Stupidiocy / 10-21-10

Today, 2010 Elections Class, we learned:

That Rand Paul and Jesus Christ are the same dude.

That fearing random Muslims is profitable.

That answering questions is an optional exercise for Senate candidates.

Let's do these in reverse order, because oh my, the Paul one is so juicy, I have to make it this post's dessert.

So the appetizer first: Joe Miller is running for Senate in Alaska. After beating the incumbent in the Republican primary over the summer, why should he have to deal with the press at all? Better to handcuff reporters when they get too frisky. Better to not honor interviews.

Yeah. When 40 fellow Alaska Republicans are asking you, in an open letter, to get your act together, and calling your campaign out for "unacceptable" behavior and "not a winning strategy," you should probably not say things like "We've drawn a line in the sand. You can ask me about background, you can ask me about personal issues -- I'm not going to answer." But what do I know? I'm not trying to lose a practically unlosable election.

Entree time. Juan Williams. Ahem.

Visiting with Bill O'Reilly recently, Williams, an NPR reporter, generously offered this up: "I mean look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

I totally believe Williams. He isn't a bigot. He's just a guy who gets irrationally afraid that because there are Muslims with different-looking outfits on his flight from Atlanta to Chicago, the plane might end up crashing into the Pentagon instead.

That sounds sarcastic. And it is, a little, but it also isn't. It's very, very difficult to begrudge someone for admitting that the Different makes them nervous. Lots of people struggle with that. When I'm walking down a dark alley at night (one of my favorite activities!), I don't want the three guys I cross to all be 6'6", 320 pounds, with prison tattoos across their knuckles. I just don't.

(Hey, did I mention Williams is black? Not that I have a great deal more to say on that count.)

At the same time, it's worth remembering a couple things.

1. The 9/11 hijackers were wearing jeans and T-shirts.

2. Women in burqas have successfully piloted zero planes into tall New York buildings.

So I can safely pencil Williams in for irrational behavior and poor timing when it comes to honesty... but probably not much more. NPR fired him, by the way, after hearing of the remarks. I'm supposing they felt he had seriously harmed his objectivity and/or his credibility.

In any event, all's well that ends well for Williams. His friends came to his rescue.

Mike Huckabee: "It is time for the taxpayers to start making cuts to federal spending, and I encourage the new Congress to start with NPR."

Sarah Palin: "NPR defends 1st Amendment Right, but will fire u if u exercise it. Juan Williams: u got taste of Left's hypocrisy, they screwed up firing u." That might be one of her tweets, or that could also be how we're doing transcripts for her nowadays.

And then, just found out that Fox News has offered him something marginally better than an unemployment check: a 3-year, $2 million contract to join them. Good for him. Now we all know what the reward/punishment is for misunderstanding other religions (and I'm being charitable). Glad to have that out in the open.

Hope you left room for the grand finale.

KY Senate candidate Rand Paul, earlier today: "In my entire life, I've written and said a lot of things. I've never said or written anything un-Christian in my life."

Now after months and months and months talking constantly in the public spotlight, under the constant stress a campaign like Paul's surely brings, people are apt to say things, that upon further reflection, they wish they could take back. Either they misspeak, they take an analogy too far, they forget which group they're speaking to, they make up facts, they stretch the truth, they say too much, or they outright lie. (Politicians do this? Whoa.)

But I pay pretty close attention to politics, and most of those instances are explainable. The candidate thought he could get away with a falsehood. The candidate embellished a story. The candidate was on the spot, and made up some numbers. The candidate said she can't tell Latinos and Asians apart. (Go ahead, click the link. I couldn't make stuff this good up if I tried.)

Oh yeah, what Paul said. Let's get back to that. It's hard to even give him credit for what he could have and should have said, which, naturally, is "I am a Christian and always have been. I've made lots of statements, oral and written, and I've always wanted to be Christlike in everything I say and write. For my opponent to imply otherwise is tasteless and vile." He missed that perfect response by a light-year or two.

Instead of crafting a sensible retort, he claimed perfection. Not recent perfection. No no. A lifetime achievement award. Not a single word against Christian principles. In his life. In other words, godlike flawlessness.

(I guess the lie he told by making that statement, that lie must have been his first. Bummer to ruin a good streak like that, on a technicality no less.)

To be fair, Paul was baited. His opponent, Democrat Jack Conway, just put out an ad exposing a college escapade Paul took part in during his days as a member of an anti-Christian club. (The story came out in a recent issue of GQ. Take that for what it's worth.) In the ad, Paul and a buddy stand accused of tying up a woman and forcing her to worship something called the Aquabuddha.

The ad's in terribly poor taste. It's inconsquential to the issues at hand, and irrelevant at best. It's nasty and full of innuendo. It misleads. But Paul's response tells so much more than Conway's sleazy move. It tells us that when the full-court pressure is on, in the heat of the closing weeks of a contentious campaign, the Republitarian political newbie folds.

Man, election season makes people do stupidiotic things.

The Flat Birthers / 8-18-10

Quick, which one of these statements contains the most wrong?

18 percent of Americans Americans believe President Obama is secretly a Muslim.

40 percent of Americans doubt Obama was born in the U.S.

61 percent of Americans believe Muslims have the right to build a mosque in lower Manhattan.

All three statements are accurate -- well, that is to say, they are all true results of actual polling done by actual people, of actual people. I made none of those stats up, is what I'm struggling to say here.

