Why Am I Not Surprised?

New translations of a Coptic "Gospel of Judas" were released Thursday by the National Geographic Society, which apparently paid for its restoration after it had been discovered by looters in the Egyptian deserts in the 1970s.

The 1700-year-old age of the ink and paper used was confirmed by "extensive analysis" of both them and of the writing style and the very text, according to the Los Angeles Times. This "Gospel of Judas" itself translated an earlier, Greek document written around 140 A.D. The Coptic translation was made by scribes of the Gnostics, an early Christian sect whose beliefs were not favored by the founders of the "official" church.

Why do we care? Well, for starters, this gospel claims that Judas was in reality Jesus's most trusted apostle, and that Jesus asked Judas to turn him over to the authorities to fulfill Jesus's mission on Earth.

The gospel also said that Jesus told Judas he would be reviled by everyone, but that he would ultimately be vindicated.

Early church fathers rejected this gospel for inclusion in the New Testament. They also ensured that the original Greek copies of this gospel were destroyed. [Surprise, surprise.--Ed.]

I remember the first time I read the official gospels, back in junior high school. I never could wrap my head around the notion that Judas was condemned for doing the one thing that seemed necessary to get Jesus into the Judaic and Roman legal systems, so that He could be crucified and then resurrected as foretold in older scriptures.

Assuming you believe that that's what happened, that is. My own beliefs are not entirely settled. I will say that I know that something momentous happened to the surviving apostles. Nothing else explains why they went from cowering in hiding after Jesus's death to preaching their "Good News" boldly and willingly becoming martyrs for their beliefs.

I also know that Mary Magdalene played a much greater role in Jesus's life and ministry than early church fathers wanted to admit--because even they could not suppress the fact that she was the first to learn that Jesus had risen from the dead.

I also know that Jesus was far, far from the prissy, intolerant, right-wing WASP a lot of Christian fundamentalists want you to think He was. They seem to have missed several key points of Jesus's teachings. To name just four of many: (1) that it is "easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into Heaven;" (2) that His mission was to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted; (3) that He would have been out amongst the "sinners" (gays, profligates, you-name-it) helping them, not sitting around raising money by condemning them; (4) that faith is faith, civil government is civil government, and the two should not be intertwined ("render unto Caesar . . .").

Not that any of this matters. People generally will believe what they want to believe, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Just as Lincoln would not be a Republican if he were alive today, so Jesus would not be a "Christian" (in the American, right-wing fundamentalist sense of the word) if He were alive today.

If that doesn't get somebody posting comments to this blog, I might as well give up.

I Said The SCHMIDT House!

World class hitter and Hall of Fame Philadelphia Phillies third baseman Mike Schmidt voiced an interesting take on whether Pete Rose should be elected to Cooperstown. On ESPN's Sports Center's Hot Seat, he said Rose's career accomplishments should be recognized by the HOF, but that no mention should be made of Rose's managerial career. I presume that this is because Rose did his illegal gambling on baseball while managing.

However, Schmidt seems to have forgotten that Rose was for a time a player-manager. While I initially thought Schmidt's argument had some merit, upon reflection I am forced to say it doesn't wash. You cannot separate Rose the player from Rose the manager. I think, as any of you who have read any of my previous baseball rantings know, that Rose should NEVER be voted into Cooperstown.

Schmidt did have the presence of mind to say that before any of this happened, Rose would have to be reinstated by baseball. He also implied that this was not likely to happen. He added that he'd have no problem having his HOF accomplishments displayed next to Rose's should Rose get voted in--as a player. I disagree with Mike Schmidt about this, but I have to admire the fact that he obviously has thought carefully about it. That is more than I can say for some of the booze-heads who cry and pitch fits at every opportunity that Rose should be voted in. (I will change my mind on this subject IF--and only if--Shoeless Joe Jackson is voted in first. Neither will happen. Cooperstown values its credibility and its role as guardian of All That's Worthy in the game too much to risk it over the likes of Pete Rose.)

Schmidt further observed that had he played during the "steroids era" (as he called it), he cannot in honesty say he would not have used steroids himself. He noted that he'd like to think he would not, but had the integrity to admit that under the pressure to perform at the major league level, if he knew others were using, he cannot say absolutely that he would not have resorted to chemical assistance. Note that all this is predicated on the understanding that using steroids was not illegal under baseball's rules at the time. I have always liked and admired Mike Schmidt; I have to confess that I cannot see him breaking the rules or the law just to get an edge. It does not seem consistent with his overall character.

Other baseball items of note . . . and of character:

The last pertinent news reports I saw about it (in February) said that Sammy Sosa had rejected a one-year contract with the Washington Nationals and perhaps was about to retire. Sammy has since fallen off the radar. I hope we have not seen the last of his electric smile and his considerable talent. The summer of 1998, when he and Mark McGwire chased and surpassed Roger Maris's season home run record, was magical. Still, both he and McGwire since have been touched by the steroids scandal . . . and while no proof is in, the rumors have flown farther and faster than any of the prodigious homers either of them hit.

I cannot help but be saddened by Sammy's absence. He was already close to getting 600 career home runs (a rare and HOF quality accomplishment), and his pure joie de vivre at playing the game was infectious. He is a good man, too. In the spirit of one of his (and my) baseball heroes, Roberto Clemente, he was first in line to help people in the Caribbean/Latin America who'd been greviously harmed by hurricanes and other natural disasters. Hey, he's from the Dominican Republic, after all. I am impressed no end that he used the fruits of his major league success to help the less fortunate whence he came.

But his absence makes me keep thinking of T.S. Eliot: "This is the way the world will end, this is the way the world will end, this is the way the world will end . . . Not with a bang, but a whimper." If this is indeed the end of Sosa's baseball career, it is a very, very sad end. Sammy, we'll miss you! [Shane! Come back, Shane!--Ed.]

Barry Bonds, on the other hand, I usually have little or no use for. He, too, has prodigious talent, but he always has struck me as not giving a damn about it and not having sufficient respect for the game. That's why his breaking McGwire's home run record and upping the seasonal ante to 73 meant little to me. Besides, I find it incredible to believe that he did not "knowingly" partake of steroids or any other illegal substances, considering his connections to Balco and other figures in that mess. [Besides, some of us are not knee-jerk opposed to what investigative journalists report, as in the new book Game of Shadows.--Ed.]

However: I cannot stand it that people in this day and age are sending him hate mail, hate emails, hate phone calls, and other such crap as he chases Babe Ruth's career home run record and tries to move into second place all-time behind only Hank Aaron. What is the matter with people who would do that? Why would anyone do that?

And that gets me right back to what Mike Schmidt said about the pressures to perform at the major league level. Who knows what any of us would do under such circumstances? I'll also give Barry Bonds credit for saying people can do or say anything they want about him--his concern is to take care of his family, financially and otherwise.

Baseball is a beautiful game. It is the American game (thank you, Susan Sarandon). It's popularity worldwide has exploded, if the general reaction to the recently played World Baseball Classic is any indication. And that leads me to the non-story of the day, to wit: Roger Clemens's remarks about some of the WBC games played in Anaheim and Arizona. He told a story about how he wanted to get some dry cleaning done, but that the lady at the dry cleaner's told him he couldn't have it done by when he wanted "because we'll all be at the game." And then Clemens talked about how packed the stadium was for the Japan-Korea game and how the Japanese and Koreans supported their teams and obviously loved the game.

Some bozo decided to complain about what Clemens said, claiming it was derogatory to Japanese and Korean people. Puh-leeze! If you listen to what Clemens said, and heard the entire thing in context, it was a glowing appreciation of everyone with ties to Japan and Korea. There was absolutely NOTHING derogatory about it. The lady at the dry cleaner's said what she said. That is a fact. And Clemens did not talk about it as though it were an insult to him. Rather, he was impressed with the level of fan support the Japan-Korea game was drawing in Anaheim. Besides, she asked Clemens for his autograph right after she said what she said about the delay in getting his cleaning done, and he signed several things for her with kindness and grace, and not a shred of a hint of an iota of acrimony.

To think that the season is in only its third day. What in the world will come next?

The Trains May Now Run On Time

No more Delay! Huzzah! US House of Representatives member Tom Delay (R-Tex) has announced his resignation, effective "sometime in June" according to a videotaped statement he sent earlier today to the media. [We can all guess why he wouldn't face the media directly.--Ed.]

The Hammer is no more. All I can say is that it's about time. Hubris ever goes before a fall, and Delay certainly had plenty of pride to go around. What finally prompted him to do a 180° from his public face of total confidence despite ever-increasing pressure from the ethics violation accusations against him? One of his top aides pleaded guilty to criminal corruption charges at the end of last week. The aide apparently told the judge that he knew more about a lot of things than he delineated in his written guilty plea. Delay must finally have seen (and with apologies to Mel Brooks) that the jig was up.

Of course, Delay wouldn't admit to this. He claims he was facing a very, very expensive reelection campaign and stood a real chance of losing, so he wanted to get out of the way to make sure a Republican would hold his soon-to-be-ex-seat in November. Right. Want to buy a bridge? He got his district redrawn to hold a solid 55% Republican majority, and he won a bruising and heavily-contested 4-way Republican primary earlier this year. What he really wants to do is use the money in his campaign war chest to pay his legal bills.

Despite my saying that, my hope now is that a higher road will be taken in response. The only way we are going to end our own American version of the eternal tit-for-tat [as brought to you daily by events in the Middle East.--Ed.] is to avoid swinging as violently to the left as Delay pounded to the right. Besides, it will give the Democrats the mantle of moral superiority to be civilized in response to Delay's fall.

