Avdat

Goodbye

2011-09-13T13:43:25-04:00

It's time to put this blog to bed. There are many reasons, not the least of which is that I am in the dissertation phase of my program, and I really ought to devote as much time as possible to that, not this.

Another reason is the "neither fish nor fowl" nature of this blog. I post sporadically on a wide variety of topics, which makes for neither quality writing nor a large readership. Eclecticism can make for a unique online voice, but I haven't worked hard enough to pull that off.

But there's a deeper reason, namely, dissatisfaction with the type of writing I've been doing here. This blog and its predecessor The Ivy Bush has been a place for me to vent. In fact, when I become a community columnist for The Charlotte Observer ten years ago, and they wanted to know which topics I would address, I replied, "Things that make me angry." I've needed an outlet for anger for a long time now, and the past decade has not failed to deliver occasions for anger!

But I realized this weekend that I need to quit venting. After composing the previous post, an admittedly bitter reflection on what's become of our country in the past ten years, I went to church Sunday, and our minister, in her understated and highly effective way, challenged us to let go of bitterness--whether it's directed at the hijackers or at anyone else.

And then I read Josh Marshall's post-9/11 reflections, which made me realize that I went for bitterness because it was the easy option. But the more appropriate option was probably silence. As Marshall notes, what is frustrating beyond measure is that so few people with such simple tools unleashed such a tidal wave of evil. And they died in the act! No opportunity for us to serve out justice. And rooting out a few terrorists from their caves did not render a satisfaction commensurate with our rage. So there was Iraq. Or, little Iraqs--people like me banging away at their keyboards at the other people banging away at the Iraqis.

But no more of that. For the indefinite future, I am only going to write what is either worthy of publication, i.e. higher quality stuff than blog posts, or what is worthy of being preached in congregational worship, i.e. free of snark and irony--the academic journal and the pulpit being the two places where I am most likely to address the public.

And if I do get angry, I will try to see whether my anger is justified or not, and put it to bed with truthful, loving words and focused, purposeful action.

Just what am I not supposed to forget this week?

2011-09-06T18:33:00-04:00

It's going to be a long week of 9/11 retrospectives. Some will be thoughtful, moving and/or eloquent. Others will be sentimental and/or jingoistic.

I'm puzzled by how many remembrances admonish us to "Never forget," as if that terrible day weren't seared into our brains forever. Absent a diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease, how could any of us who are old enough to remember 9/11 ever forget it?

I suspect that some of the calls to "Never forget" are more about justifying everything that's happened since 9/11. Well, I don't buy that.

9/11 doesn't justify torture. 9/11 didn't justify the invasion of Iraq. 9/11 didn't justify the orgy of consumption in the 2000s which we are paying for now. 9/11 didn't justify the maligning of Islam, a noble religion practiced by a billion people. 9/11 doesn't justify continuing to fight in Afghanistan, propping up a corrupt government long after the architect of 9/11 has gone onto his eternal reward--such as it is.

What I will remember about 9/11, aside from the sheer horror of the day, is how badly we handled it. When we looked to our leaders to rally us in the face of evil, all they could come up with was, "Go shopping." Living well is the best revenge, they say, so living large must be so much the sweeter!

Like sheep we obeyed. The 2000s were the decade of the McMansion and the Hummer, conspicuous consumption on a truly baroque scale. Why, we made the Greed Is Good 80s look like an era of Puritan restraint.

And that's partly why we're in the mess we're in. Take away easy credit and cheap energy, and McMansions and Hummers will put you in the poor house. People have talked about bin Laden's goal of bankrupting America. He's come close, but indirectly, not by miring us in a land war in Asia, but by miring us in second homes in Vegas that we could never afford.

I'll also remember this decade's unique cast of incompetent and immoral public servants. The boomers have MacNamara and Nixon and Kissinger; the Gulf of Tonkin and My Lai. Gen Xers have Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld; WMDs in Iraq and Abu Ghraib.

