Quasi-Acerbic Oddities from a Quasi-Eccentric

Top 10 World Titles

1. Most overrated product: wine
2. Most overrated artist: Picasso
3. Always last to know: Hillary Clinton
4. Biggest waste of time: Bridge
5. Most acceptable rich, really rich person: Warren Buffet
6. Most Boring: Donald Trump
7. Most annoying: Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity (tie)
8. Product in greatest oversupply worldwide: T-shirts
9. The Abomination of Desolation: Prosperity Gospel
10. Least global need: Another list of 10 superlatives of anything

Wright and Obama: Prophets and Politicians

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. I Cor. 12:4

It is important keep in mind the distinction between a prophet and a politician.

A prophet speaks unvarnished truth to power, heedless of consequences, which can sometimes be severe. Ideals and norms can be enunciated without regard to their immediate practicality.

A politician is engaged in the art of the presently possible who, in a democracy, must get elected and thus must not unduly offend the prevailing sensibilities of the populace. Before power can be exercised, it must be attained. Hence, strategic compromises with truth and justice must be made along with wise silence, prudent avoidance of dangerous issues, and some pandering to local bias. The patriotic gestures must be observed, no matter how trivial, like wearing a flag lapel pin or making important pronouncements in front of a bank of American flags, and, if possible, accompanied by pictures if not the actual presence, of the lovely family of the candidate or official.

(EXCURSUS: Senator Walter George from Georgia said that for five years he could go to Washington and do his work. When reelection year came, he said he had to go back to Georgia and "shovel some sh**t." George was a savvy politician who knew how to play the game, but he knew when he was tossing the manure. As a sophisticated intellectual with integrity, Obama sometimes seems reluctant to follow this example. My advice to him: Get a good shovel and, without abandoning your call for a new politics, when the occasion calls for it, creatively, thoughtfully, enthusiastically, and pragmatically "shovel some sh**t. )

Jeremiah Wright is a prophet. Barack Obama is a politician. These gifts must not be confused. Some seem to think it is enough to explain black liberation theology and the prophetic black church tradition to the white population to make Jeremiah Wright acceptable for political purposes and to make him harmless to the Obama candidacy. Don't bet on it. The positive interpretations of Wright are mostly shared among his defenders, the converted testifying to the converted. If Obama wants to be elected in order to do the good he honestly wants to do and to achieve what is politically possible, he has to do whatever his integrity will permit to render the Wright issue impotent to wreck his candidacy. I hope it is not too late. The Republicans will use every dirty trick in the book to destroy Obama with this issue.

Those of us who work in the cultural arena (and that includes religion) must do the work of explaining, interpreting, and defending the role of the prophet. That is not politician Obama's task. He walks a fine line between getting elected and maintaining his integrity, i. e., keeping a proper balance between realism and idealism and between principles and pragmatism. (On this point, see my blog of April 29, 2008. My texts for today's homily are a repeat of those in the aforementioned blog.)

Is the politician, then, limited to present actuality with no power to transform the present into a better future? No, not a all. A strong leader must locate the places where growth and transformation are possible, areas and issues where a breakthrough is possible by creative vision and liberating action -- a kairos, a situation pregnant with new potential for justice and a greater social good in need of a midwife to facilitate the birth.

I am not a prophet nor a politician but a professor. My calling is to elucidate context, provide definitions, make distinctions, and to expose simplistic propositions that obscure complexity, ambiguity, and nuance, to puncture pretension, and to provoke deeper thought than usually prevails. I wish I had better gifts to do so. I am thrilled when someone tells me I have been successful in some measure in living up to my calling.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

The Mystery and Meaningless of Political Strategists

Where do all these political strategists come from? There must be thousands of them. Every day, it seems, a new batch never seen before shows up on the news stations . Are they being spontaneously generated in TV studios? Crawl out from rocks at night? They can be identified because they (1) nearly always repeat the party line of the day and (2) seldom have anything important or new to say. The worst situation is when a Dem. and a Repub. strategist are paired off against each other to offer a predictably partisan interpretation that adds nothing to understanding.

What accounts for this plague? Simple. The all-news stations have 60 minutes to fill every hour. They have at most 10 minutes of news, most of it old news repeated endlessly, and only occasionally new news. Breaking news breaks for 10-12 hours. They have roughly 20-25 minutes of commercials, and the rest is filled with commentary by resident pundits, network consultants, and imported experts. During the campaign season, i. e., nearly all the time, much of this time is filled by political strategists, except when there is a natural catastrophe, some medical story that is breaking in, Paris Hilton has been sighted (cited?), or a plane is in danger from landing gear not working, which brings out a multitude of immediately available aviation experts. Now and then, of course, we get to observe a highway chase, usually in California, that can occupy half a day. But mostly, these days we get to hear the vapid analysis of political strategists.