But blood is in the water, and I fear a feeding frenzy will commence.

Une Pastiche

I hate Daylight Savings Time. The only good thing about it is going off it . . . and next year, we'll have to wait even longer. Ugh!

On the other hand, DST means that baseball can't be far behind--let's play two! (And focus on the game, not on Barry Bonds.)

* * * * * * * * * *

Is it my imagination, or have nasty thunderstorms been occuring later in the day than they used to occur? I seem to remember being told once that storms form during the hottest part of the day--which means that we used to get tornado warnings and such from around 3-7 p.m. Lately, however, they seem to be starting at 7 p.m. or later. More anecdotal evidence for global warming? Or am I just getting old and upset with sitting up all night waiting for the things to pass . . . or for a lightning strike to blow up my TV again?

* * * * * * * * * *

I should have played the women's NCAA basketball pool, not the men's. I'd have had 1/2 of the Final Four right. Still, if the men's pool hadn't filled up with so many upsets on last-split-second shots, I'd have had at least 1/2 of the men's Final Four, too, instead of having bupkis.

This is why I much prefer baseball, even though I'd doubtless lose money on that if I were to bet. I enjoy the head game, the intellectual exercise of evaluating the teams. I have no interest in the money angle. I'd rather be right than be rich. Although being rich has its advantages, like being able to afford decent health care for all Americans.

* * * * * * * * * *

I see from an op-ed column in the Friday or Saturday (forget which--read both the same day) Omaha World-Herald that at least one doctor has exactly pegged the reason consumer-driven health care plans (CDHP) will never work: health care is not like buying a car, where you can go elsewhere or skip it if the price and other conditions are not right. Once you need health care, you need it NOW. And if you've already started receiving it, you cannot just up and leave, as a rule. The vaunted Free Market won't work under those circumstances. By definition, you are not really FREE to make cost-based choices. For this reason, too, utilities should not be creatures of the free market, and run by profit-driven companies.

I am no communist (certainly not in the "how it actually exists in the real world" as opposed to "how Marx presented it in his imagination" sense), but I can see that there are times when money/cost/profit are not the best bases for decision-making. Which is why I agree with Firesign Theater: "All Hail Marx (Groucho) and Lennon (John)!"

* * * * * * * * * *

The character Bill from "The Red Green Show" is a comic heir to Harpo Marx. I realized this while watching "Duck Soup" on TCM's April Fool's Day classic comedy films line-up yesterday. There's even a vague physical resemblance between the two of them.

But don't ask me to explain why my favorite comic characters tend to be the "wise/holy fool" kind. There is something quite profound about their wisdom being revealed in their innocence. Other such characters? Stan Laurel, Bullwinkle, Patrick Starfish, Odie, Opus, Linus spring first to mind. Feel free to add to this list.

Don't get me wrong: I also love the wit and word-play of such comic geniuses as Groucho Marx and Mr. Peabody. But I have always been drawn to the comic innocents--as opposed to the comic dumb, like Jerry Lewis. I don't care what the French think. A lot of Jerry Lewis's humor is not brilliant--it is cruel.

It must be the eternal optimist in me (which I try to suppress, usually without much success). I hope that the world can be the sunny place the comic innocents see it as being. It's a question of kindness, at heart . . . which is the other thing the comic innocents have in common: kindness is at the very heart of their characters.

* * * * * * * * * *

Yet the serious world intrudes. It is ever thus. I saw in David S. Broder's recent column on the immigration question that a poll was finally taken of legal immigrants, with the somewhat startling result that 81 percent of them think that illegal immigrants do not drive down wages "because they are doing the jobs no one else wants to do." Eleven percent disagreed; the other 8 percent apparently were undecided.

The pollster explained the reuslts by noting that most of the legal immigrants did not feel the illegals were in competition with them, and thus the legals felt sympathy for the illegals. As one woman, a legal immigrant and accountant put it, "I came first class. The illegals are coming coach--they do jobs I didn't have to do, and they live outside the law."

This is all well and good, but it begs the real question. The real question is WHY Americans seem so unwilling to take the jobs the illegals are taking. Is it because the jobs are that disgusting? I think not. It is because the wages for such jobs are way too low for what the labor involved is worth. Any number of Americans would take those jobs if they would be paid what the jobs were worth.

But I still have no idea about what is the best way to answer "the immigration question." So I repeat my call to you, my readers: give me your insights, your wisdom and your reasons. Right now, I feel like a cross between Diogenes and the Hebrews, wandering around lost, seeking answers. Help me out, here, won't you?

Phil Collins Was Right

OK, so it was Genesis, not Phil Collins alone. But he/they was/were right: it is no fun being an illegal alien.

I confess to being totally in knots over the latest immigration proposals before Congress. As a matter of simple human decency, it's wrong to make felons out of both people who come to America to improve their circumstances and people who help illegal immigrants once they are here. However, if illegal immigrants are given guest worker status, they'll become a permanent economic underclass which business interests can exploit to drive down wages and benefits for citizens, undercut the power of labor unions to protect their members, and generally otherwise wreak havoc on everyone who is a worker bee and not an owner bee.

"Them what has, gets--and the rest of us gets screwed."

On the other other [yes, I meant to repeat that--Ed.] hand, I can also see the country coming apart at the seams, as more and more people come here for better money than they can earn at home, but who have no interest or stake in perpetuating the idea of "America." Is it fear of being discovered as illegal that keeps these immigrant communities so insular? Or is it lack of interest in making even a token effort to learn some American English? Or is it just plain bad manners--the scourge that seems to be afflicting every society on Earth right now?

I just do not know, and I am distressed. I do not like sitting on fences--for one thing, doing so is most uncomfortable--but I dislike the terrain on either side I'd land on if I were to come down. So, my readership, assuming you are out there, help me out. Post comments. Give me some insight, a fresh way of evaluating the situation, so that I can live with the results of getting off the fence. I'm counting on your individual and collective brilliance to show me the way.

Typical Nebraska Weather--Addendum Redux

OK, so it's March in Nebraska. We've had high temperatures in the sunny low 70s, a blizzard, and now we're in the middle of a tornado watch . . . you want 4 seasons of weather? Come to the Cornhusker State. You can get them all in the same week!

Santa's Little Helpers--NOT!

For those of you who had trouble seeing the picture I've added to my profile, here it is in a larger version. That's Linus on your left (higher) and Lucy on your right (lower). They never knocked the tree over, and they didn't break any ornaments--because I put up only non-breakable ones--but the tree was listing quite a bit by the end of the holiday season!

P.Vill.

Back in the day . . . WAY back in the day . . . on the order of a quarter-century ago . . . I spent two summers as an employee of the Nebraska Department of Economic Development, Division of Travel and Tourism. I was a Nebraska Vacation Guide. [This is taking on the air of "True Confessions," isn't it?--Ed.]

My job entailed spending my days with at least one other Guide at assorted Interstate 80 rest areas. We gave out maps, directions, and other information about the scenic wonders and destinations of note for visitors to/travelers through the great state of Nebraska. Oh, I can tell you stories about some of the weird questions we were asked! But that's for another day.

One of the most heavily promoted stops (due to its creator's own efforts) was Harold Warp's Pioneer Village, out near Minden. Mr. Warp, who made his millions in plastics if memory serves (and if it doesn't, please correct me), created an homage to his own upbringing in rural Nebraska. For instance, he bought an abandoned one-room schoolhouse and moved it to the Pioneer Village site, displaying it with a plaque noting it was similar to the school he attended as a child.

Pioneer Village had some neat stuff: one of the last working steam-powered carousels in the USA is the first that leaps to mind. But it also had a lot of junk. He had collections of old cars and tractors, knickknacks and other googaws, massed together by type for the visitor to peruse at his/her leisure, with no serious regard for historical significance beyond the fact that Mr. Warp liked them. All too often, the items were rusty and dusty, displayed in a generally decrepit condition that further disguised any larger historical significance they perhaps held.

Mr. Warp also made sure the Vacation Guides had plenty of promotional handouts for tourists, delivered in box after box after box labeled "P.Vill." You can imagine what a budding iconoclast made of that unfortunate abbreviation!

A story in this week's Bellevue Leader has caused me to reassess. While Mr. Warp himself died quite some time ago, Pioneer Village lives on. I doubt that its overall impression has changed; nevertheless, the keepers of Mr. Warp's vision have made a decision that I can but admire and appreciate. By way of explanation, let me tell you a love story . . .

Bill and Rita Cornell grew up together in Indiana. Bill's father thought Rita was the perfect woman for his son . . . and eventually Bill and Rita agreed. After enduring the tribulations of separation during World War II, they married in late 1947.

After traveling the world, they settled in Bellevue in 1982. All this time, Rita had collected dolls: porcelain ones, Barbies, Cabbage Patch, and others. She bought what she liked, often from a second-hand stores. She restored them and displayed them, and they gave her great pleasure.

In 1995, Rita suffered a debilitating stroke. She became frail and lost her ability to speak. Bill couldn't bear to see her in the hospital, so he learned how to care for her and brought her home. He built shelves and shelves in her room, to display her treasured dolls. He took her for walks, pushing her wheelchair up and down the Fontenelle Hills neighborhood that was their home. [This is no mean feat, as anyone who's tried to drive in Fontenelle Hills in good weather, let alone after a snowstorm, can attest.--Ed.] And though she declined steadily over the succeeding 10 years, he cared for her tenderly until her death last September.

Even as she lost touch with things that had once mattered to her, Rita never lost interest in her dolls--or in Bill. He would show her catalogs of dolls, her eyes gleaming when she saw one she especially liked. He would take her shopping and add to her collection. He loved her and cared for her the way any real man would. [Which is unfortunately increasingly rare these days, but that's beside the point.-Ed.]

