it's still, you know, dispiriting and discouraging.

Tim Drake: Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I had never thought, you know, of the sort of the treatment of religion pre-9/11 and post-9/11, but with the rise of the “new atheists” it almost seems like we need a “new apologetics” to kind of respond, don't we?

Father Barron: Absolutely, and I think—I've been thinking about it for a long time—there is a clear watershed at September 11, because what it did, it stirred up in the minds of a lot of people that old Enlightenment Era critique, namely, religion is irrational, therefore it's violent. You go back to Kant and to Schleiermacher and to Spinoza and the leading philosophers of the Enlightenment, that was exactly the argument. Religion is irrational. Therefore you can't really have an argument about it, all you can do is fight about it, which is why religious people tend toward violence. And that old argument from the eighteenth century was stirred up after September 11. People say, well, look, there's these irrational—therefore violent—religious people knocking down the World Trade Center. All religion is like that, you know. So I saw a revival of that. And that's why I think it's no accident that Hitchens and company emerged so strongly after September 11. The difference, of course, is you want people who'll be willing to engage religion seriously, to try to find out what serious religious people actually mean when they use language like, a wafer of bread is transubstantiated into the body of Jesus.

What serious religious people believe about transubstantiation? Why does Fr. Barron think anyone, in the media or otherwise, is puzzled by that? “Serious” Catholics believe that magic happens. It's no big mystery what they believe because the Church doctrine of transubstantiation is very clear: the wafer of bread truly, really, literally becomes the genuine, actual flesh of Jesus Christ himself—except without changing any of its physical aspects. The bread retains its previous appearance, form, and tastelessness. In brief: a miracle without evidence. As I said: magic. And, lacking the least particle of physical evidence, it must be taken entirely on faith. If you're not a believing Catholic, then it's just so much superstitious baggage—to borrow an apt term from Keller.

Father Barron: But I find that there's just an unwillingness on the part of much of the mainstream media even to understand what we mean. It's simply a back-of-the-hand dismissal. That's a problem. And then to your point: Yes, indeed, we need a new apologetics. When I was coming of age, apologetics had a bad flavor. You know, it was seen to be defensive, and it was non-ecumenical, and it was Tridentine and all this, but, you know, what's happened is my generation—I'm fifty—my generation ran out to meet the culture. The culture's good, embrace the culture. Well, I mean, now a large part of the culture has turned against us, with hostility. And so there we are, without any weapons. And so I think, yes, indeed we have to recover the intellectual tradition of Catholicism, which is very strong, and will enable us to meet some of these attacks.

Tim Drake: Yeah, it certainly seems as if the Catholic Church does not receive the same degree of respect that other faith traditions receive. And don't you think that much of that hostility and hatred that is directed at the Church comes from the fact that the Church is one of the only institutions that kind of actually stands for something.

Father Barron: Yeah, Oh, quite right. In some ways it's a back-handed compliment that we get so much attention, you know, so much opprobrium, it's because we're the biggest kid around and, as you say, we actually stand for something. So it is a back-handed compliment that we're still seen as a threat. And it's something I find fascinating, to go back to what I said a few minutes ago, from the Enlightenment on, who is perceived as the great enemy of modernity but the Catholic Church? And so you've seen a revival of that argument. Now as with Vatican II, there were elements of modernity that we can and should reach out to, we should try to engage the modern culture as much as we can, but there are elements of the modern culture that are antipathetic to our program. And it's wrong for us simply to, you know, embrace it all in an uncritical spirit. They've recognized in us an opposition. Okay, good. I'm glad. We are opposed to modernity. In some ways. I think one of the primary ways is modernity loves the mythology of self-creation, you know, that we make ourselves by sovereign acts of the free will. That's a great modern myth: Here I am, an individual with rights, privileges, responsibilities, and I can even create the meaning of my own life. Well, I'm glad the Catholic Church stands against that and I'm furthermore glad that the modern culture recognizes that. They know that we're the enemy of that view. I think we should boldly enter the lists and say, yeah, let's get it on. Let's have a good argument about this.

