Now’s your last chance to pick up John Dean’s e-book “Unmasking Deep Throat” , which blows the lid off Watergate’s biggest mystery, from Salon.com. Through the course of the book, Dean explains not only why Deep Throat “couldn’t have been an FBI man”, but narrows it down to the following five suspects :

Pat Buchanan, a Nixon assistant and speech writer at the time; Steve Bull, an assistant to Nixon’s appointment secretary Dwight Chapin; Raymond Price, a special assistant to Nixon; Ron Ziegler, Nixon’s press secretary; Jerry Warren, Ziegler’s assistant.

So hurry over to Salon and pick up the groundbreaking book before…oh, dammit. You already saw the news today didn’t you?

This quote from former New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent pretty much says all you need to know about modern newsrooms :

“I also believe that columnists are entitled by their mandate to engage in the unfair use of statistics, the misleading representation of opposing positions, and the conscious withholding of contrary data.”

Regardless of whether you think this applies to Krugman or not, this is a stunning admission that I’d imagine is pretty standard for the gatekeepers in publishing and television news. Why else would hacks like Sean Hannity or Bob Novak remain employed if it weren’t for the fact that the people in charge of protecting the integrity of their news organizations had decided that pundits in lofty positions are entitled to mislead the public.

Though I’m not as enthusiastic as Ezra, I’ve gotta say that Warren Beatty’s speech the other day was very impressive. Not only are his ideas right on, but it’s full of long-overdue jabs at Arnold Schwarzenegger :

I’ve never enjoyed being publicly negative about actors^{[1]Not that Arnold was ever a decent actor. At least his peers like Stallone and Bruce Willis branch out every once in a while and do serious work. The only real difference between Arnold and someone like Jean Claude Van Damme is that Arnie had a much better agent.} in public office like Ronald Reagan, who I really liked, or Sonny Bono or George Murphy because I’ve always had a real soft spot for actors even if they are right wing.

And although I’ve never known Arnold very well I’ve always liked him.
. . .
But now that he’s a politician, I say, why not rise to the higher levels of that calling, rather than denigrate your fellow politicians, calling them “stooges” and “girly men” and “losers.” They give years of their lives to public service in the legislature of what is intended to be a representative form of government, where public policy on decisions affecting 38 million people’s lives are adequately discussed ? not a government by ballot initiatives financed by huge advertising monies that bypass a careful examination of a bill by the people’s elected representatives.

Can’t we accept that devotion to the building of the body politic is more complex and a little more sensitive than devotion to body-building?

Does that make me a “girly man”^{[2]By the way, am I the only one who noticed that some of Arnold’s “best” lines were lifted from the Hans & Franz SNL sketches? How lame do you have to be to steal from people who were making fun of you?} ?
. . .
Of course he can joke that I want to defend the nurses because I’m closer to needing one, and the elderly because I’m nearer to being one, and the blind because I can’t see past tax-and-spend liberalism. And then I can joke that he should defend the teachers because he has so much to learn, but finally it’s not funny.

Government is not a joke, and despite what he’s said, it’s not a movie.

That’s what ultimately drives me nuts about Arnold. His arrogance towards his fellow candidates for governor alongside his avoidance of every public forum in which he’d be pressed to articulate and defend his ideas^{[3]Except for the “Super Bowl of Debates”. Yawn.} pretty much confirmed the notion that most bullies are really cowards on the inside. He’s a political one-hit wonder who sailed into office on a string of cliches about “change” and “leadership” without saying a damn thing. He was a gimmicky candidate who’s now being forced to realize that you can’t quote movie lines to get yourself out of every problem.

Even if he was doing a good job as governor, I’d still resent the hell out of him. The way he ran his campaign was an insult to everyone who takes public service seriously. It was the ultimate example of style trumping substance and it makes me embarrassed for my adopted state. When he says “I’ll be back” during a stump speech, he might as well be saying “Where’s The Beef?”, yet the people of California were dumb enough to fall for it. Here’s hoping that Arnold’s latest troubles are the result of people finally seeing through his “charm” and not part of the natural ebb and flow of politics.

