In your face Christianity

David McGrath has an interesting commentary in today’s Chicago Tribune about a gigantic white cross that looms over the prairies in southern Illinois. (The photo isn’t on-line, but it can be seen for miles.

But there's a different kind of feeling as you approach the Effingham interchange, about 225 miles south of Chicago, when you first catch sight of the 198-foot white cross that scrapes the sky. You get a chill. It's a reaction to power, or what might also be called intimidation.

Having been raised a Catholic, I don't usually find crosses scary. Their historic use for execution notwithstanding, crosses have connoted hope, compassion and the triumph of good over evil, or over vampires, at the least. You see lots of them poking unobtrusively above the neighborhoods as you drive the Dan Ryan and Kennedy Expressways and the feeling you get is a positive mix of reassurance and community.

But the steel "Cross of the Crossroads" punctuating the junction of I-57 and Interstate Highway 70 in the center of Illinois, does not induce the same warm feelings. Rather than beckoning from the distance, it towers as close to the highway as the Illinois Department of Transportation would permit, hovering over passing motorists, its white sheet-metal panels reflecting the glare of sun in order to command attention, to shout and to bully with its message of Christian morals.

Its intent is starkly different from what used to be called debate in this country, when individuals and groups would profess and explain their views and beliefs. They'd show their earnestness by clinging to those beliefs and attempt to persuade through example.

But, unfortunately, many radical Christians on the far right act in very un-Christian like ways as they attempt to force their beliefs on others. They are arrogant and they are mean-spirited bullies – certainly not something that we used to think of we the word “Christian” was used. That has changed.

For it's apparently no longer enough to express an opinion, or to simply be noticed, like those multiple churchlike spires decorating the Chicago skyline. Today's activists, after the fashion of the Effingham behemoth, demand conversion.... We have begun to confuse free speech with some perversely perceived expectation of compliance. It's the ultimate in politically correct arrogance, the assumption that my agenda should be your agenda.

But it must stop, not only because it trespasses on the rights of others, but because coercion is destructive and, ultimately, unsuccessful.

Exactly, being nasty toward someone is hardly going to convince them to convert to your religion, this is a very destructive aspect of the radical religious leaders so prominent today. I hope that someday, they’ll learn that and go back to trying to change others by example, but I don’t think that’s likely. This sort of behavior has become integral to their version of Christianity. How embarrassing for other Christians, who are trying to lead by example.

The state of journalism

Molly Bingham is a journalist who has written an excellent editorial that raises some questions about the state of journalism in this country today.

She asked the questions other journalists were unwilling or unable to ask.

We spent 10 months in Iraq, working on a story, understanding who the people are who are fighting, why they fight, what their fundamental beliefs are, when they started, what kinds of backgrounds they come from, what education, jobs they have. Were they former military, are they Iraqi or foreign? Are they part of al-Qaida?

Those sound like important questions – and certainly legitimate questions that we should have answers to. But she found out not only about some of the people who are fighting against us, but also about the state of mind of those on “our side.”

Along these lines, the other thing I found difficult was the realization that, while I was out doing what I believe is solid journalism, there were many (journalists and normal folks alike) who would question my patriotism, or wonder how I could even think hearing and relating the perspective "from the other side" was important....

To seek to understand and represent to an American audience the reasons behind the Iraqi opposition is practically treasonous.

Liberals often criticize journalists in the MSM for not doing their job – and rightly so – but there is another aspect to this. A good junk of the American people don’t want to hear any bad news, they don’t want to know what’s really going on – they just want to feel good about their country and the way things are going. And journalists who don’t oblige are regarded as treasonous.

This attitude, although it is expressed with great bravado is actually the zenith of insecurity.

Parody is dead

I thought for sure when I saw this that it was a parody, but it’s not. Yes, the “Christian” fish symbol with BUSH inside and “one nation under God” is for real, and you’ll probably be seeing it on cars at some point.

Now they say at the site that this just means that the person sporting these magnets is a Christian who supports Bush. But it comes darn close to making Bush a Christian icon, and a symbol of Christianity – or at least a symbol of a Christian America. It’s just a little bit scary.

This is happening more and more. When I see something I think has to be a joke or a parody, the right-wing lunatics go and prove me wrong.

Social Insecurity

It’s hardly a secret that some Republicans have been trying to destroy Social Security since its inception. But it is news that George W. Bush has held that view since he was a college student, and that he regards it as a “socialist” system. No wonder he wants Janice Brown as a judge – that’s her view too- to repeal the New Deal.