No one wanted to sell the dolls after she died; nor did Bill and Rita's children want the collection to be split up. Bill is moving into assisted living facilities himself, and cannot keep the collection with him. Neither did anyone want to see the dolls just go into storage and be forgotten.

Once the good people at Pioneer Village learned about this situation, they said they'd be delighted to take the dolls. They have promised to keep the collection intact, and to display the Rita and Bill Cornell Doll Collection in its entirety. It will debut in the coming years. It will be a concrete expression of the love Bill and Rita shared, of their joy in their love for each other until death did them part.

Bravo, people of Pioneer Village! I take back and apologize for every less-than-sterling comment I made and thought I had about your facility. I hang my head in shame while at the same time thanking you for your generosity of spirit and understanding of what truly matters in this life.

Typical Nebraska Weather--Addendum

Lord help me, but I am beginning to sound like everyone's great grandpa. In my original post today, I implied that current snowstorms are pretty wimpy compared to what Nebraska used to get, specifically back in the early to mid-1970s. But we did! It's true. I swear!

Snow was piled up 3 feet deep along streets and in parking lots well into May every year. As one of my closest friends (who shares my love of tongue-in-cheekiness) says, "We had to walk uphill 30 miles each way, every day." No such thing as a snow day for us! [The girls in those days weren't allowed to wear pants to school, either. Jeans in school, on males or females, were entirely unheard of. Nor were girls allowed to wear pants and change once they got to school. Even in the days of maxi-coats and hip-hugger boots, that was a stupid policy.--Ed.]

Seriously: we did walk to school even during the worst of the storms. Nowadays, however, a mere 2 inches of snow seems to call for Winter Storm Warnings, school and business closures, and general wailing and great gnashing of teeth.

My brain tells me this is just the pendulum swinging too far in response to what obviously was an untenable situation 30-plus years ago. My heart tells me we've become a bunch of wimps.

In any event, it provides additional, if anecdotal, evidence supporting global warming. My generation's parents' parents don't recall any winters, even during the Dust Bowl, as relatively mild as what we've experienced over the past decade and a half.

Frankly, I'd rather have the old-time big storms.

Typical Nebraska Weather

So we had two heavy (by current experience) snowstorms back-to-back in early December. Then we spent most of January reveling in the sixty-plus degree sunshine in our short sleeves. February was mercifully brief. I saw my first robins of spring on St. Patrick's Day. And now, on the first full days of spring, we are getting socked by "The Blizzard of Aught Six."

Wazzup with that?

I am not complaining. We need the moisture. And the storm seems to be much less drastic than predictions would have warranted, here in Bellevue anyway. Besides, there's something almost holy about the stillness of the air during a lull in the snow. It's a cathedral-like hush that makes me understand the human need to acknowledge a universal Greater Power.

And the small sting of the cold air on one's face is downright refreshing.

I thought of this earlier today, when I was dragging my trash out to the curb for its weekly pickup. What the heck I was doing up at 5:20 a.m. I do not know. I'm almost never awake at that time of day unless I stay up all night to get there. But something woke me today, and I am glad it did. That enveloping stillness is a wonderful [in its original sense, as in "full of wonder" or "producing wonder."--Ed.] experience.

Things are back to mundanity now. The snowplows are rattling up and down the street. The sun is shining. For all I know, the snow may be melting already. But I am still glad I got to treasure that perfect silence this morning. I'm sure, however, that I'll be taking a long nap this afternoon!

Were They Thinking?

Not "what were they thinking"--but "were they thinking" is the question of the day. Government lawyers in the penalty trial of convicted al Quaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui coached some of the FAA witnesses in clear violation of the judge's orders in the case. Worse, the potential witnesses got copies of the emails sent to the others in an implicit attempt to make sure that all the witnesses' testimony agreed, also violating the judge's orders. Still worse, it came out in court yesterday as the judge, Leonie Brinkema, questioned the potential FAA witnesses., that one of the attorneys never told the witnesses that if they were willing, they could talk to the defense attorneys . . . while that same attorney had told Judge Brinkema that the witnesses all refused to speak to the defense attorneys.

The judge made the only feasible ruling she could in the case. She forbade any of those witnesses from testifying in front of the jury. She could have disclared a mistrial--thus spending even more millions of dollars on a case already 4 years old. She could have ruled out the possibility of Moussaoui getting the death penalty--not a particularly politic move in the current emotional climate . . . though my personal belief, as previously expressed in this blog, is that life in prison without parole would be far more punishing to him than would his own death, which would make him a martyr to his "glorious cause."

[I do dearly wish the families of the victims of 9/11 could recognize that. They all seem hell-bent on Moussaoui getting the death penalty, which is exactly what he wants. Moussaoui's death would not well-serve the memories of those who died on 9/11, despite what their relatives say they think.--Ed]

As a matter of fact, however, Judge Brinkema has taken the death penalty off the table, by making it nearly impossible for the prosecution to prove the FAA could have stopped the events of 9/11 if Moussaoui had not lied. If none of the FAA witnesses can testify, none can offer testimony supporting that contention, which is the keystone to the argument for imposing the death penalty in the first place.

Maybe Judge Brinkema thinks as I do about Moussaoui's punishment. Actually, I hope not. The judge shouldn't be thinking about that at all. She should be thinking about how to get this trial to its conclusion with as little additional time and money wasted as possible. And that seems to be a reasonable interpretation of what she's doing.

I can't wait to find out how the government's lawyers screw up next. If they did what they did out of ignorance, the quality of legal education in this country has certainly plummeted. If they did what they did out of a win-at-all-costs mentality, they have no business being prosceutors. If they did what they did out of conviction that Moussaoui shouldn't get the death penalty, then even Machiavelli should tip his hat to them. It's not too many people who are willing to sabotage their own public standing in the service of a greater good (which is having Moussaoui forgotten but not gone).

At Least Someone Is Speaking Out

According to the New York Times, a new Islamic voice is challenging traditional Muslim teachings. Dr. Wafa Sultan is a Syrian-American psychiatrist who lives near Los Angeles. In late February, she gave an interview on al-Jazeera television further publicizing the views she expressed in an essay she earlier had published on the web site Annaqed.

The Times said that she "bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders whom she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran for 1400 years. She said the world's Muslims . . . have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence."

She compared Muslims unfavorably to Jews. In response to the Holocaust, she said, the Jews "forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. . . . The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or of civilizations. It is a clash between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality."

Muslim clerics have dismissed her as a heretic who has blasphemed against Islam, the prophet Muhammad and the Koran. She is receiving death threats by telephone and email.

But what she said makes a lot of sense. Now if an influential, respected-in-the-Islamic-community male Muslim would just say the same things. Maybe then we could make some progress in learning to live with one another.

Icky L'Uomo, Or Are You Kidding Me?

According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, "[t]hey had sex. She got pregnant. She sued for child support. Now, he's suing back, claiming that men have a constitutional right to 'avoid procreation.'"

Matthew Dubay, 25, of Saginaw, Michigan, claims he had a discussion with his then-girlfriend wherein he told her he was not ready for the emotional OR financial responsibilities of parenthood. She allegedly responded that she was infertile and using birth control "just in case" anyway. Of course, she got pregnant. She did not want to give up the child. After her little girl was born, she got a court order requiring Dubay to pay $500.00 a month in child support.

He doesn't want to pay, so he is (largely at the behest of the National Center for Men, which has wanted to make this case for over 12 years) suing back, claiming that under the equal protection clause, he has a right "not to be a father." [The National Center for Men more properly should be called the National Center for Boys, as what they really want is to play without paying.--Ed.]

Arguments favor both sides. As a practical matter, once the woman IS pregnant, if the father does have a constitutional right not to be, would that mean he could compel her to have an abortion? That certainly isn't going to sit well with a lot of people. Or does it mean that he has a right not to support that which he helped create? That, too, is BAD social policy. All it does is pass the financial burden onto the rest of us while letting the man have his cake and eat it, too.

On the other hand, when couples create test-tube embryos but then decide to go their separate ways, courts have ruled that the father can stop the mother from using the embryos to get pregnant.

A simple solution to this conundrum exists, however. It comes down to the facts of the case. If the man relied on the woman's assertion that she used birth control, he accepted the risks--both the risk that she was lying and the risk that she was telling the truth but the birth control failed. In that case, he reaps what he sows, literally. He is responsible.

On the other hand, if he takes the initiative and provides additional birth control, and his partner gets pregnant anyway, he may be able to make the company providing the faulty birth control at least partly financially responsible for the results. [Not that that would ever happen in the current pro-business-profit, anti-business-responsibility environment.--Ed.]

But there's an even easier answer! All you men out there: think with your brains and not your gonads. If you are not willing to accept the consequences of your actions, DON'T DO THE DIRTY DEED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

You don't want the burdens of being a father? Then don't have sex. The ONLY 100% effective method of birth control is abstinence. So grow up, kwityerbitchin, and accept the facts. If you insist on having sex, you have to take responsibility for the consequences. You don't get to dance without paying the piper when the tune is done.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

The Omaha World-Herald reports that the federal government is cutting back on a USDA nutrition program for low-income families. Two years ago, the program helped 536,196 households; after June 1st of this year, the number will be cut to 477,187. That doesn't seem like a lot, but more than 50,000 households nationwide means over 1,000 per state will lose vital assistance. According to federal regulations, the vast majority of those losing aid will be the elderly, because federal regulations require the assistance go first to women and children.