As far as Warren Beatty is concerned, I’m not a big fan of famous people graduating into government service, but then again it’s always the conservative celebrities who end up running for office^{[4]Schwarzenegger, Reagan, Sonny Bono, Fred Thompson, Clint Eastwood, Gopher from The Love Boat….the closest we have is Jerry Springer, but he was a politician before he got famous.}. That said, I do see the appeal in trying to, as Ezra put it, “even up the star power and refocus the election on ideology”. Let’s take Arnie’s celebrity crap off the table and get back to business, shall we?

UPDATE : By the way, there’s no better metaphor for Schwarzenegger’s political career than this inane photo-op (via BoingBoing). In order to tout his ideas for funding transportation projects, he sent a crew to create a pothole so he could fill it up in front of the press. Hell, I thought Pete Wilson and Jeff Skilling were the only people who created fake problems that Arnold would pretend to fix.

---

1 : Not that Arnold was ever a decent actor. At least his peers like Stallone and Bruce Willis branch out every once in a while and do serious work. The only real difference between Arnold and someone like Jean Claude Van Damme is that Arnie had a much better agent.

2 : By the way, am I the only one who noticed that some of Arnold’s “best” lines were lifted from the Hans & Franz SNL sketches? How lame do you have to be to steal from people who were making fun of you?

3 : Except for the “Super Bowl of Debates”. Yawn.

4 : Schwarzenegger, Reagan, Sonny Bono, Fred Thompson, Clint Eastwood, Gopher from The Love Boat….the closest we have is Jerry Springer, but he was a politician before he got famous.

Okay. I’m officially getting sick of Salon^{[1]And I’m not the only one.}. I’ve been an avid reader for almost ten years now, but their pop culture writing has gotten so bad that the whole site has begun to annoy me. Last week, their review of Star Wars was written by someone who openly hates the series and was accompanied by an article in which other Salon staffers articulate why they think Star Wars sucks. (Since it was their last chance to bash George Lucas, they even invited their readers to write in about why they hated the films.) Today, the season finale of American Idol was written up by someone who’s never seen the show until this week. I’m sure the editors are anxiously awaiting the next pop culture phenomenon so they can figure out what else to hate.

Now I’m no stranger to the frustrating feeling you get when it seems like the entire world loves crap but you, but we’ve all got our guilty pleasures^{[2]I think Survivor is unwatchable garbage, but I couldn’t get enough of Boot Camp.}. Most people are grown-up enough to accept this and realize that if they dislike something it doesn’t mean that the show/movie is without merit. The writers and editors of Salon, however, seem to feel like they’re on a crusade to warn the public that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes without realizing that most of us are just enjoying the sight of a naked man walking down the street.^{[3]To put it another way, they’re like the people who constantly complain that pro wrestling is “fake”, but fail to notice that fans are drawn to the melodrama, not the faux-athleticism.}

Why would you review a movie if you hated the previous installments? How could you appreciate the finale of a reality show if you hadn’t seen all of the ups and downs of the previous installments? The stock answer to questions like these is that movies and episodes should be able to stand on their own, but that’s bullshit. The fact is, Star Wars and American Idol are considered simple, low-brow entertainments^{[4]Which they mostly are, but so what?} that aren’t worth expending any mental energy trying to understand. If it’s this popular, it must be crap, right?

Salon can still be counted on to contribute some great investigative journalism and their political commentary is first rate, but their knee-jerk contrarian posturing has grown tiresome. They’re like the angsty teenagers who you knew in high school who would constantly mutter to each other about how much everybody sucks, but never make any effort to get to know the objects of their derision. Yeah, Truffaut is better than Spielberg and Elliot Smith is better than Britney Spears^{[5]My examples, not theirs.}, but there’s no need to be a snob about it.

---

1 : And I’m not the only one.

2 : I think Survivor is unwatchable garbage, but I couldn’t get enough of Boot Camp.

3 : To put it another way, they’re like the people who constantly complain that pro wrestling is “fake”, but fail to notice that fans are drawn to the melodrama, not the faux-athleticism.

4 : Which they mostly are, but so what?

5 : My examples, not theirs.

Wow. I got quite a few responses to this semi-rhetorical question in my last post :

What is it about the makeup of the Senate that makes the body immune to the “fickleness and passion” of the House?