Message for Obama: Children of Light Need to Wise Up

For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. Jesus, Luke 16:8

Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Jesus, Matthew 10:16

Do not cast your pearls before swine lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces. Jesus, Matthew 7:6

Deceivers, yet true. Reinhold Niebuhr

A worthy politician needs to keep a proper balance between two sets of perspectives: 1. idealism and realism, 2. principles and pragmatism. Idealism without realism will end in cynicism and passivity. Pragmatism (doing whatever works) without principles leads to a naked struggle for power guided solely by self-interest.

1. Proper idealism means devotion to the true and the good, but not in a naive way that assumes mere moral suasion is sufficient to win the day. Ideals must be connected to interests and perceived needs. The power of the civil rights movement resided in the coincidence of justice and self-interest in black people. A few saints may prefer the interests of others to their own but not enough of them can be found to populate a mass movement. Idealism must be tempered by realism -- a recognition of the way things actually are in this world where people tend to prefer their own wants to the needs of others and seek present rewards for themselves rather than sacrifice for the present and future good of all.

2. A good politician, where good means both successful and devoted to justice, must be anchored in moral principles and a quest for the common welfare. Principles have to be flexible enough to conform to what can actually be achieved. Politics is the art of the possible. An idealistic politician cannot exercise power in behalf of justice without being elected. Devotion to justice must be tempered with wisdom about the way the world actually works. Principles without pragmatism yields no success. Success at all costs means a quest for power for its own sake rather than power as the necessary means for attaining good ends.

I think this is what the three quotes I began with add up to. The children of light must learn the ways of the world from the children of darkness without losing the light that guides them. They must be worldly wise like serpents as they battle the evil forces without losing their innocence and their ideals, remaining harmless as doves. They must even be seen as agreeing on some points with the children of darkness while in this deception remaining true to their fundamental moral principles and the quest for justice. It is foolish to give pearls to pigs, since they cannot possible appreciate them.

I learned politics in the segregated South of the 1930's and 40's. Candidates for governor of Georgia who embraced integration from the left got a few thousand votes, as did the extreme white supremacists on the far right. Any moderate who could be perceived as compromising segregation in the slightest was damned by his opponent -- usually successfully. So we either got strict white supremacists or moderates who pretended to be more orthodox than they were in order to get elected so they could do something for black people within limits of of the pragmatically possible. I never faulted the moderates for espousing white supremacy as long as I believed they would actually be better in practice than their rhetoric suggested, i. e., were deceivers yet true, wise as serpents yet harmless as doves, making use of the wisdom of the children of darkness in order to let in some light. It would have been foolish for an integrationist politician at heart to espouse this notion to white voters in Georgia in 1940, for they could no more understand this crazy idea than pigs can be awed by a precious pearl.

All this has become fresh with the mess Barack Obama finds himself in dealing with his "bitter" comments and the harm Wright. has done without doing wrong to Wright. He has not been at his shining best recently. Three brief comments based on the words of Jesus and Niebuhr.

1. Before he announced his candidacy for president, he should quietly have left the Wright church. If he didn't know about the extremist comments he now denounces, why didn't he? He should have known that the mean machine of the Republicans would make a "Willie Horton" event out of it. It is the kind of thing the blood-thirsty, audience-hungry, ratings-driven media loves-- controversial, emotional, involves conflict, and can be simplified, presented visually, and repeated endlessly.

We social gospel liberals with some knowledge of black liberation theology can understand and appreciate most of what Wright said, but trying to get a sympathetic response from white audiences generally is not a challenge to undertake in a political campaign, which the media translates into simplistic, distorting thirty-second summaries. Wright seems to me to be stuck at about 1970, and Obama cannot afford to repeat that fight as a politician in 2008.

2. He should not have offered a psycho-social analysis of the working class -- a muddled one at that -- to a privileged group in private in California. Didn't he know that nothing is private any more and that his words were toxic?

3. In his press conference today (4-29) he went further in disassociating himself from Wright than before. Why didn't he do this earlier? My theory is that Obama is a man of integrity who previously tried to include in his explanations all the nuances, complexities, and ambiguities in the situation. That is fine for a professor in the classroom -- which he was -- but not in a political campaign. I wanted to see more passion and some simple statements, e. g., "I have had it with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright." He used some strong language, but he appeared calm, controlled on TV. although reporters present on the scene said he was visibly angry. In any case, he should have thrown Wright under the bus earlier -- if he wanted to maximize his chances to be president, and I, for one, earnestly want him to be.