One measure of a society is how it cares for its members who are least able to care for themselves. By that measure, we collectively are failing miserably. This is inexcusable. It differs only in number, not in kind, from the 19th century British passive genocide against the Irish during the potato famines. Other food was there, but the British exported it and sold it, letting the Irish starve while they made money . . . and gained even more property in Ireland as its native owners died.

The official justification was that the only people who starved were the ones too lazy and shiftless to take care of themselves. Right. And I have a bridge to sell you. Even in the face of credible eyewitness reports of people eating grass in their desperation, the British government refused to assist the Irish.

The British government's stand was utterly reprehensible. And so is our government's stand today. Dubya's projected budget for 2007 is even worse: it will eliminate the program entirely, not just the help for our seniors. We spend and spend and spend for (among other questionable things) the quagmire in Iraq--and I wouldn't even be upset about that if the money were going where it was needed, to wit: to our troops and to their equipment and protection. An awful lot of the money seems to be disappearing, however, most probably into the pockets of those committing contract fraud . . . and more scarily, perhaps even into the hands of those who will use it to do us harm.

What's worse, the money for the war in Iraq isn't even in the regular budget to begin with, so the federal government's spending crisis is even worse than the "official" figures suggest.

Part of the money being cut had paid farmers for their crops, thus putting foodstuffs directly into the hands of the needy. These cutbacks therefore will also hurt an already-reeling agricultural economy. Yet the total amount of money involved is a microscopic pittance of the multitrillion dollar deficits Dubya has run up. "But we have to cut unnecessary spending," she said, sarcasm dripping from her lips.

Let's face it: the poor, even the elderly poor, are invisible to this administration. When Dubya can have his scripted, audience-pre-selected "public" appearances, during which an elderly white male (well-dressed and obviously well-off) claims that the new Medicare drug "benefit" worked well for him, Dubya does not get an accurate impression of the plight of the elderly in this country. Of course, how would he know anyway? Despite his pseudo-folksy manner, he's a child of privilege. Remember, his father--20 years ago-- didn't even know about UPC scanners in grocery stores.

It shouldn't surprise me that Dubya doesn't want to see what's really going on. He certainly doesn't want us to see what he's really doing, either. He gutted the terms of the release of presidential papers; he instructed the NSA to illegally wiretap Americans; his appointees make their departments ignore the Freedom of Information Act; and the government is classifying a geometrically-increasing percentage of its documents. All this in the name of fighting a war on terror wherein he has not even directly engaged our principal antagonist.

It's beyond shameful. It's inexcusable. Nevertheless, I do not see any hope for improvement unless the Democrats can come up with candidates who can articulate a sensible, coherent vision for the future of America and at the same time not be perceived as being soft on defense.

I'll take your bids on that bridge I'm selling now.

Flash!

Herewith some updates and clarifications on the Bare Bottom Bandit story (and, yes, the pun in the title was intended).

First: he didn't catch his pants on the broken glass; he caught it on the security bars he squeezed through after he broke the glass.

Second: he didn't pull up his pants because he either knew or feared that a motion detector alarm would go off with that much activity on his part. That's also why he crawled on the floor, to stay "below the radar" as it were.

Third: the fact that the Tobacco Hut's advertising slogan for years has been "The Best Butts In Town" had absolutely nothing to do with it. Too bad.

Fourth: he was arrested Thursday, and in an interview on Friday with one of the local TV stations admitted he was drunk out of his mind at the time. He said he'd had an entire liter bottle of rum. He says he drinks like that frequently. He's 21 years old. This moves the story from the silly to the sad. The very, very sad.

Fifth: he will return the money he took. I am sure the judge will further order him to make restitution for the property damage he caused. The total for both is in the neighborhood of $1,000.00 according to the Tobacco Hut's owners.

Finally: Just don't smoke!

From The Ridiculous To The Sublime To The Sad To The Silly

I see that Omaha is getting more national attention for an odd local robbery . . . or more correctly, for the odd local robber. He recently broke into a Tobacco Hut by kicking in the glass. When he crawled through the opening he'd made, his pants must have snagged on some of the shards. Security tapes show him scuttling around the store on his knees with his pants down and his rear assets visible. [I can't help but think of an old "Designing Women" episode, wherein Annie Potts's character talks about plumbers and notes that they give the newspaper headline "America's Crack Problem" a whole new meaning.--Ed.]

He has been nicknamed The Bare-Bottom Bandit. Local TV newscasters are asking anyone who recognizes either end of the bandit to notify Omaha police.

The local NBC affiliate won't air the security tapes, saying they are not fit for broadcast TV. The local ABC affiliate, on the other hand, aired them with strategic pixel distortion. The local CBS affiliate showed the tapes with a fuzzy spot in the critical area. I was too afraid to see what the local Fox affiliate showed.

* * * * * * * * * *

I am still reeling at the news of the deaths of baseball Hall-of-Fame outfielder Kirby Puckett from a stroke and Dana Reeve, widow of Christopher Reeve, from lung cancer. Puckett was a geniuinely talented fireplug of a player and a truly nice guy. Dana Reeve had marvelous courage in the face of the crap life threw at her: her husband, paralyzed in a horse-riding accident, used his fame not just to fund spinal cord research but to speak out about the inequities of the US health care system (and she was 100% by his side as he did so); a life-long non-smoker, she contracted lung cancer and knew she was going to die; she knew she would leave behind a teen-aged son . . . and yet her spirit and optimism never wavered. She was an inspiration. Somehow I think her son will be just fine.

Billy Joel was right. Only the good die young.

* * * * * * * * * *

The jury must NOT give Zacarias Moussaoui the death penalty for his being an adimtted Al Quaida member and alleged co-conspirator in the 9/11 attacks. (He claims he was training to fly a plane into the White House on a different day. Like that should give him brownie points.)

All his antics during his trial have been calculated to tick off the jury and get him the death penalty so that he can become a "glorious" martyr for his "cause." He has repeatedly ignored instructions from the judge, repeatedly condemned his own attorneys, and pumped his fist in apparant satisfaction when the horrors of 9/11 were recounted to the jury.

The LAST thing we need to do is make him a martyr for radical Islam. Let's give him life in prison without parole and see how he likes it as his name and deeds and intended deeds fade from the collective American consciousness. Being forgotten but not gone would serve him right.

* * * * * * * * * *

The weekly Bellevue Leader includes a column during the school year called "KIDspeak." Local elementary school students are asked a question, and nine of the best/most typical/most interesting responses are published with the students' names and pictures.

Sometimes the questions and answers are cute. For Valentine's Day, for instance, many of the kids said their mom was their favorite valentine. But this week, the question was "What makes a perfect husband or wife?"

After reading the responses, all I could think of was "it starts early, doesn't it?" The boys all thought that part of being a perfect wife was doing the cleaning and other chores and catering to the needs of the husband. One of them even said that included financially, as she was supposed to have a good job in addition to feeding him and keeping the house and laundry clean.

The girls, on the other hand, thought the perfect husband would gladly help with the chores and raising the children and generally be kind and caring. One went so far as to say that the perfect husband would also be rich and take her shopping. (No, her name was not Anna Nicole.)

I think they ALL need a reality check.

One Ringy Dingy . . .

Lily Tomlin's Ernestine must be waxing rhapsodic. AT&T has just reached terms to buy out Bell South, reuniting virtually all of the old Ma Bell under one corporate roof--and thus undoing much of the judicial decision in the 80s to break up the Bell monopoly.

I, for one, have been on record for years stating my belief that the Bell system shouldn't have been broken up in the first place. "But don't you believe in the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?" you ask. Yes, I do. But I also have always believed that telephones are in fact (though not in name) a utility, not an optional household expense. Try having a medical crisis and getting help without a phone, if you doubt that a telephone is a necessity in the modern world.

Still, I am not sanguine about this merger. I realize the business climate for telephone systems is not the same as it was in the 80s (due largely to the break-up of Ma Bell to begin with) and I know that there are economies of scale that only enormous companies can attain. However, less competition is in general not a good thing. Besides, the tendency lately is for companies to use the cost savings they gain by mergers to improve their bottom line, not decrease costs to their customers.

True, that is not a bad thing from the corporation's viewpoint. The corporation's goal is to maximize return for its shareholders. That's its job. But there are larger societal implications than making the most money possible. There are not-necessarily-tangible gains to be had from running a business with "enlightened self-interest." Maybe the corporation makes a little less money in this fiscal year--but then it also stabilizes its existence and ensures a steady, long-term income stream by maximizing the number of people who hold jobs, and who thus can afford to buy what the corporation sells.

For the same reasons, I have shaken my head in disbelief at (for just two examples) both the proponents of extreme logging and the airline pilots who propose striking Delta right now. Once all the trees are gone and once Delta ceases to exist, none of them are going to have any jobs. What is wrong with giving a little to get a lot more over the long term in return?

Of course, this all goes back to the current political climate. An awful lot of people who hold powerful political positions seem to have forgotten that the genius of the American system is compromise. They all want their own ideas implemented 100% and don't seem to be willing to give an inch. On ANYthing. Which is downright unAmerican, if you ask me.

Have none of you heard of the concept of a pyrrhic victory? What's the point in winning a short-term goal if you all ultimately go down in flames?

How can you tell if a compromise is a good one, anyway? Simple: if everybody is mad, from the farthest right to the far-outest left, you've achieved a workable solution. Not necessarily the best solution, but a workable one. And that historically is what has made America function.

Our collective loss of memory about the viability of compromise threatens our system, our safety, our security, and our whole way of life far more than Al Qaida ever could. We need to relearn why America survived its first two hundred years and get back to implementing what has made America work if we are to survive another two hundred.