Though I used this to slam the disproportionate representation of small population states, I received plenty of reminders about two additional aspects that make the Senate unique. As reader Bob of Bob’s Links and Rants put it :

I think Madison and Washington were referring to two aspects of the Senate, as originally conceived, which were to give it the calming effect they refer to. First, senators serve six-year terms, hopefully making them less susceptible to constant re-election pressure and therefore freer to think in the long term. Secondly, senators were originally chosen by state legislators, not directly by the voters, providing them an additional buffer from the supposed whims of the populace.

I agree with you that the over-representation of small-population states is undemocratic (although it was seemingly a necessary compromise to get the Constitution ratified in the first place). I don’t agree, however, that there is something fundamentally wrong with having a brake on the too-rapid implementation of legislation.

I agree in theory about the positive aspects of a bicameral legislature in which one body is expected to be more deliberative and cautioned, but does the idea that the Senate are the “grown-ups” as compared to the House really apply anymore? It seems that the last few years have seen a string of failures that lay to rest the notion that the Senate is a more civilized institution than the House. If there is still a difference today, I’d credit it to lowering of the bar by Tom DeLay and his cohorts than any maturity on behalf of the Senatorial elites.

Additionally, I’m not entirely convinced that the six-year term limit gives Senators the freedom that they might lack in the House (especially considering that the Senate is the home of the world’s biggest ass-kisser), but I guess it does help that the entire body isn’t replaced (at least in theory) every two years. As far as the Senators being chosen by state legislatures, I think in some ways that’s a good idea (at least, in terms of the framers’ intent), but the 17th Amendment made that a moot point anyways.

Elaborating on the “cooler heads” point is this email from Peter Gross :

[T]he US gov’t is set up to protect the rich from “the tyranny of the masses.” ( I forget who’s quote it is. Possibly Madison. Read federalist paper #10)

The House, being set up by population, was designed to be a little more off the hook. A little wild. The senate was designed to be a more “elite” and well mannered(!) institution.

The whole shebang was designed to make change (from the ruling elite paradigm) VERY slow and difficult. So that’s what Washington may have meant when he said “cool” the house. The rambunctious house might actually pass a piece of populist legislation. The Senate can keep it from going any farther.

Whenever these guys talk about “the American People,” they’re not talking about us. They’re just talking about themselves.

Needless to say, the whole dammned government is “off the hook” now. This is an interesting topic, so discuss it amongst yourselves in the comments. I’m gonna get a stiff drink…

Conservative blogger Stephen Bainbridge^{[1]Who gets my respect for being a real conservative and not just another partisan hack.} has a good post about “the deal” that pretty much sums up why I hate the filibuster :

The filibuster is a profoundly conservative tool. It slows change by allowing a resolute minority to delay – to stand athwart history shouting stop. It ensures that change is driven not “merely by temporary advantage or popularity” but by a substantial majority. Is it any wonder that it has usually been liberals who want to change or abolish the filibuster rule?

The filibuster is an anti-democratic tool that’s been used to empower some of the most horrible elements of our society in blocking progressive reforms such as anti-lynching legislation, the civil rights act, and universal healthcare. It’s a depressing irony that Democrats have been forced into a position of defending this tactic due to the even greater hypocrisy of the Republican majority in the Senate^{[2] As Prof. Brainbridge put it :
[A]ny honest conservative must admit that the only reason we’re having this debate over filibusters is because of Orin Hatch’s changes to the Judiciary Committee rules and procedures on matters like blue slips, hearings, and so on, which deprived the Democrats of the tactics that the GOP used to bottle up a lot of Clinton nominees in committee.}.

Then again, as far as I’m concerned, the filibuster isn’t the only problem here. I’ve always hated the fact that the Senate is an anti-democratic institution that disproportionately favors the south :

If each of every state?s two senators is taken to represent half that state?s population, then the Senate?s fifty-five Republicans represent 131 million people, while its forty-four Democrats represent 161 million. Looked at another way, the present Senate is the product of three elections, those of 2000, 2002, and 2004. In those elections, the total vote for Democratic senatorial candidates, winning and losing, was 99.7 million; for Republicans it was 97.3 million. The forty-four-person Senate Democratic minority, therefore, represents a two-million-plus popular majority?a circumstance that, unless acres trump people, is at variance with common-sense notions of democracy. So Democrats, as democrats, need not feel too terribly guilty about engaging in a spot of filibustering from time to time.