Fr. Barron fails to recognize that the “ good argument” actually began a long time ago and has been going against his side. His attack on “modernism” is an instructive echo of the Church's long and losing struggle against humanity's slow progress toward rationality. In the Church's formulation, “modernism” is a heresy, much abhorred by popes. Barron joins them in condemning the notion that the meaning in one's life can come from one's own conscious will. In Barron's world, the Church is in charge of doling out meaning. If you don't like it, that's just too bad. Amen?

I don't think so.

Wherein I fail

The Impostor Fantasy

My friends and acquaintances are very helpful in keeping my ego in check. They are ever ready to assure me, especially recently, that I am no good at false modesty. As someone who strives to excel in every endeavor he undertakes, it is understandably greatly disappointing that my self-deprecations are so unsuccessful. For some reason, friends and family do not accept my frank admission that I am a dilettante and poseur. It is a puzzlement. I ponder wearily how to remedy the situation, but inspiration fails me. I confess that I do not know what to do.

I felt like a fraud.
So I learned to fly an airplane.

When did this all begin? I am not certain. Perhaps the most recent spate of failures began when I told some friends I had stumbled into writing a novel. It was a purgative event, rendering the pent-up demons of old family feuds into a fictional form, exorcising ancient controversies by reducing them to narrative form. Much-told tales had been written down where others could see them and smile. Tragedy had been tamed into a tragi-comic story, which I shared with several friends.

At 50,000 feet I thought:
“A fraud is flying an airplane.”

I explained to people that I wasn't “really” a novelist—just someone who had written a novel-length manuscript. After all, I'm just a math teacher and not a littérateur. People scoffed. One particularly sly friend pointed out that using a word like “littérateur” was a dead giveaway. Clearly I fancied myself an author. In response, I confessed that I was an author: an author in the field of expository mathematics, with contributions enshrined in a number of texts and supplements and magazines—and a couple of writing awards to my credit—but not really a fiction writer.

So I crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat.
I docked at Cherbourg and thought: “A fraud has crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat.”

This was deemed evasive. Did I not intend to seek a publisher for my quasi-memoir? I confessed that I was interested in shopping it around. The first readers had been extravagant in their praise (of course, they were friends), raising my expectations and causing me to dare to think the story had commercial prospects. I had even sought an agent. This was, clearly, proof positive that I was now a fiction writer—and my biggest fiction was my pose that I was not.

So I took a space shot to the moon.
On the trip home I thought: “A fraud has circled the moon.”

I failed at finding an agent interested in my manuscript, but instead I found a university press that was eager to look at it. Several months passed while their reviewers read it, but eventually my novel was accepted for publication. When I met the professor who was the editor-in-chief, I ever-so-modestly mentioned that it was an extraordinary stroke of good fortune for a non-novelist—a math-teaching non-writer—like me to get his manuscript accepted. The good professor scoffed at my characterization: “You wrote a novel. It's being published. You are, by definition, a novelist. In fact, you should be thinking about future writing projects.”

I had to grin. A professor of foreign languages was lecturing a professor of mathematics about what is true “by definition.” He had me there.

So I took a full page ad in the newspaper and confessed to the world that I was a fraud!

One of my colleagues dimpled when I recounted my recent failures at modesty. “Oh, Zee,” she said. “Don't you know about ‘fishing for compliments’? You're just trying to get people to tell you how wonderful you are.” I would, of course, have denounced this vile calumny, but it seemed to hit pretty close to home. Yes, perhaps I protest just a little too much. If I'm really anxious about being a dilettante in foreign fields of endeavor (and risking embarrassing pratfalls), wouldn't it make more sense to stop drawing attention to it? If only I were a naturally taciturn person—

I read the ad and I thought: “A fraud is pretending to be honest.”

During the late seventies, I had a Jules Feiffer cartoon posted in my graduate student office. The “impostor fantasy” amused me greatly, as well as speaking to deep-seated fears. Naturally I was reminded of it and was pleasantly surprised to discover it still resided in my decades-old files. It gave me renewed inspiration:

I felt like a fraud, so I wrote a blog post...