Baked Beans Are Off

I hope you have been watching "Monty Python's Personal Best" on PBS. It is a real joy to see humor that has stood the test of time. So far, individual episodes have focused on Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, and Terry Gilliam. I know many people who watched Monty Python when PBS first aired it in the 1970s and who enjoyed it just because it was silly . . . but there's much more to it than that. Monty Python aired some of the most potent social satire of the day. And while some of the political references may be dated (e.g., "Margaret Thatcher's brain"), the sketches are still funny.

Some of my personal "best of the best" sketches that have already aired include "The Lumberjack Song," "The Philosophy Department at the University of Wallamaloo," "Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge" (Eric Idle); "The Dead Parrot," "The Penguin on the Telly," "Spam" (Graham Chapman) [How can you NOT love a sketch that gave a name to a whole category of unwanted internet emails?--Ed.] ; "Confuse-A-Cat," "The Upper Class Twit of the Year" (John Cleese); and the entire hour of animation, but especially "Conrad Poohs and His Dancing Teeth" (Terry Gilliam).

One oddity: 3 of the 4 episodes aired so far have included "The Fish-Slapping Dance." Don't get me wrong: I adore "The Fish-Slapping Dance." When viewed in the context of other great confrontations, like Bugs Bunny's "The Rabbit of Seville," "The Fish-Slapping Dance" comments succinctly on the futility of arms races. But is it the best Monty Python sketch of all time? It's the only one so far to be included in its entirety in more than one episode. Maybe saying it's "the best" is a bit strong. Perhaps saying it's the "all-time favorite" of the Pythons themselves is better.

I eagerly await "Hell's Grannies," "The Killer Joke," "The Piranha Brothers," "The Spanish Inquisition," and "Election Night Special," among other gems yet to air. Heck, just thinking about them makes me giggle.

"Monty Python's Personal Best" also reminds me that: (1) "Saturday Night Live," notably in its first incarnation with the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, among other shows, owes an incalculable debt to the Pythons; and (2) even the Pythons owe a debt to Ernie Kovacs.

Kovacs did it first; Kovacs did it better (just imagine what he'd have been able to accomplish had he lived long enough to use more recent technologies); Kovacs knew whereof he spoke when he said "Television is a medium because it is neither rare nor well done."

"Monty Python's Personal Best" may be television, but it is rare, and it is very well done indeed. If you haven't been watching, see the additional airings. You won't regret it.

The Debate Is Settled

One of the great questions of the day is whether Dubya and his minions are evil or just stupid. I haven't commented much on Dubya's administration's antics of late, because it seems as though no more can be said, but after what I heard on NPR this morning, I just had to say this:

They definitely are clueless, if not outright stupid. True evil is in general not so bumbling.

What did I hear, you ask? A recounting of Dubya's trip to India, wherein he said in his own words that India is "a great democracy where people of different religions live side by side in peace and harmony."

All I could think of was, "Oh, so that explains Kashmir."

But then again, I tolerate irony better than a lot of people.

Dubya went on to talk about how the outsourcing of US jobs to India is good for trade, thus good for us. I'd like to see him go into an American town and say that to the workers who've lost their jobs due to outsourcing. Or to those of us who have suffered through nearly incomprehensible customer service calls routed to an Indian telephone center. Between bad phone connections and too heavily-accented speech, such calls are not worth the time they take and the frustration they cause. Let's face it: Indians who speak English well and clearly are in professions, such as law or medicine. They are not slaving away at a cubicle in some sweatshop call center.

And don't even get me started on the putative UAE-company-[read "UAE," as the company is owned by the government--Ed.]-managing-the-the-US-ports deal. This is truly delicious for those of us who enjoy the taste of irony. Dubya may very well be right on this one, but he has handled it so-ham-fistedly that he's turned it into yet another strike against the competency of his administration. And for him to be complaining about people judging others based on racial/ethnic/religious stereotypes after some of the things he's said and done is entirely ludicrous.

If I weren't so afraid for my country and its future, I'd be ROFLOL.

I am quite sure that Dubya stopped paying attention to American history after he learned that Calvin Coolidge said that "the business of America is business." Someone needs to remind Dubya that just because a president said it doesn't make it right. Or true.

That same person also ought to remind Dubya that just because a president did it doesn't make it right. I do dearly wish Dubya's defenders would stop pointing to Abraham Lincoln's abuse of civil liberties in the North during the Civil War as justification for Dubya's illegal NSA wiretaps and whatnot. Lincoln is criticized to this day, and rightly so, even though he had much more justification than Dubya could ever muster for his excesses in the name of the "War on 'Terra.'" [Thank you, Molly Ivins. Not only did you capture the essence of the accent, you made a multilingual pun that accurately describes what Dubya and his gang are really doing.--Ed.] After all, Lincoln's governmental capital was located in essentially hostile territory. Not to mention all the other differences others have rightly elucidated.

But Dubya's belief seems to be that all is OK if pursued in the name of Free Trade. Thus his continued insistance on tax cuts for the rich in the face of truly ridiculous budget deficits--run up by him and his minions, to boot. All I can say is that anyone who clears less than $75,000 a year who buys into that is delusional. Don't kid yourselves, folks. The economic class divide in the USA is real, and widening. And if we get more and more "concealed carry" gun laws passed, the economic war may turn into a shooting one . . . on ourselves, by ourselves, for ourselves.

That most definitively is NOT what Lincoln was thinking about when he wrote the Gettysburg Address.

Bragging Rights

I see that the University of Nebraska College of Law is trying to get a special program in space law set up/endowed. More power to it--but I must note that back in the Dark Ages (1978, that is), in an undergraduate International Law course, I wrote a term paper on aspects of space law.

Yes, I got an "A," even though everyone in the class, the instructor included, thought I was nuts.

'It's not easy to be a visionary," she said, tongue imbedded firmly in cheek!

Running Rings 'Round The Omaha World-Herald, Logically

In a recent (Sunday, February 26) editorial column, the Editor of the Omaha World-Herald opined that a main engine of ever-rising health care costs is "Americans' preferences[.] We as a society avoid shopping for care (because we want constancy in our providers) and have distorted insurance from a backstop against disaster into a 'prepaid medical' plan."

WRONG.

What acutally has happened is that technology totally outstripped planning. Illnesses, accidents, and assaults that used to kill people--and quickly--now can be managed medically, as chronic medical conditions [consider Lee Harvey Oswald: if he'd been shot nowadays, he'd not have died from a single gunshot to the abdomen.--ed.] . . . which means continual care, which means high long-term costs. None of the health insurance plans I know of were created in this context. Medicare, for just one example, will pay for a lot of procedures when done to someone who is an inpatient, but will not cover the very same things when the patient is at home. The costs of being an inpatient are much higher, as they include the hospital room, meals, and a lot of other things that the patient is already covering as ordinary costs of living while living at home.

This obviously makes no sense. To some degree, Medicare and other insurance plans are beginning to recognize this, as they are modifying and adapting their coverages to include certain preventative care tests and procedures because a problem caught early is, as a rule, a problem less expensively resolved than a problem caught late. But getting the insurance industry as a whole to totally revamp itself is a haphazard hope at best.

Besides, the people most often in immediate need of health care are not in a position to shop around for it. If one has spiked a fever of 103°, one isn't going to go calling everyone in the phone book to find the cheapest treatment: one is going to the first place one finds. One doesn't have the luxury of taking the time to shop around.

Furthermore, who has a crystal ball to determine in advance what kind of health care/insurance one needs? My own example is telling: I, a lifelong NON-smoker, have a chronic and ultimately terminal pulmonary disease. Before I was diagnosed, if I were shopping for health insurance coverage, I would not have chosen a plan with a lot of pulmonary coverages had it been cheaper not to include that in the plans from which I was able to choose. And I'd have been sunk once my disease manifested. Which I nearly am as it is, so I know whereof I speak.

Thus is revealed the fallacy of running health care as a for-profit business. The free market is not a panacea for every economic problem plaguing mankind. When one is talking about health care, one is talking about life itself, the most fundamental of our inalienable rights. Second, the people who need health care the most (especially under the current system, where preventative care and early detection are not necessarily covered) are the least able to afford it--for they are already ill.

The entire point of insurance is to spread the risk so broadly that everyone's costs come down. This won't happen under present "health-care reform" suggestions like health savings accounts (HSAs). Those who don't need health care will amass savings, while those in the most dire need are unable to, because whatever money they have is already paying for prior health-care services rendered. The net result? A segregated society: those who have good health and money on one side; those who have poor health and no money and declining care due to same on the other. In the long run, this will be slow genocide, or Social Darwinism run entirely amok.

If the goal truly is to solve the problem, a national health insurance plan that covers everybody is inevitable. That is the only way to spread the risk widely enough to ensure that no one is bankrupted by one debilitating, chronic illness . . . which is all too often exactly what the chronically ill are forced to suffer now. Which means no more "for-profit" health care, which means government must run the program. (1) National problems require national solutions; (2) "government" is not a dirty word; (3) therefore, if we truly are united in society to further our collective rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," we need to start thinking and working together to solve the problem instead of limiting ourselves to letting "the market" literally kill off the unlucky.

An Olympic Observation Of Little Or No Consequence

Did anyone notice that the Italian National Anthem sounds an awful lot like an opera chorus?

Actually, I thought the Italians did a lovely job of hosting the recent Winter Olympics. I just couldn't help but giggle quietly to myself whenever their anthem played. I kept expecting to see "The March of the Toreadors" from "Carmen" . . . or Spike Jones's version of same . . . or PDQ Bach's "Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice, An Opera In One Unnatural Act" . . . or Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd performing "The Rabbit of Seville."