Young men join the military for a variety of reasons--love of country, hatred of the enemy, a scholarship, a paycheck, to see the world or test oneself in extremis. Some of these reasons are valid, others less so. But what we must never forget is that old men start wars for a variety of reasons--national security, fears real or imagined, vanity, ignorance, vengeance, meanness, lies. This seems to hold whether the cause is just or unjust. And every young man or woman needs to consider that before joining the military. I will not forget to tell my sons that unpleasant truth once they come of age.

I will also tell my sons that patriotism cannot be reduced to military service, for that would call into question the patriotism of the overwhelming majority of Americans who've never donned a military uniform--a strange proposition. I will tell them what the World War II vet John F. Kennedy said, "War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."

We owe members of the military love and respect as human beings created in God's image and capable of extraordinary courage. We also owe it to them that we do not send them into harm's way unless it is absolutely necessary. We owe them adequate health care to heal their injured bodies and minds. We owe to ourselves and to them the work of making the society they've pledged to defend more just and equitable. On all these counts, we failed them over the past ten years. We shouldn't forget that.

We shouldn't forget that the evil of the terrorists rubbed off on us. There's no consensus on torture in our society today, thanks to the illegal acts and fearmongering of our elected leaders, aided and abetted by the media. The Viet Cong water-boarded our POWs. If we'd won that war, we'd have convicted their leaders and generals for war crimes that ex-Bush administration officials brag about in their memoirs.

History won't forget. History will judge them harshly, and judge us all the more because we failed to hold them accountable. After all, it's not as if America at the turn of the 21st century is a feudal state, lacking the institutions and mentalities to protect human rights and due process. We're without excuse.

I also will remember how inadequate "our" religion has been in the face of "their" evil. We Christians seem to have had three choices this past decade:

The crusader mentality of the religious right.

The shrill hectoring of liberal Protestantism.

The "I'm so over politics" pose of the communitarians.

Roman Catholics have been on the sidelines, first paying lawyers to strong-arm victims of abuse and their families and then paying out to the same.

The religious right is quite wrong about bin Laden representing Islam. They're quite wrong to want to dish out in the name of Christ the same type of treatment Christ received in their favorite snuff film The Passion. Liberals are right about consumerism and militarism, but no one's listening. Blame it on the low Christology, I suppose.

Communitarians are right that that church needs to re-group before it re-engages, lest it lose its soul, but they never get around to engagement. In fact they poo-poo it. It's no accident that thoughtful young Evangelicals flock to Hauerwas. Evangelicalism careens between Theocracy and Quietism. Hauerwas's ouvre is really a "thick Quietism" that gives young Evangelicals a way to choose the path not taken by their Moral Majority parents without succumbing to a "Just Me and Jesus" sentimentality. But it doesn't give them a way to tell obvious truths like, "Election results matter."

Christians are ill-equipped to humanize politics these days.

Finally, we should remember the dead and their loved ones and friends. Remembering the dead is one thing that makes us human. And as the scripture says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep." But that should go without saying, shouldn't it?

If I sound bitter it's because I am. And yet, what right have I to be bitter? As Matt Yglesias is fond of pointing out, ours are the best times in human history. Is bitterness a conceit of the privileged?

I don't think so. Lamenting mistakes, missed opportunities and unnecessary death is appropriate, even given our relative comfort and affluence.

But despite all the stupidity and nefariousness of the past decade, some good things have happened. Americans put aside their age-old prejudices and elected a black man President. Quite apart from our bombs, Arabs are demanding democracy and reshaping their societies. Who knows how it will turn out? For the best, I pray.

Providence has its own tale to tell apart from the depressingly familiar narratives in the headlines and history books. We shouldn't forget that, either.

The GOP jobs market

2011-09-05T19:13:56-04:00

For you, is Labor Day 2011 a well-deserved day off from work? Or is it another tedious day of puttering about the house, sending out resumes and hoping that one day you'll rejoin the workforce? Either way, it's a good day to look back at how we got in this mess and take stock of what may get us out of it.

To make things easy we can compare two very different approaches to job creation, lying almost side by side in time and place. There's the liberal approach, which would have the government prop up the labor market with deficit spending, either by hiring people directly or by letting bids for all sorts of government-funded projects. We tried that in 2009.