Dumping on Fresno

Trashing your allies

Like anyone else, the stars of entertainment and news media want to go on vacation during the holidays. Thus the interval comprising Christmas and New Year's is chock-full of opportunities for the B team. Wingnut radio is no exception. On Saturday, December 31, the semi-sane Barbara Simpson (“The Babe in the Bunker”) was missing from her KSFO talk program. In her place was the fully certifiable Mark Williams, reliving the glory days when he used to have a radio program of his own.

During the 4 o'clock hour, Williams lit into John Boehner, the one-term Speaker of the House. He was wroth that Boehner had been so ineffective a leader in congress and condemned the speaker as complicit in the political machinations of the Obama administration. While floundering around for a metaphor sufficiently negative to exemplify his disdain for Washington politicians, Williams picked a peculiar target:

You know, the government's acting like they're from Fresno, you know, meth-heads. They're acting like they've got teeth made out of Styrofoam, like you lived in Fresno or something.

Fresno? Williams homes in on Fresno, the epicenter of California's bright-red Central Valley. The home of raisins and Freepers and Republican votes is the most contemptible example that Williams can conjure up. Talk about clueless. Talk about slapping your own allies up alongside the head.

Nice work, if you can get it. No wonder he no longer gets it very often.

Victoria Jackson is not crazy

Not when you grade her on the (extreme) right curve

Depending on your scale of measurement, your conclusions can vary dramatically. For example, suppose you're trying to evaluate the sanity of Victoria Jackson, the Saturday Night Live alumna who has found a new life—if not happiness—as a right-wing pundit. Do you measure her against an absolute scale or a relative one? She comes out a lot better if you gauge her against the fringe-centered standards of Free Republic.

Recently Jackson announced that the Islamic group known as the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated “the highest levels” of government in Washington, D.C., including the White House! When Jackson's claim was posted at Free Republic, the first commenter said, ”I'm inclined to agree with her.”

A dissenter weighed in with a cautionary note: “Umm, don't we usually dismiss the pronunciamentos from Hollywood airheads out of hand?”

He was promptly denounced for his use of a foreign word.

Another Freeper chivalrously leaped to Jackson's defense: “She played an airhead of SNL but she isn’t one in real life.”

Perhaps he has not seen her current act. The crazy seeps right out of the video.

Toons ahead of their time

Rocky & Bullwinkle & birthers

The longest running plot in the original Rocky & His Friends cartoon show was the 40-episode “Jet Fuel Formula” series, which involved a quest to find a mooseberry bush (to obtain the vital ingredient for rocket fuel). With the bush in hand, Rocky and his sidekick Bullwinkle face a dilemma. The moon men Gidney and Cloyd have helped the heroes obtain the mooseberries, which the lunar natives need to fuel their craft if they are ever to return home. Rocky and Bullwinkle, however, are agents of the U.S. government. The bush is supposed to go to Washington, D.C., and not to the moon men.

As the brains of the duo, it falls to Rocket J. Squirrel to come up with a clever plan: Since the U.S. government was itself planning to use the mooseberries to power a moon rocket, Gidney and Cloyd need only offer themselves as Americans willing to volunteer for the mission. A complication, however, arises in the form of Senator Fusmussen, chair of the Senate Citizenship Committee, who has introduced troublesome legislation:

Reporter: Just what does your new bill mean, Senator?
Sen. Fusmussen: Well, you see, right now it's entirely too easy to become an American. This bill's going to make it tougher.
Reporter: What do you mean, it's too easy?
Sen. Fusmussen: Well, all you got to do is be born here. This large loophole has got to be plugged up! Too many people are claiming to be Americans. Alaskans! Hawaiians! Californians! It's disgraceful!

What? Hawaiians and even Alaskans are claiming citizenship? Outrageous! Sen. Fusmussen's bill may already be too little, too late!

There is, inevitably, a happy ending. Gidney and Cloyd fail their citizenship exam and get deported—to the moon.