I am totally ashamed of myself.

As well I should be.

I'm continuing to giggle anyway.

A Darwin Award Candidate In Omaha

OK, so technically the guy doesn't really qualify as a Darwin Award candidate. He destroyed neither himself nor his ability to produce progeny. Still, if he keeps doing the kinds of things he recently did, he'll get there soon enough.

Our hero was working on his car in his detatched (thank goodness) garage one recent morning. It was cold, and he had a propane heater on in the garage. He decided to warm a can of red (of course) spray paint before using it to touch up the front end of his car by leaving it atop the propane heater.

You can guess what happened.

The can exploded, knocking the garage off its foundation, buckling the garage door, displacing part of the garage roof, giving our hero second degree burns on his hands and face, and imbedding itself into a cross beam in the garage's ceiling.

The warning on the can that its contents are both flammable and under pressure is easily read on the part of the can protruding from the cross beam.

Masking tape that our hero had placed on parts of his car also caught on fire, which our hero dutifully extinguished before he was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center by ambulance.

He is lucky to be alive. The auto insurance industry is again vindicated in its collective decision to charge drivers of red cars higher rates, as they tend to take more risks than most people.

I wonder whether our hero's vechicle was a sports car, a truck, or an SUV.

In any event, if the rest of us are lucky, we won't (literally) run into him when he decides to make his candidacy for a Darwin Award more than the "honorable mention" kind.

Some Questions I'd Like Dubya To Answer

So the State of the Union is very good? Which Union is that, anyway? Certainly not the one I'm living in.

Dubya said last night that the US economy was robust and that our collective economic endeavors more than doubled those of the EU and Japan combined. And that we created an ungodly number of new jobs in the last year.

OK. But is creating a bunch of minimum-wage, no benefits jobs really better than losing all the high-tech jobs that US companies are outsourcing to other countries?

And is our economic performance so great when everyone I know is saying that they are having to work harder and harder, and do more and more tasks, in less and less time and with less and less support and benefits, just because the corporate powers that be are trying to improve their bottom lines?

And why is it that executive compensation packages keep getting better and better while more and more and more companies are announcing plant closures, layoffs, and other cutbacks?

What about the drag the federal deficit is putting on the economy? And why is it better to whittle away at the edges of the deficit by trying to minimize, restrict, or even curtail the already too small programs that really help people and then undoing any miniscule good that that might have done by increasing tax cuts for the already very, very rich?

And why is a 4% COLA in Social Security benefits such a good thing when the costs of things like Medicare premiums is at the same time raised by more like 33%?

Why is it that you persist in saying the free market is the best way to run health care, when it obviously does not work? People can't shop for medical procedures the way they can shop for cars--when they need services, they are not in any position to take their time, shop around, and bargain for the best price. The free market may work for people who are in excellent health and who just want to get the least expensive health care policy premiums possible, but in this day and age, with the very medical technologies we have to save and prolong lives that just a few years ago would have been lost, does that description even fit a majority of the population?

I'll say it again: health care, because it deals literally with people's lives, is part and parcel of the most important of our unalienable rights--those being "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"--thus it violates our birthright as Americans to put health care on a "you can get what you can afford to pay for" mentality.

It may not be a conscious decision, but to act in ways that will eventually limit health care to those incredibly lucky few who do not need it will have the same effect as out-and-out euthanizing the entire population of the disabled. Talk about Social Darwinism run amok!

(Silly me--I thought Social Darwininsm had been thoroughly discredited as a way to run a society.) Welcome to George Orwell's Brave New World, indeed.

Everyone Knows It's Wendy's

(With apologies to The Association)

Wendy's got a lot of sympathy last year once the news was out that the "finger in the chili" was a fraudulent extortion attempt.

Wendy's just wasted all that sympathy--and more.

Dan Mirvish, former Omahan, former speechwriter for US Senator Tom Harkin, and current independent film producer, recently got royally dissed at a Wendy's in Park City, Utah. He was there to host his annual Slamdance Film Festival, in conjunction with the more well-known Sundance Film Festival. He's also in a wheelchair at present, thanks to a broken leg.

He wanted a hamburger before going to attend one of the several late-night parties associated with the festivals, and the parking lot was icy, so . . . he wheeled up to the Wendy's in his chair. The dining room being closed, he did what any hungry and enterprising soul would do, and moved over to the drive-up window, which was still open.

The cashier then informed him they weren't allowed to serve "walk-ups" at the drive-thru. [What's wrong with this picture?--Ed.] So, he went off to his party, gathered together several of his filmmaker friends--with cameras--and then returned to the restaurant, whereupon restaurant manager "slammed the window literally in our face," according to Mirvish.

As if that weren't bad enough, the manager had also called the police, who drove up, lights flashing, and demanded that "You in the wheelchair--pull over!"

The police thereupon ordered Mirvish and his companions to leave.

Mirvish is considering filing some kind of complaint or lawsuit against Wendy's for violating the Americans With Disabilites Act. I say more power to him!

It would have been different had the Wendy's dining room been open, but under the circumstances, it's a slam dunk that Wendy's failed the ADA's requirement that commercial establishments provide "reasonable accomodation" to those with disabilities.

Wendy's spokesman Bob Bertini only made matters worse when he tried to defend the restaurant manager's behavior by saying that the "no walk-ups" policy had nothing to do with the ADA, and that it rather was a matter of public safety and security "particularly late at night, for employees and customers as well." [How nice that he included customers in his comments, considering that customers are the entire driving engine of Wendy's business.--Ed.]

Everything Bertini said is probably true, but is so insensitive as to be absolutely crass. I, for one, no matter how much I like Wendy's chili on a baked potato, will not buy from Wendy's again. Please join me in my boycott.

Back To The Future . . . Again

Did you watch "Lincoln" on the History Channel last Monday night? It was a 3-hour psychological biography, an extravaganza of speculation with a paucity of documentable fact. Still, it did have some good points. The most notable of these was Gore Vidal pointing out that Lincoln's abrogation of civil liberties during the Civil War was valid and genuine (after all, the Union's capital city was surrounded by if not "officially" enemy territory, "enemy sympathizer" territory). Most unlike Dubya's so-called War on Terror, making the point that citing Lincoln's behavior in support of Dubya's illegal wiretaps and other present excesses is both improper and invalid.

(Are you listening, Dick Cheney? Probably not, but that's OK. Jay Leno noted last night that having a bad boss increases one's risk of heart attack by about 33%. Cheney is certainly in trouble now.)

Anyway, back to the History Channel. I found a lot of things NOT to like about the program, the least of which was the use of wrong pictures to illustrate battlefield horrors. An oft-published picture of dead Confederates at Gettysburg was used during talk of the battle of Cold Harbor, for instance. There also was entirely too much MTV-type camerawork, hand-held and shaky, ostensibly giving us what Lincoln himself saw on the last day of his life. Trying to outdo Ken Burns, are we? This is not the way to do it.

My most serious complaint, however, is the amount of time wasted on speculating whether Lincoln was gay. The world was a very, very different place in the 19th century; the fact that two males shared a bed for years--and were open about it--most emphatically proves they were NOT gay. All things sexual were taboo in the Victorian Age. The very fact that we know Lincoln and Joshua Speed shared intimate quarters establishes that there was nothing at all sexual in their relationship. Besides, many practical reasons existed for sharing sleeping quarters in those days: heating systems were not so good as they usually are now, for one thing. And in hotels and rooming houses and the like, it was much more affordable to share a bed than to rent two. Heck, we have copious examples of Victorian Age men and women sharing beds without the benefit of clergy, and we know there was absolutely nothing sexual about it in those cases, either. Why should this be any different? To interpret this one case differently because a venerated American was involved smacks more of the interpreter's political agenda that it does of valid historical exegesis.

As for the admitted sentimentality and emotionally open nature of their personal correspondence? Well, again, the 19th century was a different age. Sentimentality was a prized Victorian Age virtue. The fact that men could express their emotional attachment for one another does NOT indicate that they had some deep sexual relationship. It means they were best friends during the middle of the 19th century.

Our rush to put a Freudian interpretation on everything does not serve us well. It speaks volumes about our own collective hang-ups and enlightens not at all when applied to history. We need to remember that Groucho Marx was right: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I must admit that the History Channel did include one historian who noted that all this business was speculative and in the eyes of most traditional historians not worth much, as it has little (if any) support in traditionally-used documentation/evidence. This opinion was, however, insufficiently emphasized given the overall perspective of the program.

One final complaint. The program glossed over much too glibly about how Lincoln had to struggle to get ahead of the curve of public opinion on the issue of slavery and the rights of American blacks. It suggested that Lincoln was always opposed to slavery per se, which is not true. He began his political career opposing not slavery, but the expansion of slavery into what were then US territories. He most emphatically hated Stephen A. Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened the slavery can of worms in territories North of the Mason-Dixon line, undoing the infamous Missouri Compromise of 1820 and ultimately precipitating the Civil War, which actually if not officially started in "Bleeding Kansas" in 1857.

Lincoln's own pre-1860 speeches and writings establish that he did not consider blacks either the social or civil equals of whites. That Lincoln moved so far ahead of popular opinion in such a short time, and in fact by the end of his life supported voting rights for blacks, was not given enough attention. The program implied he was there from the beginning, and that just isn't correct.

Still, I can't complain entirely. The History Channel did note that it was Lincoln's final public speech, from the balcony of the White House shortly before he was killed, advocating giving voting rights to blacks (OK, black men), that got Lincoln killed in the first place. John Wilkes Booth was there; he heard that speech; he was an avowed racist; he thereupon said that that was the last thing Lincoln would ever say on the subject; he then carried out his heinous plot to assassinate the president.