In Plato's Myth of the Cave the freed prisoner who has escaped into the realm of light, truth, and goodness from the dark cave where he could only see fleeting shadows on the wall was not able to make them out at all after returning to the dark cave and thus faced derision from the unenlightened prisoners because the enlightened one was not as good as they were at interpreting the shadowy figures on the wall. Want to know what this Myth means? Start over with the quotations from Jesus and Niebuhr.

Obama, Bittergate, Elitism, and the Historical Debacle

The truth is that among segments of the Democratic party there is an ugly elitism. Some highly educated, culturally liberal, affluent Democrats share a disdain of ordinary, working-class folks. They are viewed as racist, sexist, homophobic, flag-waving, gun-toting, unenlightened, religiously conservative foes of abortion. Truth is not altogether absent in this mental portrait of rural, small-town Protestants and urban Catholics. But the negative attitude toward them by elitist liberals at the feeling level is distinctly "elitist." Moreover, for Christians in this camp (I have known some), this unloving outlook is utterly unattractive and sad.

The larger historical background of all this is a tragic disjunction between the economic interests of ordinary working people which inclines them toward the Democratic party and their conservative cultural, social, and religious outlook which attracts them to the Republicans. It began when Lyndon Johnson signed civil rights and voting bills and, as he said to Richard Russell, handed the South over to the Republicans for a generation.

To those who believe that justice requires equality of race, gender, and sexual orientation without discrimination and more economic equality among social classes, this split has been painful indeed. We are puzzled that there is more tolerance of the greedy rich than of cultural and religious conservative folks among working class strivers.


The Republicans, who never tire of championing the money interests of the wealthy, have cleverly managed to portray themselves as the friend of the ordinary religious, patriotic American -- factory and office workers, small farmers, lower[paying service employees, etc, who usually. get paid by the hour. Their success in this endeavor is found in the stereotypical Southern Bubba and Northern Joe Sixpack who by economic interest should be Democrats becoming Reagan "Democrats," the "angry white men," who voted for Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I and II for racial, religious, and cultural reasons. Too often devoted to cultural diversity at the neglect of economic equality, the Democrats have lost a series of elections.

The asses of the Democratic Party have aided and abetted the Republican elephants by aligning themselves with a variety of liberal interest groups whose focus is on social and cultural values that puts them at odds with the conservative, white working class, small-town, rural, ethos of religion, patriotism, and tradition that may include bias toward minorities, immigrants, and others who are different from them. At them same time the Democrats moved toward the center on economic issues, becoming so friendly to business that the economic policies they offered were less attractive than the conservative social and cultural agenda of the Republicans.


Into this pile of historical, cultural, and political manure stepped Barack Obama so clumsily and so deep that he may not be able to shake it off his boots -- and will not succeed at all if Hillary Clinton and John McCain succeed in their demagoguery. Obama's remarks to a private group of the privileged about the less privileged contained such mangled thought and such a poor choice of words that it is hard to forgive him -- he should have known better.

I think Obama in his heart of hearts is sound in his empathy and identification with all races and classes, especially the less privileged. I hope he survives, but he better wise up politically lest his awkward bowling take its place in the cast of historical failures along with Dukakis in the tank and Kerry wind surfing -- all elitists. and losers.

Health and Mortality

During the last year doctors figured out several interacting issues I had and resolved them. Now instead of seeing doctors three or four times a week, I'm seeing them three or four times a year. Two have dropped me completely. That is progress for which I am grateful. However, I still check in with my mortician frequently just to make sure I am still alive.

Dr. Pepper and Wine: The Debate

Resolved: If all the wine in the world were turned into Dr. Pepper, there would be a net gain in taste.

Deja Vu a la Clinton

Headline
Bill Clinton: I didn't play the 'race card.'

Previous Headline
Bill Clinton: I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

William F. Buckley, Jr. 1925-2008

He was a conservative I hated to hate. I admired his perverse perspicaciousness, his clever pleonasm, his gifted periphrasis, his polysyllabic dexterity. He had no sympathy for antisesquipedalianism. Though he was wrong on many things, he charmed you with his style. and generally was not nasty to his opponents in intellectual combat. Born to wealth, he unashamedly enjoyed its privileges. He was personally gracious to his many friends and debated others with skill and good humor. His libertarianism did allow him to denounce the futile war on illegal drugs, which was one of the few point on which I found myself in agreement. A man of many talents, including playing the harpsichord, he will be missed.