The conclusion of the “Jet Fuel Formula” epic was broadcast in 1960. Was it a prescient anticipation of today's absurdly hollow controversy over how one qualifies as a “natural-born citizen,” or simply an echo of previous instances of overwrought nativism? Perhaps it's both.

There was an enjoyable grace note to the happy return of Gidney and Cloyd to their homeland. Sen. Fusmussen, present at their deportation, accidentally gets launched with them. President Obama could take a lesson from this and should consider a renewed program of lunar missions. I have suggestions for some people we should shoot into space.

Orly? Your ticket is waiting.

Adroit gaucherie

A left-handed backhand tribute

David Berlinski has brilliantly resolved the sovereign conundrum of his existence: How can he remain modest while being the smartest member of an anti-intellectual cult? His elegant solution is to not even try. Another effortless triumph!

He again puts his sumptuous vocabulary and self-conscious prose on display as he preeningly pretends to celebrate the life of the late Christopher Hitchens. While Hitchens was a master of the finely honed, sharp-edged phrase, Berlinski prefers to poke about with a dull-tipped poniard. The jewels on his stiletto's hilt are of more interest to him than the blunt tip's inability to make a point. Watch as he uses his supposed tribute to Hitchens as a vehicle for self-aggrandizement, attempting to clamber up to Hitchens' level and stand by his side as a co-equal polemicist. It is an intriguing spectacle. Some excerpts:

Christopher Hitchens's reputation rests on his literary works, his panache as a public speaker, and on his defiant atheism. He wrote on a very wide range of subjects, and his book reviews were often very fine. He liked to praise the writers and poets he loved: Oscar Wilde, Vladimir Nabokov, Evelyn Waugh, W.H. Auden, Wilfred Owen, James Fenton, many others. He read closely and he read well. As an essayist, Christopher Hitchens is often compared to George Orwell. The comparison is careless, and it is one that in his final interview with Richard Dawkins, he rejected. Hitchens wrote fluently, Orwell, unforgettably. The difference is very considerable, but it is not to Hitchens's discredit. No man is obliged to be what he might have been.

Poor Hitch. He was no more than he was, but that's not his fault. Berlinski understands, and sympathizes. (As well he should.)

Hitchens was an engaging public speaker, and he had the gift of gracefully holding an audience. His intimate interviews were often wonderful because invariably, he was more elegant and far more articulate than his interlocutors. When faced with a rhetorical bruiser like George Galloway, his natural register failed him, and he did not have the dexterity to secure by means of an ironical divagation what he was otherwise unable to secure by matching bruise to bruise.

Poor Hitch. He was better at fencing than at crotch-kicking. (Really? Perhaps Berlinski overlooked Hitchens' well-known stone-crushing skills. Or maybe David wisely kept his knees clasped tightly together during his debate with Christopher.)

With the publication of God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens reached a mass audience. He became celebrated. When he discovered how well he had been received by the public, he tended to regard his own religious beliefs with the indulgence of a man who on discovering that he has been lucky in attracting admirers very naturally concludes that he has been justified in attracting them.

Poor Hitch. He mistakenly thought he deserved the attention he got. Berlinski desperately wants to know how he got that attention and would sell his soul to achieve the same level of recognition. (Perhaps he already has. The house intellectual of the Discovery Institute has a lot to answer for.)

His atheism nonetheless had a kind of shambling boisterousness that made Christopher Hitchens seem a Mirabeau to Richard Dawkins's Saint Just [sic] or Sam Harris's Robespierre.

Poor Hitch. Did he never suspect that he was playing a part in a zany recapitulation of the French Revolution? (By the way, David, the name of Louis Antoine de Saint-Just is usually rendered with a hyphen. Not, of course, that this significantly detracts from your light-shedding simile. Pas du tout!)

Hitchens was uninterested in subtle analysis. On the masthead of the Daily Hitchens, there is the legend: What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. The difficulty with this assertion is straightforward. If it has been asserted without proof, why should it be believed, and if not, where is the proof?