And then there's the conservative approach, which favors cutting taxes, regulations and government spending in order to create a friendly environment for private sector job creation. Conservatives distrust fiscal stimulus because they believe that deficits and bureaucracies crowd out private investment. This is the approach we're trying right now.

And to make things even easier we have charts! From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, here's the unemployment rate from January, 2008 to June of this year:

From the Lehman Brothers collapse in September, 2008 to President Obama's inauguration the next January, the unemployment rate jumped nearly two percentage points. Remember, unemployment was already an intolerably high 8% the day he set foot in the White House.

Then came a series of typically liberal moves: the stimulus bill in February, Cash for Clunkers and the GM takeover in the spring. Allowing a bit of time for the pig to move through the python, when the full force of Obama's plan hit, the unemployment rate was flirting with 10%. And there it leveled off and began to dip a bit.

Then the Republicans won control of the House, and forced a more conservative approach. In late 2010 Congress extended the Bush tax cuts and cut the payroll tax. This year Republicans have forced budget cuts at the federal level. And what has the unemployment rate done? It's edging back up again.

Here's another chart that's useful for evaluating conservative economic policy. It compares private and public sector job creation so far this year:

As the stimulus money petered out, state and local governments began laying off people. But the private sector has failed to add enough jobs to keep up with population expansion, much less reduce unemployment . Not to put too fine a point on it, but the lousy job market is a job market designed by conservatives. Shrinking the bureaucracy hasn't kicked off a surge in private sector hiring.

But we knew that, didn't we? This is what John Maynard Keynes taught us: markets are not self-correcting. At times they need government intervention to get them back on track.

On the other hand, the best we can say about the liberal approach was that it was a kind of triage for an critically wounded economy, but by no means a cure. This is because the stimulus was not big enough. We now know that in late 2008 the economy contracted far more than economists or politicians were aware of at the time.

We don't need more tax cuts, because people will just save the extra money or pay off their debts. Indeed this is what they ought to do, but that won't put people back to work. Since neither consumption nor private investment is resulting in new hiring, the government needs to put people to work. In a big way.

And there's a big need. Our nation's roads and bridges are in terrible shape. Our schools are crumbling. We need a new electrical grid that will transport clean energy to homes and workplaces.

And we can afford it. On Friday, the real interest rate on the ten year bond fell to 0%. Bond purchasers are basically giving the U.S. an interest free loan. We've heard Republicans say so often, If the nation's households have to tighten their belts, so should the government. Well, if the nation's households were offered interest free loans they'd take them, wouldn't they? So should the gubmunt. Spend. Put people back to work.

And that's exactly what President Obama needs to tell Congress this week. Normally, he would have benefited from this clear contrast between two very different plans, but since he's acquiesced to GOP demands, he's on the hook for the economy, without the option of running against a do-nothing Congress. That can change, if he wants it to.

Art, baseball and health insurance

2011-09-04T10:52:55-04:00

My younger son loves to draw. And my minister has a great eye for talent. So she's commissioned him to create artwork for this fall's Sunday School class.

Well fall is just about here, but he hasn't delivered his promised creations yet. So yesterday Mrs. Avdat and I had to crack the whip.

Our son got rather upset. I reminded him that he'd made a promise, and he needed to keep it. This just made him more upset.

I said, "Son. You love to draw. Drawing is fun. Why are you so upset about completing this assignment?" He tearfully replied, "It's no fun when I have to do it!"

I remember this attitude. I've never been shy about public speaking, but in 8th grade Miss Mansfield dragooned me onto the speech and debate team. Simply because I was forced to do it, I hated it, and I was stubborn enough that I quit the team for two years until Mr. Earnest tracked me down two years later and said, "Now you will be on the forensics team." For some reason I couldn't say no to the man. And I wound up having a lot of fun and getting better as a public speaker.

Now bear with me. In some strange way, this reminds me of the ongoing resentment about the health care reform law. Specifically, the mandate to buy health insurance.

