NOW THAT THE FUROR IS OVER . . . FOR NOW ?

The "Tim Tebow Story" gripped sports and culture for a double handful of crazy weeks in this years NFL season. Tebow is, at first blush almost athletic cliche. A Heisman Trophy winner, small-but-agile, a collegiate star, but seemingly not good enough to make it to the big show, just like so many Heisman winners before him.

When this year's Denver Broncos season started (predictably) poorly, Tebow was given the shot at the starting job. He responded with a Season reminiscent of the late great George Blanda's last full season in the League, although not possessed of Blanda's advanced age "handicap." Nonetheless, as Tebow's string of improbable comebacks and sensational wins grew, more attention began to be paid to his contemplative kneel after a touchdown play, his prayerful salute to his Creator. Some saw this as an apostolic gesture, while others ridiculed it as religious grandstanding. Still, others focused on the athlete's off-field exploits. Again, there were divergences. Liberal thinkers who may trend away from religious yearnings pointed to Tebow's (and his mother's) participation in a pro-life advertorial a few years ago which was used as a GOP convention side dish. Others focused on Tebow's exploits visiting sick and disabled children, and striving to bring some fleeting happiness into kids who were and are struggling. Saturday Night Live and Jimmy Fallon got into the act as well, with some irreverent spoofs and satires of Tebow, including the former's visit of Jesus himself to the Bronco locker room, and the latter's merging of Tebow and David Bowie in a song parody. Still, the controversy raged, and some commentators labeled Tebow a polarizing figure. Why?

From this perspective, it seems less about Tebow himself, and more about the religion he is overtly professing. Too many progressives are themselves beyond apathetic or disinterested in faith, but openly hostile toward it. They see overt religious displays as intensely sanctimonious, pseudo-pious demonstrations which ought to be ignored, and these anti-religious progressives show great intolerance - which is ironic. The reasons underpinning the aversion are fair - there have been innumerable examples of religious hypocrisy on display in the television age, and you don't have to be named Baker or Swaggart (or Haggard - or even "his Eminence" for that matter) to acknowledge it . Yet the reality is that religious displays have been a part of the football post game ritual for decades now - whether the networks choose to show that demonstration or not - and usually they have opted for the latter.

Some of the Tebow scorn is heaped in the direction of his presumed politics - the partisan participation in the Republican convention comes to mind; yet that ignores the fact that sports in general - and football particularly, tend toward a generally conservative/traditional crowd and mind set.

In fairness, Tim Tebow the person seems like a decent sort of person, whose outward actions - at least the ones best publicized, track with one who practices what he professes. And, politics and faith aside, he's the runt - the underdog, the guy who couldn't make it, gaining on the establishment, and proving them wrong. In short, there are reasons to like the man, and admire the perseverance against tough odds, and the achievement. Isn't better to hear about athletes who brighten sick and disadvantaged kids lives, rather than ones whose exploits belong on a police blotter? Does the previous question really need a lot of thought before it is answered? Yes, that doesn't mean that there won't be something ugly discovered below the surface - it could always happen in this story, too - but recognizing that possibility, and hoping for it to occur, are decidedly different responses, too. For now, it's just nice to see an affable underdog acting responsibly in the limelight, whether or not it includes outward displays of piety.

SHOULDA, COULDA, WOULDA

"What's happening?" I can almost hear you saying it still, through the receiver, your typical greeting. My gawd, you were funny. You could pick out something in a person and go on for hours about it, and have everyone within ear shot spitting out their noses in hysterics. You were smart, to a point where you aggravated your best family friend by making school look/seem "so easy." You impressed your peers - and rankled them, by coming in as a senior and making the varsity team at the local Catholic football factory without having played the preceding 3 seasons. You spoke Spanish like a native. You loved this time of year. Yeah, you got crotchety and you couldn't leave the 60s behind, and that Bill O'Reilly stuff got old in those last years, man, really old. But you were a good guy. You made people laugh, and laughter eases stress better than anything made by Pfizer or Upjohn. You were loved. And you are missed. Wish you could have been here today, for number 65. It looks like another keeper from this vantage point. God Bless you my brother.

THANKFULNESS

There is an abundance of reasons to be grateful this year . . . full time employment, a great family, a talented Mrs. LOST, a home, a beautiful state, despite its troubles, health (mostly, time to get off that couch more, though), sanity (okay, let's not push it, right?), a sense of humor, the lifting of a great burden, and the prospect of a better near and intermediate future, the time to spend recharging batteries in a college town (twice this Fall, once courtesy of each kid), the opportunity to reconnect with an energetic, spirited Faith. All of this, and so much more. Thank You, God, for the good fortune. May all be so blessed.