I asked Hitchens about this during a break in our debate. We had retreated to a forlorn hotel loading ramp in order to have a cigarette. “Well, yes,” he said, “it's just a sentence.”

Oh, that Hitchens! Such a sly boots, and yet hoist by his own petard when caught making a statement without proof about statements without proof. Sneaky, clever Berlinski, to catch him out like that! It was also wise of Berlinski, who routinely plays the part of a math expert, to refrain from making the obvious point that every theoretical discussion must begin with unproven axioms at its foundation. Ceding this point to Hitchens would have deflated Berlinski's elegant gotcha. How unfortunate that Hitchens neglected to cringe in humiliation at Berlinski's sly riposte.

Christopher Hitchens found objectionable the very idea of a source of authority, and so of power, greater than his own. This has seemed to some of his readers all of the time, and all of his readers some of the time, both defiant and uplifting. The very same idea is at work in the terrible crimes of the twentieth century. It is inseparable from them.

I hasten to point out that Berlinski is not running afoul of Godwin's law here. Our elegant elegist deftly ducked this faux pas by not elucidating the nature of the twentieth century's terrible crimes. Hitler is only implied. We all understand perfectly well that Hitchens would never have supported Hitler—that is, of course, if he had only possessed the wit to realize that “the very same idea” of disdaining an ultimate authority is “inseparable” from campaigns of mass murder.

At least, that's one way to read Berlinski's prolix paragraph. Antecedents are difficult to pin down. (Does “the very same idea” refer to “the very idea of a source of authority” or the notion that this source itself was “objectionable”?) One of the glories of his prose is that the author will be on a firm footing if he objects to this characterization on the grounds that the sentences are ambiguous and subject to many (and divergent) interpretations.

Christopher Hitchens chose to greet death publicly. Had he thought of it, he might well have invited an orchestra. We signed books together after our appearance in Birmingham, and to admirers on his very long line inquiring after his health, Hitchens replied that he was dying. It was a response that inevitably took his interlocutor aback, the more so since it was true. I followed his interviews and read his essays about cancer and death. I found them moving. But they do not evoke the man.

And neither does Berlinski's supposed encomium.

God's utilitarians

The meanies justify their ends

Someone had been busy. Each car in the parking lot had its own copy of an anonymous flier. I pulled the document out from under the windshield wiper. Large letters said “A B C.” Upon closer inspection, the fine print delivered the message:

Abortion = Breast Cancer

The flier was a simple one-fold document, the interior of which went on to explain breathlessly that “post-abortive” women were at severe risk of breast cancer. A woman's body, you see, goes slightly crazy when frustrated in its divine mission to bear young and unfulfilled hormones wreak havoc in the mammaries. Hence the battle by “pro-life” forces against abortion is also a battle to save women from horrible and disfiguring disease—and even death.

It's science, people. You have to believe in science. (Except, of course, when those same crazy-ass scientists go on about evolution, global warming, or that nonsense about a billions-year-old earth.)

The so-called ABC connection between abortion and breast cancer is a favorite talking point of the anti-abortion activists. It is routinely cited on Catholic Radio and fliers like the one I found on my car keep insisting that the link is established beyond any reasonable doubt. They like to give numbers, too, such as “28 studies reveal increased risk.” The cherry-picked reports, however, include results deemed not significant (in the statistical sense) and no hint is given that the preponderance of the evidence goes in the opposite direction. As the National Cancer Institute puts it, in the affectless diction of a neutral science-based agency, initial research in the area was ambiguous, based on small sample sizes, and produced inconsistent results:

Since then, better-designed studies have been conducted. These newer studies examined large numbers of women, collected data before breast cancer was found, and gathered medical history information from medical records rather than simply from self-reports, thereby generating more reliable findings. The newer studies consistently showed no association between induced and spontaneous abortions and breast cancer risk.

That is the consensus of modern medical science, but the pro-lifers still cling to the handful of early studies that went their way.