Yawn -- Nader is Running Again

Ralph Nader is right on the issues, e. g., that we live in what is dangerously close to a plutocracy and that making Medicare universal is a better plan than either Clinton or Obama offers.

The only possible justification for his candidacy is that it would actually change the political climate in ways that would make what he advocates more politically feasible in the future -- his own reason for what he is doing. Will it? I doubt it seriously. But as long as he does not prevent a Democrat from being elected, let him have his say.

Should be be allowed in the presidential debates? Only if he qualifies in enough states to make him a possible winner and the reputable polls show convincingly that at least 15% of voters intend to vote for him.

King/Queen or President?

The way Hillary and Barack are quibbling over the details of their respective health care plans, you would think they were running for Queen/King, that the day after they took office they could by royal decree enact their version into law. Any policy either of them recommended could be rejected, modified, or put aside for one Congress prefers.

So all the debate about whose plan is better is a minor point at the moment. Each has strong points, and both have weaknesses. Either plan would be a lot better than any Republican President would support. Neither is as good as simply making Medicare available to everybody.

The question before us is whether Hillary or Barack should be the Democratic nominee, and that will not be settled -- and should not be -- on the basis of which has the better plan right now. Remember: we elect Presidents not Kings or Queens.

In any rational discussion each would acknowledge the valid criticisms against what they offer and merely claim that their proposal is on the whole better than the other's and the best that can be hoped for in the current political climate. Boy, am I a dreamer!

Suddenly Feeling Ancient

I always thought that "Golden Oldies" music was the good stuff from the 40's and 50's. I just learned that radio now uses the term to refer to the 1980's! Boy, do I feel old.

Why Obama is Winning

Obama has integrated his masculine-feminine sides. In Clinton one dimension is usually behind the other, and the integrated person is seen only sporadically. We never ask who the real Obama is. We often do ask that question about Clinton.

Barack is the woman who doesn't cry. Hillary is the man who sometimes does.

Obama can be soft in speaking of uniting, working together, going beyond the old he-man politics, cooperating, overcoming the past and seeking transformative change without destruction -- all in a deep voice and preserving his manliness. He has it together in a unified package – an authentic person.

Most of the time Clinton presents herself as strong, invulnerable, experienced, smart, tough, a battle-scarred veteran who has been tested by Republican dirty tricks, i. e., the well-prepared man who is ready from day one to send the troops into battle if necessary. Moreover, too often she comes across as cool and controlled -- a persona she has worked hard to project in this man-dominated world. Even worse she frequently gives the appearance of being programmed and calculating, careful to seem on both sides of every issue, offering something for everybody in her zone of support and offending as few as possible.

Behind that John Wayne exterior is a soft, vulnerable, human being with feelings who is hurt by being disliked and who can cry. For a brief time in New Hampshire and in her closing remarks at the Austin debate last night, this side came through, and it was appealing and persuasive. In these moments she was empathetic, genuinely concerned about hurting people and ready to champion their cause.

Oh, I know about the demographics, the fund-raising, the contrast between Obama's purple poetry and Clinton's plodding prose, the organizations on the ground, Clinton fatigue, and all that other stuff the TV pundits peddle ad nauseam. All this is important, of course, but I think the decisive difference that may get him into the Oval Office and her back in her Senate office is his ability to project persistently a winsome, compelling, unified personality, whereas the face she presents most of the time is losing and the appealing face that could make her a winning candidate is seen only now and then and too late..

PS: Maureen Dowd has the same idea (NY Times, February 24) but probably didn't get it from me, though hers is cuter. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/opinion/24dowd.html?hp

Word and Idea Stealing

Plagiarism is unacceptable. Therefore Clinton and McCain should give credit to each other when they make the same criticisms of Obama in almost the same words.

Thoughts on a Snowy Day: Happiness

Happiness: Happiness is the last day of the pledge drive on NPR. And today is the day. Pledge week on public TV and radio has been called "the fund raising equivalent of waterboarding." NY Times Magazine (February 17, 2008)

Dream Team in 08 Not Likely

No Clinton-Obama team:

Would you want to be Vice-President if Bill is in the White House all day and sleeping with the President at night? Naah! At the prospect BO would remember Cactus Jack Nance Garner's -- FDR's Vice-President --1933-41 -- statement that being VP is "not worth a bucket of warm spit." (The New Yorker, March 22, 2004, claims that he actually said "warm p*ss.")