What’s even more frustrating is that this was all by design :

Writing to Thomas Jefferson, who had been out of the country during the Constitutional Convention, James Madison explained that the Constitution’s framers considered the Senate to be the great “anchor” of the government. To the framers themselves, Madison explained that the Senate would be a “necessary fence” against the “fickleness and passion” that tended to influence the attitudes of the general public and members of the House of Representatives^{[3]Which worked so well during the Terri Schiavo fiasco.}. George Washington is said to have told Jefferson that the framers had created the Senate to “cool” House legislation just as a saucer was used to cool hot tea.

The notion that the Senate is the body in which cooler heads prevail strikes me as incredibly elitist. What is it about the makeup of the Senate that makes the body immune to the “fickleness and passion” of the House? The fact that states with small populations are given the power to overrule the will of the majority? This is just the sort of notion that I’d expect from a group of men who felt that the only people who could be trusted to pick their own representatives were wealthy, white males^{[4]No, I’m not bashing the founding fathers. I think their flaws should be kept in historical context, but I bring this up to make the point that our concept of how we define a democratic republic has evolved over the last 200 years or so.}.

Going back to the filibuster, before you all decide to send me angry emails, lemme make one point clear. I think the Democrats are completely justified in their use of the filibuster. It may be a tactic I disagree with, but my discomfort with its use is outweighed by the fact that the the GOP majority are trying to sneak wingnuts into the judiciary while crippling the rules that allow Democrats to give “advice and consent”. When the Republicans play this dirty, we’d be fools to not fight fire with fire.

---

1 : Who gets my respect for being a real conservative and not just another partisan hack.

2 : As Prof. Brainbridge put it :

[A]ny honest conservative must admit that the only reason we’re having this debate over filibusters is because of Orin Hatch’s changes to the Judiciary Committee rules and procedures on matters like blue slips, hearings, and so on, which deprived the Democrats of the tactics that the GOP used to bottle up a lot of Clinton nominees in committee.

3 : Which worked so well during the Terri Schiavo fiasco.

4 : No, I’m not bashing the founding fathers. I think their flaws should be kept in historical context, but I bring this up to make the point that our concept of how we define a democratic republic has evolved over the last 200 years or so.

I got my first negative comment on my use of footnotes from a reader who says :

I enjoy reading your posts at TMM, but –arrrgh!– your use of
footnotes is very irritating, especially in a hypertext medium.
Scrolling up and down, up and down, for your parenthetical asides is
very annoying.

Since this is hypertext, I’m thinking there may be a more HTML friendly solution to all this. Part of me would love to take the Suck.com route, but I can’t draw for shit and the template doesn’t have the room for side notes.

So here’s a little experiment I’m gonna try. Using CSS, I’m gonna see if I can make the footnotes appear by hovering over the number, using this sample paragraph from a post I did last week :

I’ve received plenty of letters and comments along these lines in response to the religious posts I’ve done in the past and it leads me to this question : Are you also saying those things to your fellow Christians or just smartass atheists like me^{[1]I’m describing myself here, not accusing anyone of labeling me as such.} who to like to take cheap shots at the religious wrong? I’m grateful that there are Christians who are willing to fight the stereotype that conservative fundamentalists represent all of Christianity, but correcting misconceptions is only one piece of the puzzle^{[2]But it’s an important piece. I often try to be sensitive to these sorts of things, which is why I make an effort to never use the word “Christianity” when referring to the extreme-right without qualifying it with terms like “conservative”, “fundamentalist”, or “lunatic”.}. As Bruce Bawer explains in his excellent book “Stealing Jesus”^{[3]You can read an excerpt of the book here.}, Christians need to reclaim their religion from the radical right.

I don’t think this works in IE, but it should work everywhere else. Because it wouldn’t work everywhere and the fact that the footnote doesn’t float long enough to click on links within the footnotes, I’d probably only incorporate something like this in addition to the notes that currently appear at the end of some posts. Are you able to see the footnotes by hovering over the number? Is the footnote floating over the text or is it offsetting everything? Is the floating footnote intuitive enough or is it just a waste of time?