I always find it irksome when some wrong-headed group tries to co-opt science in support of its non-scientific objective. Creation “science,” of course, is a prime example of the perversion of science in the service of sectarian interests. I have, however, a particular disdain for the sheer opportunism exhibited by people like the ABC proponents. Contrary to their supposedly deep-held principles, they are fully prepared to embrace the notion that the ends justify the means. It's a pragmatic utilitarianism that I suspect most of them would instantly disavow, but here's another place where the evidence goes against them.

For example, anti-abortionists emphasize that terminating a pregnancy is the killing of human life. Many of them are willing to call it murder and express the wish that health professionals who perform abortions be tried in courts of law under homicide statutes (and then, somewhat inconsistently, some anti-abortionists want them subjected to capital punishment after conviction). It is, therefore, a great moral crusade against a heinous crime that society at large has so far been blind enough to permit.

Doesn't it severely undermine the moralistic argument to append a health warning? “Oh, and don't forget that you'll get breast cancer if you do it!” The ABC issue is irrelevant to the faith-based moral argument. Its inclusion is nothing more than a concession to pragmatic realpolitik. Yet I never hear apologists on religious programs concede that point. They toss in the ABC argument as if it's equal in status to their abortion-is-murder claim. The disproportion should be dizzying to the conscious brain, but it appears that this does not bother most anti-abortionists. (In fact, not any that I've ever seen.)

Down on your knees!

My recollection of the ABC flier was prompted by a recent e-mail that I discovered in my spam folder. The nice loons at Newsmax Health (as distinguished from the loons that infest all the rest of Newsmax) wanted me to be aware of the health benefits of prayer. No, not the long-discredited notion that intercessory prayers could speed one's healing. This message was about the benefits to oneself. Prayer, by golly, is good for you!

1. Can modern science explain prayer?
2. Does praying strengthen your brain and prevent mental decline?
3. What benefits, if any, does prayer offer you — physically, mentally, and emotionally?

That's a pretty good teaser. I'm sure you're as excited as I was at the prospect of learning the answers to these weighty questions. A free video (28 boring monotone minutes) is available to tell you amazing facts:

• How a specific amount of “prayer time” per day can help prevent memory loss, mental decline, and even dementia or Alzheimer's . . .
• The #1 prayer pitfall that can actually make you sick if you're not careful (this is one of the most important bits of wisdom you'll ever gain) . . .
• 47 scientifically proven benefits of prayer, including pain relief, reduced risk of death from heart attack or stroke, lessened anxiety or depression, and more . . .
• And much, much more . . .

Want the details? Newsmax Health will send you two free copies of its Mind Health Report! (And more, if you subscribe for only $36 for twelve monthly issues. You knew we'd get there eventually.)

Of course, this is science. (Remember “science”?) The founder of “neurotheology” is a real scientist (well, an M.D., anyway) at a real medical research center (well, an “integrative medicine” center, anyway). As a totally careful scientist and researcher (and stuff like that), the researcher began with a formal definition of the phenomenon being studied. Namely, what is prayer? I wasn't surprised by the research paper involving the rosary. That's pretty traditional and old school. But there's a much broader non-sectarian approach to what is called “prayer.” Here's the definition from the beginning (at 4:41) of the tedious video!

So, for the purposes of our research, we defined “praying” as any mental activity that includes

• traditional prayer practiced by people of religious faith
• meditation, or contemplative reflection on a power greater than oneself, which can be God, the Universe, or all Life
• focused positive thinking, such as speaking affirmations
• attending a church or synagogue service

How's that for a tight focus? When you bundle it all up, it amounts to meditation of some kind. Period. (Even in a church or synagogue, which were specifically cited. But not, apparently, in a pagoda or mosque.) The results, of course, merely indicate that quiet contemplation is good for you. It says nothing about the efficacy of prayer qua prayer. Newsmax is trying to sucker its conventionally religious readers into ponying up some cash to wallow in “scientific” validation of their prayer practices. We should “pray” because it's good for us—not because it works in any conventional way as a nice chat with one's deity.

Nice work, Newsmax!