WHY THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT IS OH SO WRONG - A CASE STUDY

One of my friends - my "rightie" friends, loves him some e-mail. He loves him some political e-mail, and he loves him some Christian e-mail, too. All too often, he sends both out with deliciously odd timing. Case in point, last night, he proudly forwarded this one:

"Finally, a way to accurately describe our Nation's current status...

Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) - a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers."

This morning, he sent this one:

HAD
A
FRIEND VISIT THIS MORNING.
HE
ARRIVED
EARLY,

SAT DOWN WITH ME AND CHATTED FOR A WHILE ABOUT
HOW THINGS WERE CURRENTLY GOING FOR ME IN MY
LIFE.
AFTER VERY CAREFULLY AND
COMPASSIONATELY
LISTENING TO ALL THAT I HAD TO SAY,
HE STOOD UP,
WALKED OVER TO ME,
LEANED OVER AND GENTLY HELD ME
FOR AWHILE.
THEN,
AFTER REASSURING ME NOT TO WORRY,
THAT EVERYTHING WOULD WORK OUT FOR ME AND BE
JUST FINE,
HE ASKED ME IF I KNEW OF ANYONE ELSE THAT
COULD USE A VISIT FROM HIM.
I IMMEDIATELY
THOUGHT OF YOU MY FRIEND.
I GAVE HIM YOUR NAME AND HE KNEW WHERE YOU LIVED.
HE GAVE ME ANOTHER REASSURING HUG, THANKED ME AND
I WALKED WITH HIM TO MY FRONT DOOR.
HE TOLD ME THAT
HE WAS ON HIS
WAY TO
YOUR PLACE.

When He gets to your PC, escort Him to the next
stop.
Please don't allow Him to sleep on your PC.
The message He is
carrying is very
important.

I asked
Him to bless you and yours with peace, happiness
and abundance.
Say a prayer and then pass Him on to bless others as I sent him on to bless you. Our assignment is to
spread love,
respect and kindness throughout the world.
Have a blessed day and
touch somebody's
life today as hopefully I have touched your life.

He's walking around
the world via e-mail!!
Please pass it on so He can get there....



As to the first e-mail, I pounded out the following, but decided not to hit the "send" button:

Oh, the ways to tear this one apart.

In the first place, everyone with a pulse rate and 18 years under their belt gets to vote. The well-heeled (those whose "wealth" is being "confiscated") can spend limitless sums of $$ blaring ads which pimp their favorite candidates and causes and tear down the ones they dislike or distrust.

Secondly, the Rewards of "goods and Services" showered upon the impliedly unworthy have been pared down considerably over where they were even 10 years ago, from a point where they did not provide a sustainable wage to begin with to a bare bones point. It is at this point where I paused, debated whether to remind my Christian-rightie friend of his 2-plus year stint on Unemployment benefits - extended mainly because of "liberal socialists" who would rather see people sustained than swept into the gutter - and I decide not to included it (after all, during the drafting, I haven't yet made the decision to "send" or "not to send.")

The "diminishing number" of producers includes GE - which paid no taxes last year at all. It includes the Walton family (heirs of Sam Walton) whose "Producing" consisted of being born into the right family. What happens to the American dream chance of those born into families like yours and mine (meaning people not named "Walton, or "Trump" or "Buffet" or "Perot" or "Gates") if all of this wealth stays firmly in the hands of families for generation after generation, including groups of those who "make" it into the charmed circle in each current generation ("Zuckerbergs" or "Jobs") The end result is oligarchy - wealth and power concentrated into the hands of a relative few. The middle class disappears.

I think the President's greatest ineptitude - maybe his only ineptitude, was to be too trusting in the idea that his adversaries would put aside politics and work collaboratively with him. This includes retaining "insiders" like Bernanke and Geitner to run the financial show. These guys "produced" nothing but sham paper (Deriviatives, Collateralized Debt Obligations, Credit Default Swaps) that pumped up the bubble until it exploded, and splattered all over the rest of us. This includes Republican "leaders" like McConnell, who repeatedly stated his main goal was to keep this President to one term. People like that are telling you they won't compromise. People like that are daring you to spit in their face and say "elections have consequences - so since you won't lead or follow, get out of the way." And that is what Obama should have done.

We should have gotten the hell out of Iraq in 09. They don't want us there.
We should have left Afghanistan - in a big giant parade - after he got bin Laden.
We should have enacted single payer Health Care Reform.
The stimulus should have been bigger than it was. That's the extent of the ineptitude, my friend . . . giving negative people and forces the benefit of many doubts.