After we lived through crap like this :

Q Scott, I just wanted to ask you, follow up on the Catholic bishops and a couple of actions they took. One was, they raised questions about whether we should — there was justification for preemptive action against Iraq without further evidence, I wonder if the White House has any comment on their statement.

MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, I think the United States and the international community were all speaking with one voice when it comes to the importance of disarming Saddam Hussein. This threat is real, and it must be addressed. The risk of inaction is too great. So we are going to continue work with the United Nations and work with our friends and allies to disarm Saddam Hussein. It’s about protecting not only America, but the region and the world from the risks that he poses.

Is anyone really surprised to see this?

North Korea on Tuesday refused to rule out a pre-emptive attack, even amid signs it may be willing to return to the nuclear bargaining table.
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The North poured out anti-American rhetoric ? a tactic it has used in the past before entering negotiations ? by claiming that Washington’s “hostile policies” led it to develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent and warning against any attack to dislodge its leadership.

“The United States should be aware that the choice of a pre-emptive attack is not only theirs,” the North’s official news agency quoted the state-run newspaper Minju Joson as saying. “To stand against force with force is our unswerving method of response.”

It’s too late to start complaining now, Mr. President. You’re the one who set the precedent for unprovoked attacks on other countries. As a country that prides itself for its (mostly undeserved) reputation as the world’s moral leader, the United States gave the okay for other countries to attack their enemies without evidence of an impending threat. You can’t just close Pandora’s box just because you didn’t like what was in it.

I guess we can stop worrying about the filibuster battle now, which is fine by me. I’m not a big fan of the deal that the Dems made, but I’m not a big fan of relying on filibusters either. Kinda sad to think that this fight, in which both sides were making principled stands and unwilling to compromise, ended with a bipartisan display of political cowardice. In the end though, our side got the slightly better deal.

With or without the deal in place, it’s definitely not in the President’s best interest for the public to see how nutty his picks for the Federal bench are. Now that the public’s interest has been piqued, I wonder if the Dems will be able to get some additional floor time to publicly debate the three certain-to-be-confirmed judges. The GOP’s strongest hand during all of this was that the public really doesn’t give a damn about what happens in the Senate, but I’m sure there’s plenty of people who will tune in now just to see what all the fuss was about.

Nothing makes me more depressed than to see how some prescription drugs are practically given away… (via Eschaton)

Scores of convicted rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in New York have been getting Viagra paid by Medicaid for the last five years, the state’s comptroller said Sunday.

Audits by Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s office showed that between January 2000 and March 2005, 198 sex offenders in New York received Medicaid-reimbursed Viagra after their convictions. Those included crimes against children as young as 2 years old, he said.

Hevesi asked Michael Leavitt, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in a letter Sunday to “take immediate action to ensure that sex offenders do not receive erectile dysfunction medication paid for by taxpayers.”

…while others are nearly impossible to obtain.

Under assault in California and other states over the cost of prescription drugs, manufacturers are increasingly touting their donations of medicine to sick poor people. But some of the ill and their advocates say the free drugs are not as easy to obtain as the industry suggests.

They complain that manufacturers change application criteria without notice, require income documentation that many homeless and mentally ill patients cannot provide and establish other bureaucratic prerequisites that block many needy people from getting help.
. . .
Some companies require that a person be rejected for Medicaid programs — a process that can take months — before being eligible for free drugs. Dozens of firms require tax returns, paycheck stubs or other documentation that patients are too poor to afford the drugs. Many of the most desperate patients are homeless, mentally ill or work off the books and do not have financial records.

“I had a fellow who went around collecting cans, and at the end of the day, he cashed them in for a small sum,” said Lynn Bramwell, patient assistance program coordinator for Yolo County. “He was homeless, and that’s what he lived on. We tried to enroll him for some diabetic medicine. The company said, ‘We need some sort of documentation for his income.’ And I said, ‘He collects cans.’”

Bramwell said the company refused to provide the medication, and he never heard from the homeless man again.

If it weren’t for those Republican dickheads in 1994¹ and their cries of “socialized medicine” we might not be where we are now. Americans die of preventable causes every day because a bunch of selfish, elitist scumbags decided that they’d rather let poor people die than wait in a line. It’s sickening and we all know who has blood on their hands.