Yoshi Tsurumi was Bush’s professor at Harvard and had this to say about Bush:

Thirty years ago, President Bush was my student at Harvard Business School. In my class, he called former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904, a “socialist” and spoke against Social Security, unemployment insurance, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other New Deal innovations. He refused to understand that capitalism becomes corrupt without democratic civic values and ethical restraints.

In those days, Bush belonged to a minority of MBA students who were seriously disconnected from taking the moral and social responsibility for their actions. Today, he would fit in comfortably with an overwhelming majority of business students and teachers whose role models are celebrated captains of piracy. Since the 1980s, as neo-conservatives have captured the Republican Party, America’s business education has also increasingly become contaminated by the robber baron culture of the pre-Great Depression era.

Bush is the first president of the United States with a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA). Yet, he epitomizes the worst aspects of America’s business education. To privatize Social Security, he is peddling a colossal lie about its solvency. Furthermore, Bush, along with today’s business aristocrats, shows no compassion for working Americans, robbing them to benefit big business and the very rich. Last year, due to Bush’s tax cuts, over 80 of America’s most profitable 200 corporations did not pay even a penny of their federal and state income taxes. Meanwhile, to pay for his additional tax cuts for the very rich, Bush is drastically cutting back several social services, such as federal lunch programs for poor children.

There’s more.

But some right wing bloggers show the true face of the nastiness of those intent on destroying the Social Security system.

The idea that those earning $25,000 annually or even twice that much, or three or four times that much for that matter, should be subsidizing seniors who apparently haven’t had enough ambition to drag their asses down to the Wal Mart and get a job as a greeter is ludicrous. (This is, after all, about all they could do for a career besides flipping burgers or shoveling excrement out of horse stalls, to average less per year than the paltry sum of $25,000.) But the notion that we are now going to turn Social Security into a third payroll tax for those of us who make $25,000 a year or more makes my blood boil.

Not only is that nasty, it’s dishonest. Because the $25,000 income that he’s talking about would be dividends from investment income from someone who obviously has some money, not what they made in a year while they were working.

But it does underscore the point that some of these people would like to punish poor older Americans and have contempt for them.

The only Darwinism they believe in is social Darwinism.

Bush answering questions?

Holland students actually had access to Bush? How’d that happen?

The Los Angeles Times had an interesting article about Bush actually answering unscripted questions from students in Holland. I was shocked – yes, shocked – that his handlers let this actually happen. After all, they would never think of allowing real questions to be asked of Bush in this country.

What I wasn’t shocked about was that reporters were asked to leave and that transcripts are not available. Now that sounds a bit more like the Bush we’re used to dealing with.

Success in Iraq?

Newsweek reports that “Some intelligence officials even interpret the recent bombings of Iraqi police stations and military posts as a positive sign. Successful attacks are just dumb luck, they argue, and the high casualty figures merely reflect the fact that growing numbers of Iraqis are putting their lives on the line against the insurgency.”

So, why am I not encouraged? Well, if attacks were down the neo-con intelligence officials who see this as good news would also see that as good news too. They see only good news, and that’s been true ever since they told us the Iraqis would welcome us with flowers and the oil revenues would pay for the war. It didn’t happen.

“‘The administration can stomach television images of Iraqis getting killed,’ says a former administration official who had a key role in Iraq policy. Images of American dead in comparable numbers would be quite another story. The war's approval rating is bad already.” continues Newsweek, “If it gets much worse, any other gauge of the counterinsurgency will seem irrelevant.”

And that’s the problem – there is no gauge of the counterinsurgency, there is no ruler to measure if we’re being successful or not, everybody has their own opinion on how to do that.

Perhaps these analysts are correct and we are making a lot of progress, but at this point we really don’t know just how we’re doing. And that will depend on how the Iraqis react to what their new government is doing. And, let’s face it, there will be a problem in Iraq if the images of Iraqis getting killed continues unabated for a long time. If these sort of attacks are continuing in the fall, we’ll know that these intelligence officials who are proclaiming this as good news were just desparately grasping at straws.

Does anyone know the difference?

Frank Rich has done it again.

Infotainment has reached a new level of ubiquity in an era in which "reality" television and reality have become so blurred that it's hard to know if ABC News's special investigating "American Idol" last week was real journalism about a fake show or fake journalism about a real show or whether anyone knows the difference - or cares.

No wonder many local TV news operations thought nothing of broadcasting government video news releases in which fake correspondents recruited from P.R. firms pushed administration policies; in some cases, neither the stations' managers nor journalists even figured out these reports were frauds.

There's not much I can add to that.

When a fake news show becomes our most reliable source of television news, we're really in trouble. With a capital T.