Having health insurance is great thing. And remember, if you can't afford it, the government will even help you buy it!

Yet there's this massive resentment out there that the government is going to force you to do something great, namely, get yourself some health insurance. Most of the people complaining, such as the editorial writers at the Times-Dispatch, are people who have health insurance and like having it. But being forced to do something you already love--why that's tyranny! Like making a young artist make art. Or making a young public speaker speak in public.

It's times like these when we need Crash Davis to remind us to chill out:

Baseball is fun. Making art is fun. Avoiding health care bankrupcy is fun!

Most but not all people complaining have health insurance. The other day I had a conversation with the man who lives under the bridge over Bellevue Avenue going into Bryan Park. He let it be known that the government has no authority to compel ctizens to buy a product. If the homeless doubt the constitutionality of Obamacare, then Houston, we've got a problem!

But he's mistaken. The courts have traditonally interpreted the interstate commerce clause extremely broadly. And there's no doubt that modern medicine is a form of interstate commerce. So if the government is going to force hospitals to treat all-comers (and any decent society wouldn't turn away the critically ill or injured because they can't pay), why can't it require its citizens not to be health care freeloaders?

Despite all that I imagine that the Supreme Court will strike down the individual mandate. Not because it's unconstitutional. Did you hear any conervatives bemoaning the constitutionality of the mandate when Mitt Romney was making it the law of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?

No, it's because conservatives are in no mood to compromise. When Democrats go so far as to endorse Republican proposals, like an individual mandate or cap-and-trade legislation to reduce CO2 emissions, Republicans simply repudiate their own positions and move farther to the right.

In the DSM there's a condition called Oppositional Defiant Disorder. We used to call it "Being a Teenager." I think the conservative movement in general suffers from this condition. Whatever Dad says is wrong, even if Dad agrees with us. Resenting being forced to do something you like is a classic symptom.

Today's treatment for ODD involves medication and family therapy, but in the old days parents treated their teenagers with reverse psychology. Like so.

So maybe the only way for Obama to enact his program is to get so far to the right of the Republicans that they'll start moving to the left. He could start by ditching Biden and tapping Ron Paul as his running mate.

The Fighter as model for mutual accountability

2011-09-03T19:04:09-04:00

There's a lot of great scenes in The Fighter, but this is my favorite. Dicky, just released from prison, approaches his brother Micky's girlfriend Charlene, seeking permission to coach Micky again, a role he'd lost due to bad behavior (language is rough, BTW):

Dicky of course is a knucklehead and a crackhead. Having a conversation with Dicky means being treated to a steady stream of one-liners, stale jokes and out-and-out BS. Like the prophet Amos, Dicky lacks the proper history or credentials for telling the truth.

But tell the truth he does! And it's not a self-serving truth. A lot of people try to excuse their sins by appealing to the ubiquity of sin, but that's not what Dicky's up to when he reminds Charlene of her checkered past. Dicky realizes that Charlene's absolute moral superiority in this situation is getting in the way of Micky's success in the ring. It's Micky that Dicky cares about. If before he had wanted to be in Micky's corner to overshadow him, now he wants to be there to help Micky shine. But not by edging out Charlene.

And give credit to Charlene for accepting the truth. Because she really does enjoy an absolute moral superiority over Dicky. She's in Dicky's world, but no longer of his world. Her "balcony view" of Micky and Dicky's dysfunctional family has been invaluable to Micky in terms of his making the right decisions about his career. And yet she acknowledges that this crackhead is speaking the truth. She acknowledges that she can't give Micky everything he needs.

We know that Dicky is clean and sober because in the previous scene he'd given his birthday cake to his erstwhile supplier while declining his invitation to "go upstairs." Charlene doesn't know that. But she is able to recognize the truth when she hears it, and that leads her to trust Dicky.

Which is an extraordinary leap of faith. Addicts are notorious liars.

Legitimate truth-telling is always disinterested, and good listeners recognize and assent to the truth wherever they hear it. I think that this scene is a model for Christian conversation. Minus the F-bombs, of course.