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^{1 : But as Tom mentioned last year, it’s not like Clinton’s approach was without its faults.}

I know criticizing a column at WorldNetDaily is like shooting fish in a barrel, but this guy’s asking for it. In “Welcome to my first column”¹, the author argues that Christianity is going to take over the entire world and in the process wipe out secular humanism and “liberal Christianity, whose basic tenets are the opposite of the Bible”². In order to prove his case, he resorts to hackish extrapolation like this :

In 1900, there were 2 million evangelical or charismatic Christians in Africa. By 2000, there were 200 million. In Latin America during that period, the born-again population zoomed from 1 million to 170 million. And in China, just since 1950, Christianity has exploded from fewer than a million to almost 120 million.
. . .
Now, straight-line projections are silly because nothing ever goes in a straight line. But just to give you a comically precise picture of our current momentum: At 8 percent growth a year, the world would have more Christians than people by the fall of 2032!

If you really think straight-line projections are “silly”, why build an entire article around them?? Maybe he believes that by 2032, Christianity will be so popular, it’ll start spreading to domesticated animals, inanimate objects, or reanimated corpses.

My research for my new book, “Megashift,” has found 52 countries where God has brought people back from the dead, mostly in the last 20 years. And these are not near-death experiences, where someone on an operating-room table passes out and sees himself going down a long tunnel. These are stone-dead corpses.

Also, for what it’s worth, I have zero interest in flying saucers, crop circles, the Bermuda Triangle, the anti-Christ, or the sexual preference of Spongebob Squarepants.

Whew! Glad we cleared that one up. For a minute there I thought he might be kinda crazy.

^{1 : Yeah, that’s really the name of the column.}

2 : Personally, I blame all those liberal women who insist on wearing pants.

Dubya’s been acting like a tough guy all week with promises to veto bills on highway spending…

The senate overwhelmingly passed a transportation bill Tuesday that would plow billions into highway and transit projects through the end of the decade, but states say that isn’t enough to keep pace with growing traffic congestion.

Approval of the $295 billion measure sets up a showdown with the House, which has passed a $284 billion bill. The administration is threatening to veto any bill authorizing more than that amount.

…and stem cell research.

President George W. Bush said he would veto legislation under consideration in the House of Representatives that would ease restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

“I have made very clear to the Congress that the use of taxpayer money to promote science that destroys life in order to save life, I am against that,” Bush told reporters in at the White House before meeting with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. “If the bill does that, I will veto it.”

Yeah, right. I’ll believe it when I see it. Bush hasn’t issued a single veto during his presidency, so why should we believe him now? As you can tell from this speech he made two years ago, he’s fond of patting himself on the back, but rarely follows through.

“I can assure you I will work with Congress to control excessive federal spending. One reason they give the President the veto power is to make sure the Congress doesn’t over-spend. Over-spending could serve as an anchor on economic vitality and growth.”

Even after bragging that he’d use his power to control spending, he’s earned the wrath of conservative think tanks for out of control budgets and he’s done nothing about record levels of pork-barrel spending. This can really lead us to one of two conclusions : He doesn’t really care about the things he claims to or he’s a spineless coward who’s unwilling to stand up to special interests. Either way, Little George’s veto threats are toothless and should be ignored.

It’s heartening to read the letter that Tom Tomorrow printed in this post from Scott in Nashville. I’ve received plenty of letters and comments along these lines in response to the religious posts I’ve done in the past and it leads me to this question : Are you also saying those things to your fellow Christians or just smartass atheists like me¹ who to like to take cheap shots at the religious wrong? I’m grateful that there are Christians who are willing to fight the stereotype that conservative fundamentalists represent all of Christianity, but correcting misconceptions is only one piece of the puzzle². As Bruce Bawer explains in his excellent book “Stealing Jesus”³, Christians need to reclaim their religion from the radical right :

In recent years, [conservative] Christians have organized into a political movement so successful that when many Americans today hear the word Christianity, they think only of the [conservative] variety. The mainstream media, in covering the so-called culture wars, generally imply that there are only two sides to choose from : The God-of-wrath Christian Right and the godless secular Left. Many Americans scarcely realize that there is any third alternative.
. . .
[Conservative Christianity] has warped Christianity into something ugly and hateful that has little or nothing to do with love and everything to do with suspicion, superstition, and sadism. And, quite often, it denies the name of Christianity to followers of Jesus who reject its barbaric theology. In essence, then, it has stolen Jesus-yoked his name and his church to ideas, beliefs, and attitudes that would have appalled him.