I must also note that the (mostly black) historians who castigate Lincoln for not being totally against slavery from Day One are just as wrong as are those who omit the evolution of Lincoln's opinions on the matter and who call him the Great Emancipator from Day One. Lincoln was a product of his age, after all. He was born in a slave state (Kentucky); he had his prejudices and misconceptions, as do we all.

Nevertheless, he learned. He grew. He changed his mind as he realized the greater significance of events. Furthermore, he was willing to say so unambiguously and in public. This is what sets Lincoln apart, and this is why I for one admire him so much. He was not perfect. No one is. [As my mother is fond of saying as she stretches her arms from side to side like a cross, "Remember what they did to the last perfect person."--Ed.] But he embodies that striving for "a more perfect Union" that is the very underpinning of the American Experiment.

So the History Channel program was worth watching, and I do recommend it to you when it re-airs, but please: watch it with a sufficiently skeptical eye and your mind engaged.

Riddle Me This

I was watching The Tonight Show last night, which featured Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segment. In case you don't know, this is where Jay goes out on the streets of LA and asks people questions. The answers (the ones aired, anyway) are usually ludicrous, and very often really, really dumb.

There is some greater significance behind this, however. I'm just not sure what it is. Is Jay implying that this is OK because the viewing audience can pat itself on its collective back for being way smarter than these people? Or is Jay implying that it's OK to be a total idiot because it will get you on TV?

I do not think that the people "featured" are just smart-mouthing stupid answers to get their 15 minutes of fame. Frankly, none of them look smart enough to be that devious/clever.

No wonder Dubya is president. >>>shudder<<<

Puh-leeze!

Craig Ferguson (The Late Show, on CBS) has called the History Channel "The Hitler Channel: All Hitler, All the Time." That, I like. It's funny. But then, so is most of Craig's stuff. Nevertheless, it is not in the strictest sense true. For example, the History Channel frequently airs various programs explaining and extolling the virtues of the so-called "Bible Codes."

I don't pretend to understand the details, but these "Bible Codes" have to do with groups of connected words found hidden within discrete biblical passages when one uses a computer search engine and considers letters a set distance apart. (The searcher sets the distance in each instance; the only rule is that once the distance is set, it cannot be changed within the confines of that search.)

Proponents of these "Bible Codes" say that they are so complicated and detailed that they cannot be accidental, that the hand of God is obviously at work, and that no other literary work can duplicate or even come close to producing similar results. I know of at least one group of scientists who disproved this last point using Moby Dick, but there are substantial other reasons to doubt the presence of the hand of God in these "Bible Codes."

For one thing, just because we can look at clouds or stars and see pictures, patterns, or constellations, does NOT mean that those things are there. They came from our own individual creativity/imaginations.

For another, I cite the magician Penn Gillette, who said (regarding Nostradamus, but the point is just as well taken in reference to the "Bible Codes") that if these things were really there, we should be able to use them to predict, and thus forestall, impending disasters. But if we can see the events only after their occurrence, we again are imposing our vision on something that may or may not--but most probably does not--predict anything.

Hindsight is, after all, 20-20.

So why is it that the History Channel can go from running the occasional informative, smart, and insightful program to running this crap over and over and over? Doesn't anyone there exercise any editorial discretion?

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I do not frequently find myself in disagreement with Rainbow Rowell, but her column in today's Omaha World-Herald disappointed me. The students at Bellevue East (my alma mater when it was just plain Bellevue, by the way) staged a protest when the faculty and staff started strict enforcement of the school's dress code, and last Friday sent home everyone wearing ripped jeans.

The poor babies! About 200 of them staged a protest on Monday. While I do agree with Rainbow that their organizational skills are impressive, I find I have absolutely NO sympathy for the students and their alleged plight.

I guess I am turning into an old geezer or an old coot, but I remember when the Bellevue Public Schools dress code would not let females wear pants--even in freezing cold weather, girls were not allowed to wear pants while walking to school, even if they changed into proper dresses once at school.

In the ensuing decades, the dress codes have gone from being overly strict to being utterly non-enforced. Now, the pendulum is swinging back to center, and the students of 2006 are paying the price.

Even Rainbow had to concede that jeans so ripped that one's "unmentionables" were visible should not be allowed. I hope that she'd further stop to think that there's no easy way to draw up a dress code that would allow for SOME but not all ripped jeans . . . and so the smart and simple thing to do is to ban ripped jeans, period.

OK. I know the ripped jeans of the "Oughts" are the long hair of the Sixties. Still, long hair could be kept neat and clean, which by definition is impossible to do with ripped jeans (clean, maybe . . . neat? No). I also know that kids want to bug their elders, that they need to bug their elders, and that every generation finds its own "badge of honor" with which to do so.

Doesn't mean I have to like it. I think ripped jeans show an incredible lack of respect for not only the school and one's fellows, but mostly for one's own self. I am appalled that these kids' parents are supporting them and casting aspersions on the school.

On the other hand, I have always said that the Baby Boomers did a generally horrid job raising their children . . . mostly because we wanted to be their friends, not their parents (which doesn't work), and now our children's children are even worse off than we made our kids.

I thus am now officially a coot. Does this mean I have to relocate to Possum Lodge?

(In any case, I still don't see what's wrong with wanting to present oneself with a little dignity, class, and good taste. In that respect, at least, as compared to the students of 2006, who want to be different just like everyone else, I am still an iconoclast. Thank goodness!)

My Best Christmas

In the winter of 1964, when I was 7 1/2 years old, my parents and I lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Every Christmas we spent there was glorious, but 1964 was my favorite. You see, that was the year I first started having doubts about the existence of Santa Claus . . . and my parents conspired to reinvigorate my belief in that Jolly Old Elf . . . and it worked.

One of our family's Christmas traditions was to drive around town after dark on Christmas Eve, looking at everyone's lights and outdoor displays. In 1964, just as we climbed into the car, my dad ran back into the house to get his wallet (or so he said). He was gone for no more than one or two minutes, I swear. (Remember, being a Type A baby, I have always had a very accurate sense of time passing.) After he came back, he drove us throughout town, and finally up into the mountains to look over the entire city. It had snowed quite a bit that year, and it was beautiful, ethereal even.

Lo and behold! When we got back home, all the presents were under the tree!

I confess to being dumbfounded. My belief in Santa was solidified, for at least another year.

I found out only years later that my mom and dad had prepared all the presents and hidden them very close to the tree (which mystifies me to this day, as there wasn't really any place in the house we lived in to do that), and Dad had just moved them under the tree in one swoop whilst allegedly getting his wallet.

It was a magical Christmas, and to this day, remains my personal favorite.

I wish you all equally wondrous holidays!

This May Be Why Shakespeare Said "The First Thing We Do Is, Let's Kill All The Lawyers"

Have you been following the US Supreme Court case about whether colleges and universities can keep military recruiters off their campuses because of the military's policy of excluding openly gay people from service . . . without having to give up the federal funds and research grants they receive?

I do not like the military's main argument on the subject, which comes down to "you cannot discriminate against us just because WE discriminate." I do, however, confess to having some sympathy with the notion that the universities do not have any entitlement to get federal funds if they don't let the military recruiters do their jobs on campus on an equal footing with other potential employers.

The only possible saving grace for the universities' position is Justice David Souter's key observation that governmental restrictions on giving federal monies to universities which wish to protest the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy infringe on First Amendment free speech rights.

Still, it's a post-9/11 world, and a Neocon Gilded Age to boot. Methinks the putative free speech rights of a bunch of allegedly "wild-eyed" left-wingers will be trumped by the practical reality that no institution has a RIGHT to get research grants and funds from the federal government. This is not unlike the case of unfunded federal mandates, wherein the government threatens to withhold, say, highway funds from any state not participating in some grandiose federally sanctioned goal, like "No Child Left Behind." No one is required to participate, but no one who refuses to participate gets any of the goodies tied to participating. It's the state's or university's choice. [Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.--Ed.]

Of course, as a further practical matter, no university can afford to forego the massive amount of federal funding it receives. The federal government pumps something on the order of $35 billion--with a "B"--into supporting American colleges and universitites every year.

So the federal government's position is little more than legalized extortion. The most amusing aspect of this is that the Neocons don't like unfunded federal mandates--when the mandate is for something the Neocons disagree with on a philosophical level. Despite what they claim, they are not opposed to unfunded mandates per se.

Another hard case is going to make bad law. First Amendment considerations should be paramount, but since the military is involved, and we are in a post-9/11 world, national security and the adverse effects of the universities' stands on military recruiting may tip the balance. I can see the Supremes ruling in favor of forcing the universities to shut up and accept the monies and the recruiters, or to keep protesting and take a catastrophic hit in their budgets.

What we really need to do is elect people who can force a change in the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. How many "Rs" are in "fat chance"?

Requiescat In Pace

Last night's Omaha World-Herald reported the death, at age 89, of Dr. James A. Rawley, professor emeritus of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I am deeply saddened by this news. I took a 400/800 Civil War seminar from Dr. Rawley in the second semester of my junior year at UNL; his own specialty was Civil War politics, and one of the requried books for the course was his own analysis of politics in bleeding Kansas between 1857 and 1860. He was an exceedingly kindly human being with a beautific smile, but a tough, tough instructor.

He bled red ink all over my term paper for that class, wherein I had explored whether Lincoln had maneuvered the South into firing the first shots of the Civil War, and whether it was a good or bad thing that he did so. I came to the conclusion that he didn't, but that the question was actually irrelevant anyway, and supported that notion with a great deal of deductive reasoning from the evidence I'd discovered in the source documents I'd used in my research.