Jobs speech kabuki

2011-09-03T14:11:16-04:00

I know I'm late to this game, but about that jobs speech kerfuffle: so the President wanted to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night. And the speaker says, No you can't because you'd upstage my party's presidential debate. And they go back and forth about it. And then the President says, Fine. I'll address the Congress on Thursday night. And that's that.

So the Speaker gets to diss the President, which plays well with his caucus. And the President gets to look accommodating, which is how he perceives himself and wants to be perceived. Everybody wins!

Now that's some bipartisanship for ya.

Media hype

2011-08-31T21:38:26-04:00

I'm ambivalent about Howard Kurtz's Hurricane of Hype article which slams the media for fearmongering before Irene's landfall.

Yes, the media outlets do seize on the crisis of the moment like a pit bull on a mailman's cuff. And yes, this crowds out badly needed coverage of other important events (cough, cough; Fall of Tripoli; cough, cough).

Furthermore, it's entirely questionable whether stationing reporters on beaches is an exercise in good journalism or good entertainment. When the reporter screams into the mic, "It's too dangerous to be out here!" the message is, "Do as I say and not as I do," which amounts to waving a red cape in the face of jackasses everywhere (as this NSFW video shows).

All that said, Kurtz seems to argue that the media hyped the storm because it was forecast to hit New York, and since New York wasn't destroyed, the hype amounted to over-hype. Kurtz:

The fact that New York, home to the nation’s top news outlets, was directly in the storm’s path clearly fed this story-on-steroids. Does anyone seriously believe the hurricane would have drawn the same level of coverage if it had been bearing down on, say, Ft. Lauderdale?

And:

As the storm weakened, a tone of reality crept into the live reports. After heading to Battery Park, on the low-lying southern tip of Manhattan, CNN’s Anderson Cooper said: “There has been some flooding—not a huge amount of flooding, and some of the water is already starting to recede … It’s actually not bad at all.”

But there is always the prospect that something bad might happen soon. “Is Wall Street going to open tomorrow?” business correspondent Bob Pisani asked on MSNBC, the towers of the financial district behind him.

Well yes, New York is the media capital of the U.S., but it's also the biggest city in the U.S. When a natural disaster threatens the biggest city in the country, doesn't the shear number of people involved, to say nothing about the threat to the nation's financial infrastructure, demand a lot of media attention?

And the threat was real. Just two days before Irene made landfall in New York as a tropical storm she was a category three hurricane off the coast of Florida. The forecast called for a near direct hit on New York (which was accurate), and not much weakening (which turned out to be inaccurate). It takes time to evacuate highly populated, low-lying regions. They didn't have the time to wait to see whether or not their forecast would hold. I think they acted appropriately given what they knew.

All this ignores the fact that things have turned out to be quite bad outside of New York. Irene's death toll has climbed to 45. She racked up damages in the tens of billions of dollars. The flood waters have yet to recede. By any metric Irene was one of the worst storms in recent U.S. history. This is what Katrina has done--it's ruined us for A- and B+ disasters.

By their very nature the 24-hour cable news networks focus attention on "breaking news," have a regrettable tendency to gin up "breaking news" when there is none, and tend to ignore the larger context and the less dramatic, more chronic problems people face. A good example is last week's other natural disaster, the earthquake in Virginia. Media types freaked out big time over that, then promptly moved onto the next crisis.

It turns out that the earthquake needed less attention at the time, but needs more attention now. Although tens of millions of people experienced a highly unusual event, it didn't amount to a natural "disaster" for the vast majority.

And yet it is turning out to be a disaster for the locality of the epicenter and perhaps for the state of Virginia. Two schools in Louisa County were heavily damaged, perhaps beyond repair. And the nuclear power plant in Louisa was not built to withstand an earthquake of this magnitude, which raises questions about its present safety and the design of a third reactor proposed for the site. Rather than sending a reporter out for the inane "Man on the street" interview which features startling insights such as, "Wow! Everything was shaking!" media outlets need to be reporting on what's happening in Louisa and the implications for other communities.