And let’s face it, it’s not too hard to jump to the conclusion that Jesus would have been appalled by fundamentalists’ devotion to “God’s Official Party”. This excerpt for the book of Luke is a perfect example of what I’m talking about :

A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good?except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’”

“All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

I doubt there are many religious leaders who would advocate giving up everything you own and giving it to the poor, but even with a loose interpretation of this passage, it’s not to difficult to infer how Jesus would react to the men and women on both sides of the aisle who accumulate great wealth while people around the world are literally starving to death. Or leaders who are more concerned with giving tax breaks to the rich while children are dying of preventable diseases due to a lack of healthcare. Or a president who ignores the plight of millions of men and women who work multiple jobs to make a decent living because his highest priority is to destroy the safety net that keeps those same people from spending the last years of their lives as paupers.

I hope this doesn’t come off as preachy or patronizing when I say that it’s time for Christians to take back Jesus from the theological kidnappers of of the far-right. The conservative extremist brand of Christianity is an aberration that doesn’t represent the mainstream and makes a mockery of the teachings of Jesus, who warned :

“Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’”

You can be proud of your religion without proselytizing. There’s nothing pushy about saying “I voted against Bush because I’m a Christian” or reminding people that Jesus had more to say about compassion for the poor than he did about abortion, homosexuality, or judicial activism. Considering how much our President is fond of telling the public how much he loves Jesus, it’s fair game to point out how skewed his priorities are when held up to the teachings in the gospels.

But the perception that Christianity is an exclusively right-wing religion isn’t going to go away until the silent majority of Christians stand up and take their religion back. Yes, you should correct people on the far left who make the mistake of assuming everyone who reads the Bible is in league with Fred Phelps, but you should be equally vigilant in regards to the mainstream press. If an AP article uses the word “Christian” to describe Pat Robertson without qualifying it with an adjective like “evangelical”, write a letter to the editor. If CNN implies that someone is conservative because they’re religious, flood their switchboard with complaints. Most of all, don’t let anyone get away with implying that you’re betraying your own faith just because you disagree with the Republican party.

^{1 : I’m describing myself here, not accusing anyone of labeling me as such.}

2 : But it’s an important piece. I often try to be sensitive to these sorts of things, which is why I make an effort to never use the word “Christianity” when referring to the extreme-right without qualifying it with terms like “conservative”, “fundamentalist”, or “lunatic”.

3 : You can read an excerpt of the book here.

Regulars have probably already noticed this, but due to my current residency at This Modern World, there will be a number of posts that will appear on both sites, though I don’t plan to label them as such. There’s a few reasons you’ll find posts appearing in both places :

Tom Tomorrow’s site enjoys a larger audience than mine does and I’d like the things I’ve written that I’m particularly proud of to be seen by as many people as possible.

The readership of his site is different than my own and I enjoy the feedback.

My site has comments and his doesn’t. I’ve said many times before that comments are one of the biggest reasons I do this blogging thing. While I can understand why he doesn’t have comments (bandwidth bills are a bitch and his high profile attracts tolls by the thousands), I still love the instant response from the loose-knit community that appears in the comments section here.

For readers who have loyally supported this site for the past 2+ years, I want to make sure you can still read what I’ve written right here.

In his invitation to join the group blog, Tom said that cross-posting was cool, so most of my favorite posts will show up on both sites. That said, there will be plenty of posts that appear exclusively on one site or the other, so if you don’t read that site regularly for whatever reason, you’re totally missing out.

Haven’t seen the movie yet, but that didn’t stop me from checking out the spectacle at the Arclight in Hollywood last night :

Who’s crazier? Religious people protesting a sci-fi movie¹ or the stormtrooper costume-wearing people who argue with them?

^{1 : Unfortunately, this was a well-executed prank. I was fooled until I saw their website.}