I know that I could dig out my credit card and send Newsmax Health some money right now for a subscription to what I'm sure would be a rich and reliable vein of unintentional humor. However, I really think I should pray about it first. Or, as I prefer to call it, a “nap.”

Solving for the X in Xmas

A high holiday potpourri

Christmas has been a little simpler in the years since I announced that I didn't want any more gifts and that I wouldn't be giving any gifts except to the youngsters. Of course, some of those youngsters now have youngsters of their own, but even adult nieces and nephews still qualify for gifts from Uncle Zee. And they're not picky, bless 'em. (As one niece commented upon receiving a gift card good at one of her favorite stores: “Oh, it's just my size! A perfect fit.” That's the spirit.

My goddaughter's eldest boy was transported with delight to discover that I had found a two-axle baler to add to his farm-toy collection. He spent most of his time at his great-grandparents' on the floor, harvesting the rug. (It was, fortunately, only “pretend.”) In case you didn't know, two-axle balers are more stable than the old-fashioned single-axle version, are less subject to jamming, and produce bales more efficiently. It doesn't take much to get the seven-year-old to deliver an extemporaneous lecture on farm management, which is how I obtained the immediately preceding information. (My brother had better make certain the family farm survives until his grandson can take the helm. That boy will be ready.) The matching toy tractor was just the icing on the cake. Uncle Zee is officially a hero.

Other, less inspired gifts were received with proportionate expressions of delight and gratitude. My goddaughter gave me a framed photograph of her family, a present which certainly gets a grateful exemption from my gift ban. My parents, who cannot help but give gifts to all and sundry (no matter what we say), presented me with a sports coat. It's an important life lesson to learn that one's parents cannot be controlled, so I offered thanks and tried it on. It fit rather snugly, so I quipped to my mother that she should break her long-standing habit of shopping for me among the “slim fit” racks. It'll work better after I drop another five or ten pounds. (Any day now, of course.)

It was a good thing my parents had warned me at Thanksgiving that the gigantic pine tree in their front yard was coming down. That spared me the disorienting experience of not spotting a lifelong landmark from miles away as I approached the family dairy farm. Dad joked that I would have been likely to drive right past the place had I not been forewarned. Either that, or I might have run off the road while trying and failing to spot the towering conical form on the horizon.

How red was my valley

Anyway, I was already sufficiently disoriented at the end of the first leg of my day-trip. The sights of California's Central Valley and the sounds of the local AM radio stations are sufficiently discombobulating to require no additional shocks to my mental stability. I'm no longer inured to it, as I was in the days when I lived down there. (In my youth one of the regional radio stations sported the call letters KLAN, mindless of the unsavory associations.) The middle stretch of Highway 99 is decorated with signs denouncing water shortages as “Congress created” (drought and increasing consumption are irrelevant) and still singling out Pelosi, Costa, and Boxer for particular blame (despite the fact that all three members of Congress ran successfully for re-election over a year ago). They're reminiscent of the older signs that said, “Adios, Babbitt, Clinton,” with a similar lack of impact. How the Central Valley votes, so votes the state—in the opposite direction.

There used to be an anti-United Nations sign in Tulare County that said, “Get US out of the UN!” I kind of miss it. It used to be right next to an “Impeach Earl Warren!” sign.

I think the Central Valley counties would secede if they could. If the rest of the state let them go, initiatives like the contentious Proposition 8 would never pass. Of course, I would probably end up having to show my papers at the border every time I headed south to visit family. (And there's a fair chance I would not be allowed in.)

The FM radio dial offered an occasional oasis of public radio stations, but those were generally offering public affairs or news programming instead of classical music. The other FM stations were devoted to oldies or country-western (or country-western oldies). The AM dial was replete with right-wing talk, more country-western, and religious programming. Surfing the AM band brought me such delights as a psychic explaining that Ron Paul would be next year's front-runner for the GOP nomination for president. I noted that she was careful enough not to say he would get the nomination, making it easier for her to explain it away when the Republican Party apparatchiks deliver it to Romney. On the other hand, she also said the 2012 presidential election campaign would be a low-energy and relatively gentlemanly matter, so clearly we can dismiss her out of hand.