Long story short: I'd like to see wall-to-wall coverage when its warranted, but more discernment about when its warranted. And some interest in the chronic not just acute crises we face.

Obligatory post on Bachmann's natural disaster comments

2011-08-30T19:04:57-04:00

A lot of what I post here is about politics or religion. So when Representative Michelle Bachmann labeled the earthquake and the hurricane a shot across the bow from God, that's just begging for comment, right? For the record, this is what she told a crowd in Florida last week:

I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending.

Now, there's at least two things wrong with this kind of statement. For one, when people identify some calamity as a warning from God, it seems like it's always somebody else who's getting warned. I'd be more inclined to accept anyone's reading of the signs of the times when they discern that it's their own ox that's being gored.

Second, and closely related to the first, Augustine said somewhere that the only nation's history that's utterly transparent to God's providence is Israel in its biblical theocratic phase. But for every other nation things are just a lot more murky.

We are told, in clear and unambiguous language, that God favored the House of David over the House of Saul. Also no locust plague in the Bible is ever just a locust plague. But we have no such clear instructions about partisan politics, public policy or the meaning of crop failures elsewhere, be they delivered by prophetic voice or act of God.

That doesn't mean that God's providence is invisible, but there is margin for error in one's discernment of the signs of the times. In very extreme cases it becomes abundantly clear which side God is on, but most of the time, as Abraham Lincoln told a group of clergy visiting the White House, we ought to be asking whether we're on the Lord's side, not glibly assuming that God is on our side.

That said, Bachmann is only articulating what a lot of average religious Americans think. They're reading the same Bible she is, and reading it as naively as she is, and are likely to conclude (contra Augustine) that the newspaper is as transparent to God's providence as Holy Writ. So the takeaway lesson here is for religious teachers to educate their people on how to read the scriptures in a pious but more sophisticated way.

Finally, Bachmann has departed from the script in such matters. What politicians are supposed to say in times like these is, "First responders are awesome; we're working with X, Y and Z to address the situation; we've seen the inherent bravery and generosity of the American people at work here, and with God's help we will persevere."

Either Bachmann doesn't know this script, or she's consciously departing from it. Either way, she's showing her political naivete here, not just her hermeneutical naivete. Voters don't want politicians to be their preachers. They want them to be believers (I think I've seen an opinion poll somewhere showing that atheists have a harder time getting elected than Muslims in our society), but not outwardly pious and mainly pragmatic.

Bachmann (and Republicans in general) are channeling Jimmy Carter here, our last Scold-In-Chief. Carter diagnosed the problem of his day as malaise--the existential emptiness of consumerism. Republicans have diagnosed our problems as the evils of debt, incurred by deadbeat homeowners or the government on behalf of selfish, lazy citizens. Both approaches tell people, You're only getting what you deserve.

I imagine we are to blame for the mess we're in, not just the banks or the politicians or our neighbor who got foreclosed upon. But most people don't want their Presidents saying such things, either because they doubt his/her competence in that arena or they'd rather not be held accountable. And that's why Bachmann isn't a viable general election candidate, even if Obama can't or won't do anything to revive the economy by next year.

A body that TSA screeners would love to pat down

2011-08-19T13:48:36-04:00

In today's Times-Dispatch, Barton Hinkle tells the story of Aaron Tobey, arrested at the Richmond airport last December for disorderly conduct. When TSA staff directed him to enter one of those see-through screening machines, Tobey yanked his shirt off revealing the text of the fourth amendment penned across his bare chest. This act may or may not be illegal.

Let's set aside the security and civil liberties issues for a moment. It strikes me that both Tobey and his more famous partner in TSA resistance, John "Don't touch my junk" Tyner, are fairly young men and fairly touchy about being touched. Could there be a demographic or cultural issue lurking here?

Maybe. The issue would be Male Insecurity About Body Image.

Of course women have been made to feel insecure about their bodies for a long time. "Your boobs are too small; your hips are too wide; your butt is too big," are just some of the insults, spoken or implied by Barbie dolls, super models and jerk husbands and boyfriends.