Despite the red ink, Dr. Rawley gave me an A, and told me I was a born historian . . . doubtless the greatest compliment I've ever received in my life.

He was a treasure and an inspiration. He will be missed.

You Are Sixteen, Going On . . .

Stupidity. My apologies to Rogers, Hammerstein, Julie Andrews, and all the other cast and crew of The Sound of Music.

There's been a bit of a dust-up in the Letters to the Editor of the OmahaWorld-Herald lately, all about whether there exists any right to privacy in our system of government.

While the consensus seems to be "No," and while that concensus is wrong, the arguments for and against it are both totally incompetent.

This is news?

One writer claimed there should be a right to privacy because no one needed to know or care about what prostitutes do . . . and the stinging reply, from a 16-year-old girl, says that since no one wants to commit crimes except in private, "of course there is no right to privacy."

Both writers missed the point. Criminal laws, enacted by the legislature of the appropriate jurisdiction and enforced by the police apparatus of the said same jurisdiction, supercede any right to privacy that exists for those activities.

However, there are in addition many, many things that people want to keep private that are NOT statutorily defined crimes, and thus are protected by a right to privacy that I, for one, believe exists. (More on that in a moment.) I don't want anyone watching me while I am doing my business in the bathroom--no one else wants to watch, either, believe me--but that does not mean that I have no right to privacy in that space, as long as what I am doing has not been statutorily defined as being a crime.

In other words, it works very much like the 10th Amendment: whatever is not specifically defined and allowed or defined and forbidden is left to the people.

The Founding Fathers did not live in the 21st century: they did not think with a vocabulary that included "privacy" the way we use it nowadays. That does NOT mean, however, that they did not intend for us not to have any right to privacy. Consider the Bill of Rights. If one looks at govnermental behavior that is prohibited, a lot of it has to do with intrusions on an individual's home or person. If the government cannot force you to house soldiers without your consent, and if the government cannot force you to testify against yourself, that means that you can keep the government out of aspects of your life (that aren't specifically defined as being criminal, that is). What is privacy if not that?

Besides, there's always that pesky 10th Amendment to consider. And since "privacy" is nowhere in the US Constitution mentioned as being subject to governmental restriction, it therefore is left as a right to the people. How's that for using the argument of "original construction" against those who mistakenly perpetrate it today?

If the Constitution cannot live and breathe, it can no longer govern us effectively. It is not the same world it was in 1789; unless you're willing to go back there, in ALL things, you cannot restrict the document to what its words meant in 1789 . . . the Founding Fathers were not omniscient, and they, at least, were smart enough to know that. Which is precisely why they drafted the Constitution as they did, so that it could flex and grow and still be relevant as the world changed around it. Heck, if we are going to limit ourselves to original intent, we do not need a judicial system at all. Why people like Antonin Scalia cannot figure that out is beyond me.

Miscellaneous Musings, Part Deux

Kansas (Kansas!) whomped Nebraska last Saturday, 40-15, in Lawrence. As my eldest cousin from Salina said, "Rock, chalk, Jayhawk!" Or, as I said, "Ick poo."

The general tenor of the letters to both the sports and main editors of the Omaha World-Herald is that if Frank Solich, 9-3 in his last season as Nebraska head coach, with a bowl game to show for it to boot, was mediocrity, what in the heck is this? After all, this is the first time Kansas beat NU in Lawrence in something like 36 years. The team is now in serious danger of going 5-6 two years in a row. People are saying that the 40+ year Memorial Stadium sellouts record will go next. Nevertheless, a stadium addition is already under construction.

Athletic Director Steve Pederson says that fund raising for the addition is on track, even though only about 40% of the projected total has been pledged. The director of fund raising, whose name escapes me at the moment, is complaining that the fans aren't supporting the team. Head Coach Bill Callahan is under so much stress that he got fined and reprimanded for making a throat-slashing gesture to an official during the Oklahoma game. (Could you see Tom Osborne or Frank Solich doing that? I don't think so.) The current crowd running NU football is living in a fantasy world weirder than even the one Dubya inhabits. And NU is the poorer for it.

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Speaking of fantasy worlds in football, Philadelphia Eagles receiver (and all around pain in the neck) Terrell Owens finally apologized yesterday for both physically and verbally beating up on his teammates last week. Or, at least I think it was supposed to be an apology. All he seemed to say was that he was a complex person, yada yada yada. His agent had to get up to the microphone and explain that Terrell was in fact apologizing.

I got news for you, honey--if you have to explain that it's an apology, it ain't no apology.

(Pardon the bad grammar there; it was intended for effect/emphasis.)

At least the Eagles have (finally) seen the light, and will not have T.O. play for them ever again. The real sorrow of the situation is that there is some team out there in NFL-land desparate enough to win to think it can put up with T.O. and his bulls*** to get victories. Don't these people ever learn?!?!?!

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And now for something completely different: after seeing a repeat of an "Austin City Limits" broadcast a couple of weeks ago and after having listened once again to "Mellowgold," "Mutations," and "Odelay," I have come to the conclusion that Beck is either channeling Jim Morrison or is Jim Morrison reincarnated. He even looks like the infamous Doors' frontman.

Maybe you had already figured that out, but it was a revelation to me!

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One of the more amusing local controversies lately has been all about reported sightings of mountain lions--IN town, be it Omaha, Papillion, Ralston, wherever. Every single sighting was unconfirmed, however. The police and the Humane Society personnel responsible for dealing with the reports have pooh-poohed every claimed sighting, too, saying in print that people were most probably "see[ing] a bobcat or a big dog like a retriever."

Right. Now that a dead mountain lion (hit by a car or truck, most likely) was found over the weekend along I-80 by the Gretna exit, all those who reported sightings feel vindicated, and the police and Humane Society personnel are saying they really do "take every report seriously." But given their earlier published statements, that's hard to believe. Further, the cop who went to get the mountain lion carcass on Sunday admitted that while he was on the way to its location, he was sure he was going to find a dead deer. With friends like these, . . .

In case you'd like to know, the mountain lion was a young male, around 2 years old, 6 feet, 6 inches from nose to tail, and weighed about 100 lbs. He had porcupine quills stuck in his legs, so the police believe he traveled all the way in from Colorado or Wyoming. Porcupines are not common in Nebraska, you see. Hmm . . . neither were mountain lions--or so I thought.

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And now for something else completely different: recent scientific studies confirm that men's and women's senses of humor are quite diverse. As the Associated Press reported yesterday, "[a] research team led by Dr. Allan L. Reiss of the Stanford University School of Medicine reported its findings in [the November 8] issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The researchers were surprised when their studies of how the male and female brains react to humor showed that women were more analytical in their response, . . . with the aim of determining if [something] was indeed funny. . . . Men [use] the same network in the brain, but less so . . . . Men are less discriminating."

Dr. Reiss went on in a telephone interview with the reporter to note that men love the Three Stooges, while women gravitate more toward humor in narrative form and stories.

I wish I could talk to Dr. Reiss. I think he's onto something, but has missed the exact center of the target. I like slapstick as much as anybody, but I don't care for the Stooges. They're not funny--they're mean! Compare them to Laurel and Hardy, who could put together extreme slapstick themselves. The Stooges don't have any underlying caring or affection for one another, unlike Stan and Ollie, who obviously cared about each other even when Ollie was in the midst of smacking Stan upside the head and giving him holy hell about something.

Besides, some of our greatest humorists in terms of narrative and story-telling have been men: Mark Twain, Bill Cosby, Garrison Keillor--even Steve Martin has grown into it, with stories like "Shopgirl."

I dare to suggest that further research would probably show that it's factors other than the type of humor per se that mark the differences in the sexes' reactions to same.

**********

While we're on the subject of humor: (1) Dubya's command that everyone in the White House, even Karl Rove, take an ethics refresher course. That's a knee-slapper! I've taken a few ethics courses. Most of the guys in them have seemed to be more interested in finding out how to skirt their ethical obligations without getting into trouble than in learing how to live up to said obligations in the first place.

(2) Dubya's nomination of Samuel Alito to the US Supreme Court. There's a real "be careful what you ask for, you just might get it" moment for everyone who opposed Harriet Miers's nomination--other than the neo-cons, that is. George Orwell would have loved those guys. Black is white, up is down, striking down laws passed by Congress is not judicial activism . . .

As I have said before, judicial activism takes place only when the judges involved rule counter to your wishes. When they agree with you, they are interpreting, not legislating from the bench. Yeah. Would you like to buy a bridge in Brooklyn? I have one for sale . . .

(3) The creationists are at it again, trying to insert "intelligent design" as a required teaching element of science classes. Eight of the nine old white men who tried it back East somewhere (I apologize for being fuzzy on the details--I wasn't fully awake when I heard the news this a.m.) got voted out of their school board positions as a result. The ninth was not voted out only because he wasn't up for reelection.

And it's back in the curriculum in Kansas . . . will these people ever realize that "intelligent design" by definition is NOT scientific and therefore has no place in a science classroom? ("And yet the Jayhawks stomped on the Huskers, so what does that say about us Nebraskans?" she added, tongue planted firmly in cheek.)

Do the proponents of "intelligent design" even have a clue as to the damage they are doing to the future of this country? If we raise a generation or two of people who can't tell religion from science, we are going to lose our place as a leader in research and technology . . . talk about stupidity in action!

Then again, I shouldn't be surprised. These are, after all, the same people who say that just because the exact phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, it is not a constitutional mandate. And then they quote the First Amendment part that says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" ostensibly to prove their point.

I'd sure like to know what drugs they are taking. I could use a break from reality myself.