I don't even know where to begin on the first one, other than to say that the messages are contradictory - the Creator I believe in doesn't wring his hands over Randian nonsense of "confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers." Funny how these types of e-mails sanitize all mention of the Scriptures dealing with how to treat neighbors, the poor, the disenfranchised, out of these encounters with the Head of the Christian faith. Matthew 25 comes to mind, for one. Were a response in order to the first one, it would have to include something like this:

When you talk with Jesus,
do you ask him what He thinks about
what we should do to help the poor?
How about what help should be offered to
developing countries?
Ever seek his opinions on the age old debate
between Guns and Butter?
Asked Him how to differentiate between those poor who are "lazy" and those whose lot was randomness writ large, or just being in the wrong place at the right time?
Ever thought about asking the Lord
about Capital Punishment?
Spending more money on Prisons than
on Schoolchildren?
Building more bombs than rebuilding hospitals?
And if you haven't asked Him those questions, Why not?
Would not the answers guide you in your "assignment to spread love, respect and kindness throughout the world" - or is that only a mandate to do among our "friends?" I don't remember being told "Love Thy Friends" over and over again on Sundays and in between.

Who's opinion matters most in such matters?
That of Your favorite candidate, or
that of your Personal Savior?

Perchance the fear in asking comes from not wanting to hear the answers . . .
If I'm wrong about that, at least I'll be in Hell with people who think like me . . . .

NONSTOP NUTTINESS CONTINUES

Every week it happens, cataclysmic recession or not. The come-ons keep a-coming. Maybe we ought to be grateful that somebody is still using the Postal Service, and quietly thankful that our e-mail addresses haven't been tapped - okay, well, they have too, its just that it is still kind of fun deleting the ads for cheap Rx, "wonder bras," and linguistically-challenged Nigerians whom we've never met promising us seven figure rewards for the mere privilege of borrowing our bank account wire transfer numbers for a few moments.

I'm talking about the nuttiness of credit card come-ons. Every week, like clockwork, they roll in. Sometimes they're the product of existing bank relationships. Sometimes they sneak in, cloaked in the guise of an organization we've belonged to in the past (or still do belong to); sometimes they're from the existing accounts we hold - little checks we can use - 'like real money" to pay off our bills!"

All suffer the same fate. Meet the shredder, prep yourself for the long ride to the landfill. That is our approach anyway, but its hard not to wonder about what happens everywhere else, and why are these things stil being sent. It isn't like someone turned the lights out in the junk mail machine room at CHASE (yeah, let's pick on them) without throwing the "OFF" switch. No, this stuff is still being sent because it works. Because, despite the recession, the people who have lost homes, cars, retirements, etc. from the orgy of overconsumption and spending like there is no tomorrow (sad, self-fulfilling prophecy that this is), people are still using more credit than they should be - and that is why the amoral institutions are stil behaving like the proverbial pimp - handing out free samples of his wares until one gets hooked. Yeah, it's not just the banks' fault - like the drug situation, somebody on the other end of the transaction is just saying "Yes" (actually a whole lot of somebodies, hence the volume of the unsolicited invitations), but it is ensuring that the damage will continue, the debts will continue to pile up, until there is nothing left to squeeze out of people. It's sickening, its' wasteful as hell, and it is and remains dangerous for too many people with not enough impulse control. Just like drugs, nicotine, gambling, alcohol, name your vice. Sometimes it seems like this blast of junk mail is the only reward for maintaining a so-called "high" FICO score, or credit rating. Hosanna and Hallelujah for the god of Wall Street, the great invisible hand of Capitalism.

Time to go fire up the shredder for this week's landfill installment . . .

ODE TO A GIANT STINKER

Two more weeks,

and it will be time to say

our good-byes

again.

This time

there is this dull, empty ache

that says this one’s for real

Twice before I knew or felt

you’d be back

with your laugh and smile in tow

Not now, for the time has come

and you’re ready to go and

grab your place among

the hopefuls at the starting line.

I’ll miss the

grand ideas and youthful

thoughts inside that giant frame

I’ll miss the insights

and the ways you’ve shown

others how they matter

I’ll miss the volume

and the humor and banter

I’ll even miss the mess

Mostly, I’m gonna miss you

hanging around, always being “down”

for whatever might come along

and bring some light.