But in these more egalitarian times, men too can be made to feel physically inadequate. Just read Men's Health, or it's soft-porn partner Maxim. Listen to the ads on sports talk radio, or play a video game. The not-so-subtle message that these media outlets pitch to young adult men is that even a healthy body will no longer do. You need a washboard stomach. Your chest needs to be large enough to merit its own zip code. Male pattern baldness is a capital offense.

Even the notoriously high young adult male sex drive isn't high enough. You've got to push it into the stratosphere. Here's a Cialis. Now chase it with a red bull and vodka. You need the stamina of a porn star because that's what the ladies expect, don't they?

Only a miniscule few are able to sculpt their bodies and jack up their libidos to meet the new and impossibly high standard. Which leaves the ones who accept the standard as gospel feeling woefully inadequate.

And I wonder if that's not behind some of the pat-down backlash. The bravado in the face of so-called "unreasonable searches and seizures," or "sexual assault" by TSA screeners may be over-compensation for massive insecurity about one's own body.

Young adult heterosexual males need their own version of the It Gets Better campaign. Call it, It Can Get Better: work out less; work at being a better person more; fall in love with someone who's committed to being a better person, and you know what? They won't love your body because it looks like it was chiseled out of granite. They'll love your body because it's yours. And that brings a security that makes the occasional indignities that the human body has to bear--like colonoscopies and airport pat-downs--a bit more bearable.

You can do this even if you never fall in love and mate for life. Seek truth and goodness, and beauty will take care of itself.

Finally, to return to the security and civil liberties issues, we do live in a world where people try to do bad things on airplanes like blow them up, hijack them, and/or crash them. It would appear as though we need security that's equal to the threat.

Now just what is that? I read here and there that a lot of what you experience in an airport is public relations. It's there to make you feel better. Leave it to the government to annoy people in an attempt to make them feel better.

Are see-through imaging machines and aggressive pat downs necessary? As to the latter, the Israelis have been doing it for some time now. Aside from my wife and my doctor, no one has touched me more intimately than a security guard at the Frankfurt, Germany airport before I boarded a flight to Tel Aviv. If I had objected, their attitude would have been, "Fine. If your junk is that precious, don't go to Israel!" And you know what? Terrorists don't do bad things to jets that fly in and out of Tel Aviv.

Long story short, I'd rather get felt up than blown up. Provided that feeling people up is a legitimate technique for keeping bad guys off of airplanes.

Web sites that suck: www.pcusa.org

2011-08-15T21:04:34-04:00

To follow up on my previous post, in which I mentioned both Andrew Sullivan and the awful PC(USA) web site, there's a thread on Sullivan's blog about web sites that suck. So why don't you go the PC(USA) homepage and decide for yourself. Does it suck like a restaurant website?

Or like a college website?

That thing about not being able to copy and paste anything because it's in Flash makes me bang my head against the keyboard, and sadly, it's true of so many church web sites.

What I love about our front page is how the link to PC(USA) Agencies follows you as you scroll down the page. Yeah, like curiosity about the Presbyterian Investment and Loan Program is generating Google searches on "Presbyterian."

A Facebook friend pointed out that the PC(USA) web site blows so bad that somebody created a Wiki to help navigate it. I had to use it to find the page on what Presbyterians believe. It's four links from the PC(USA) front page and the clicking sequence is bizarre:

Home-->General Assembly Mission Council-->Mission and Ministry-->Communications and Funds Development (Huh?)-->Presbyterian 101.

So I think it's less a matter of not knowing what we believe; maybe a bit more of beliefs being irrelevant on a web site by and for ecclesiastical paper-pushers, and maybe a whole lot of not wanting people to know what we believe--the page on predestination is another two clicks deeper into the bowels of the site.

(Although that's understandable; I mean, when the Mormons land on your front porch they don't lead off with getting your own planet and multiple wives after you die).

If you Google "what we believe," eight of the top ten returns are denominational web sites with prominent links on their front pages. Everybody from the United Methodists and Evangelical Lutherans to the Foursquare Church and Seventh Day Adventists. If it occurs to practically everybody else to put their faith front and center online, why not us?