Garner's dictum did not hold with Bush-Cheny and some other recent occupants, of course, but, if it were Clinton-Obama, it might become true again -- in fact if not in outward appearance.

But, on the other hand, politics makes for strange bedfellows, so Hillary-Barack in bed could happen (we refer here to "political" bedfellows, of course -- a clarification necessary whenever Bill is in the vicinity, since he has had some strange "non-political" bedfellows).

An Obama-Clinton team?

Hill and Bill playing second fiddle to Barack? Naah!

Theological Question

News Report: February 7, 2008
At least 55 killed in tornadoes in the South

Write an essay on one of the following:

1. Show how this event illustrates intelligent, benevolent design.
2. Show how this event expresses the love of God without appealing to ignorance, mystery, or eschatology.

Multiple Choice Test:

1. God caused.
2. God did not cause but permitted.
3. God neither caused nor permitted, in fact had nothing to do with it.
4. God could have prevented it but didn't.
5. God would have prevented it but couldn't.
6. None of the above.
7. I don't know. It's a mystery. (The coward's answer, permitted in my classes only on the first day.)

For the correct answer send $1.23 in a plain brown package containing a stamped, self-addressed envelope. For express service, send $1.79. For a 30 second personal lecture on the subject, park a 2008 BMW (any model) in my driveway and hand me the keys and title.

One Final Time: the God-Critics

Recent best-sellers by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens have urged the thesis that religion is bad and should be eliminated. I have had my say about this before, but today I administer the coup de grace.

Their intellectual sin is that, in the words of Alfred North Whitehead, they commit the "fallacy of misplaced concretion." They mistake an abstraction about religion for the whole of the concrete reality. They look at history and the present and find many reprehensible ideas and practices associated with religion and attribute them to religion. They take what they and many of us would regard as untrue and wrong, i. e., bad, and take that to be the essence of religion, its reality.

This neglects the fact that religion is always embedded in a cultural context and inexplicable apart from that setting. To abstract religion from its cultural setting is to mistake what is abstracted for the reality itself, i. e., "to commit the fallacy of misplaced concretion."

Remember Paul Tillich, "Religion is the substance of culture; culture is the form of religion."

In short, religion is more complex and ambiguous than the simplistic representations of the God-deniers.

Finis

Too Often the Media Lack Self-criticism and Are Ignorant of Their Ignorance

A free press is essential to a democracy -- to expose corruption in high places, to inform the public about important matters, and so on. Our press frequently fulfills its role well and is to be commended. But journalists tend to think of themselves more highly than they ought to think. (Like some preachers?) It is impossible to be totally fair and balanced since reporters and commentators are human beings with finite perspectives even when they try their damnedest to be competent and impartial. By the very choice of the topics they cover, they make judgments about what is important and what is not.

Two criticisms in particular:

1. They lack sufficient self-criticism. For example, long ago the major reporting agencies decided that the Democratic race was between Clinton and Obama. Edwards was not given the attention he deserved. They will, of course cry, "Don't shoot the messenger," but they forget that the media can shoot the candidate by their lack of attention. They don't just report reality, they participate in determining what people think is reality.

2. They are sometimes ignorant of their ignorance. Most would not attempt to say much about string theory in physics because they know how little they know about it. But they do not hesitate to speak freely about religion, politics, faith, separation of church and state, and the like. They lack sophistication but don't realize it. They lack depth of understanding and don't recognize the shallowness in themselves and others.

On religion and politics, e. g., they apparently can conceive of only two options: political decisions based explicitly on a particular set religious beliefs and a total relegation of religion to the private sphere totally divorced from political choice. They are apparently innocent of other "live options" (W. James) between and beyond this simplistic dichotomy. Note their typical approval of John Kennedy's statement to the Houston Baptist preachers in 1960, which actually is superificial and leaves unanswered what his "conscience" -- his guide -- is guided by. If it is not guided in any sense by his religious faith, then one wonders how broad and deep this faith is.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkhoustonministers.html

Mario Cuomo is a much better guide here. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mariocuomoreligiousbelief.htm

My advice is to journalists is this: Heed Socrates, who said, "Know thyself."

Question of the Day

Do we really want the Billary Clintons to be president of the United States again?

If Hillary does become president, maybe Bill, the ex-boyfriend of Monica Lewis, could teach a class on ethics to the female interns. He could make the point that shaking a finger vigorously for emphasis when lying does not work. Perhaps he could also give them some tips on how to get stubborn stains off a dress.