SUNDAY STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

. . . "Maybe shoulda gone to rehab, 'stead of 'no, no, no!" . . . now the Congress wants to appoint a "Super Congress" to do what it can't - agree on a way to raise the debt ceiling. Why would any elected official think that creating a new layer of government - consisting of members from the layer whose job it is do decide the issue to begin with - is a good idea on any level? Maybe the government should default and shut down, if its legislative body is this incompetent . . . when can 'victory' be declared in Afghanistan and Iraq, so everyone can come home? What's the wait for, Mr. President? . . . how do you tell a family member who has stopped speaking to you that you heard about their misfortune, and you feel terrible about it, and wish and hope for the best, and will keep eyes out for any potential solution? Here's hoping LOST just did that . . .what is worse, a church choir that sings really well and knows it - so much that it tries to dominate the service, or a choir that sounds awful but keeps enthusiastically, repetitively, trying? Not sure on that one . . . the country needs a month where Christians don't tell people they are Christian, they show people that they are Christian; there is a big difference . . .in a perfect world, the inventor of the 44oz. fast food beverage cup would still be in prison for that act . . . If Motel 6 will "leave the light on for you," but has lots of vacancies - meaning that "the light is on but nobody is home" doesn't that make Tom Bodette Norman Bates . . . Americans should not have to work past 70, but the trade off is that no one but the truly exceptional - the extreme upper end of the wealth pyramid, or tremendously successful entrepreneurs, should be able to afford retirement at 50, either . . . a college education shouldn't cost someone $100,000 for a State University . . . there is nothing wrong with California's Public Education system that couldn't be fixed by greater parental commitment, and some streamlined means of terminating faculty deadweight . . .

COCKROACHES

When LOST was in college, there were many compromises, and a whole lot of benefits. Among the latter was a vastly shorter list of monthly obligations - most apartments came with utilities during the college years, so beyond school, books and food - expensive but not "monthly," per se, there was rent, and a phone bill to pay. Those were the days.

Among the compromises on the west side of Los Angeles were cockroaches. They were everywhere in those years. The only satisfaction LOST derived out of the plague was confidence in the belief that every one of those Holmby Hills/Westwood/Brentwood/Bel-Air mansions ringing the campus suffered the same affliction. Nothing eradicates them. They can live in sewer environments, thick with hydrogen sulfide and all sorts of other unspeakables too disgusting to contemplate. They are impervious to microwave radiation, and - rumor has it- can survive nuclear blasts. And they breed, my how they breed.

There is one thing they loathe. Light. It will send them scattering back to their corners and crevices quicker than a garlic flavored crucifix would eradicate Dracula. Not dead, just contained. Not gone, but restrained.

The State of Ohio had a large cockroach a few years ago, named Kenneth Blackwell. He was the Secretary of State for Ohio, and the state chairman of the Bush Re-election campaign in 2004. The same year that there were innumerable anomalies in Ohio's elections - all the way down to the precinct levels - long lines in urban areas caused by fewer voting machines, Diebold voting machines with serious reliability problems, and magical precincts with more votes than voters. All overseen by the Secretary of State who chaired the re-election campaign for one of the candidates - nope, no conflict there.

Flash forward to 2011. Blackwell is not gone. But he needs a little light to shine upon him. At the recent "Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference," put on by Ralph Reed and blathering toe-fetishist Dick Morris, Blackwell appeared and spoke to supporters, as he is eyeing a Senate run. In a piece run by Slate.com http://www.slate.com/id/2296313/pagenum/all/ , here's what Blackwell had to say,

" On Saturday, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell spent a little time away from the podium to meet activists and talk to reporters. He runs Reed's affiliate in Ohio; he's thinking about running for U.S. Senate. He was the only Republican in that position who said what the social conservatives believe.

'Clean water is important to us,' said Blackwell. 'Decent housing is important to us. But they're not rights. And we have to begin to say that what's important is that we in a rational way are able to reform these programs in a way to save them. And, yes, if it means that somewhere down the line individuals have to make sacrifices, because the rationalization of the system means we save it, but we are also doing it in a more efficient way. … I don't think too many Americans will object to that. At the end of the day we're going to get back to making sure we're in a position to finance the wars in which we engage. Does that mean we can do that without sacrificing? No. We have to make sacrifices. But what's more important? Our freedom and security or the gluttony of the federal government?'

The world according to Cockroach Blackwell. We don't need no stinking regulations to protect Americans from polluted water or unscrupulous lenders or landlords - those gluttonous bureaucrats be damned! We do need cash for wars. Lots of cash, for any wars to promote "freedom and security." Shine the light people, Shine the light.