Your holy host

Naturally I was disappointed to discover via one station's house ad that I was too late to hear the daily dairy report. That airs at 5:00 each morning. However, my ears pricked up when Jesus Christ came on the air, introducing himself as “your holy host” and “the reason for the season” and offering to take questions. Holy crap! It was The Jesus Christ Show, a syndicated show that bills itself as “interactive radio theater.” The show's website identifies some guy named Neil Saavedra as a self-taught lay apologist who is the “producer” for The Jesus Christ Show. He has no academic credentials and “hates when people try and sound more educated than they actually are.” (That would appear more literate if it were “try to sound more educated.”)

To give the devil his due, Saavedra correctly noted that “Xmas” was not an anti-Christian slur, since the “X” represents the Greek letter chi, an ancient shorthand symbol for Christ. Good one, Neil. On the other hand, one questions whether Jesus would have cuts from Christian rock bands for his bumper music and Jesus would certainly have known better than to sing with such a lousy voice. Ouch!

The show struck me as having been inspired by Saavedra seeing Jesus Christ as a talk-show host on South Park and thinking it was worthy of emulation (but on radio, where dressing up is not necessary). The segment I heard was very uneven, especially given its abrupt transitions. When Saavedra is speaking in third-person-pretentious, he sounds like just about any radio preacher prattling about Jesus. However, when he shifts suddenly to first-person-intimate, it utterly fails to evoke the listener's suspension of disbelief so that the imposture works. Part of the problem may be that it's difficult to imagine Jesus prompting a caller with, “Okay, let 'er rip!”

Thou shalt not tell fat jokes

I did not share any of my radio experiences with my folks. Too dangerous a topic, fraught with peril. Any discussion of broadcast media with my father is certain to elicit his favorite diatribe: too many Spanish-language programs and channels. Last Thanksgiving, for example, his opening conversational gambit was to fish a slip of paper out of his pocket to show my brother-in-law and me how many Spanish-language television stations were available via a local satellite-based provider. Dad smugly proclaimed that a client had employed him to block all such stations on his TV so that his eyes and ears would not be profaned by exposure to that Mexican-type talk. He was clearly inviting us to roll our eyes in sympathetic dismay over the proliferation of Hispanic entertainment in the Central Valley, but my brother-in-law and I were eye-rolling for other reasons.

Instead the snatches of brief Christmas conversation were dominated by family chit-chat and generally harmless holiday chatter. The brother who currently runs the family dairy farm commented that the front yard was now spacious and wide open in the absence of the old pine tree. I quipped that there was even enough room now for my wide brother. My sister-in-law had not heard my previous fat joke at my own expense, but she certainly heard the quip about her husband and did not appreciate it. Displaying an enviable talent for maintaining a cheerful expression and upbeat tone of voice while laying stripes on one's hide, she pointed out how much she disapproved of fat jokes about her husband and said, while citing his good points, “You know he's as big-hearted as all outdoors.”

You will, I know, be amazed to learn that I was intelligent enough not to seize the opportunity to pile on with, “Yeah, I'd expect an enlarged heart, too, if I were carrying that much excess weight.” (So there, dear friends. All of you who have said I would risk my life for a good punch line— Not so!) I listened meekly, then asked my sister-in-law whether their next stop was her mother's house. When she told me that was correct, I asked her to proffer my best holiday wishes to her widowed mother. My sister-in-law rewarded me with a big hug and a warm farewell, so I made my escape intact and in good odor. (Besides, my brother's mother-in-law is a nice lady and my greeting was sincere as well as conveniently timed.)

I will consider, however, that my sister-in-law has conveniently given me a New Year's resolution as a Christmas gift. I solemnly promised her that I would tell no more fat jokes within her earshot. In return, she agreed to spare my life. And I didn't even try to ingratiate myself by agreeing that my brother is twice the man I am. It's win-win.

I can hardly wait to tell Jesus!