(None is exactly as flashy as the typical "EDUKATION KRISIS: 135 percent of Mississippi High school graduates can't find Chile on a world map" or "77 percent of Oklahoma students can't name the first President of the United States." Both of those statements are false, although one was published as truth as part of a commissioned study last year. Pardon the usual digression.)

But yeah, it's that third figure that irks me the most. Its flipside, really, is the problem.

39 percent of Americans either don't give a hoot about religious freedom, don't give a hoot about Muslims' religious freedom, don't know squat (12 squats = 1 hoot; 1 hoot = 6 goshdarns) about the Bill of Rites, or don't want to answer.

Breaking it down, it's actually 34 percent who claim the mosque would be illegal. The no opinion/don't know crowd is 5 percent. More on this in a minute, after a short detour.

And then there's the fake controversy over Barack Obama's birth certificate. As you might have noticed, many individuals slog through the day, less than enchanted with the prospect of BHO as our 44th President. So before he was even nominated in '08, they began circulating a theory that he is not a "natural born" citizen. Instead of calling them "morons," how dare you suggest that, bite your tongue, we should term them "Flat Birthers," in honor of these splendid citizens.

The problem with Flat Birthers is that their beliefs stretch the boundary of reasonable doubt. To hold on to their beliefs, they have to actively ignore verifiable facts. So I call b.s. -- not on their beliefs, but that we use the excellent term "belief" at all in this instance. Consider, first, some fact-type-items.

Like this. Or even this.

Plus all this.

And the third paragraph of this.

Nobody disproves these facts. Even if you subscribe to the theory that Young Barack gave up his citizenship or accepted dual citizenship at some point, renouncing his American passport in the process, you still are left with the verifiable truth that Obama was born on U.S. soil from an American mother. That's your starting point.

Even if you reject that fact and instead subscribe to the theory that Obama's mom delivered him in Kenya then flew across the globe with a newborn to convince authorities to help fake his birth on U.S. soil -- and this is precisely where you ought to question, "where's the motive?" -- then you're still left with the indisputable fact that Ann Dunham was an American citizen herself. Hence her child is a natural-born citizen (i.e., my brother, born in Paris, France to an American mother), as opposed to a naturalized one (i.e., Arnold Schwarzenegger, who became an U.S. citizen at age 36 after immigrating and applying and waiting and passing a test.)

So yeah, I think I sprained my left brainkle on one of those logical leaps. And when Glenn Beck is calling you out on his show for being crazy, well, that should tell you SOMETHING.

But my point isn't actually to point out that Flat Birthers are wrong. People have been doing that for two solid years now. (It's fun, but it's not my goal.)

No, my aim here is to alter the semantics involved. I'm tired of the cheapening of the word "belief." A belief needs to be beyond proving AND disproving. When we say the Birthers "believe" Obama to be ineligible for the presidency, we're abusing a perfectly good word, employing the wrong one altogether, really. You can believe in God, Lucifer, angels, Fate, karma -- all unprovable and undisprovable. The facts of everyday existence don't directly contradict an underlying karmic power at play.

What we need is a whole new word for what it is the FB'ers have convinced themselves of.

"Blindly persuaded" ... too clunky

"BeLIEve" ... too clever

"Deaflieve" ... better already

"Beleave?" "Faithgnore?" "Manifest Density?" "Wreckon" ...

"Misspeculate" ... too kind

"Speculame" ... too lame

"Except" ... but only if misused in place of "accept"

"Lalalalalalalalaican'thearyou" ... already taken

I do like "wreckon." It fits, as in: "I wreckon I can buy lots more ammo at Walmart with forty bucks, rather than fifty." Not to pick on Walmart shoppers. Go here for that. (Laughing and crying happens to that site's visitors.)

When 34 percent of Americans say they "believe" Muslims have no right to build a mosque in lower Manhattan, what they're really saying is they've chosen to disregard the Bill of Rights in this instance. Yeah, that's not belief. That's something else altogether.

That's: "I wreckon they can build mosks anywhere they want. Accept right next to Ground Zero. That's not OK."

So give me my word back!

I Slam Islam / 8-16-10

Religious puns are the best.

As you'd imagine, I don't personally have any problem with Islam. I mean, no more problem than with every other organized religion. All self-perpetuating institutions screw up every so often, go off the deep end, do some seriously f'ed-up stuff in obvious complete opposition to the purported teachings of their faith. It doesn't take a whole lotta research to find some pretty massive screw-ups by powerful people claiming to act in a religion's best interest. (As if that were even possible. If you have truth, it will win out, with or without your "help," such as it may be.)

But slamming Islam has become something of a national sport, and it's driving me absolutely crazy. People with megaphones are going out of their way to trample the Bill of Rights in a way that should shame them -- but instead, they're proud of their actions.

Case in point: the media-driven furor over the right of Muslims living in Manhattan to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. City planners in Manhattan approved the project, which consists of a mosque and community center designed to improve relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. (Please provide your own ironic comment here.) Obviously, their plans didn't please EVERYONE.

"In my opinion, the prospect of a mosque right near this site of reverence and respect for lost loved ones from the attack shows a serious lack of sensitivity.In fact, the majority of the country is strongly opposed to building a mosque at the site of the most tragic terrorist attack on America." That's from Senator David Vitter of Louisiana. I chose his words because they were less inflammatory than the average politician's. (I could have quoted the usual blowhards here -- you know who you are -- but I wanted to save that for later. And Vitter's right about the "majority of the country," but we'll get to that in due course as well. Like, after about 5,000 words of snarkventarrhea. What? Is too a word.)

As I was saying. Not everyone so happy-happy joy-joy about this turn of events. So when President Obama stated that Muslims are entitled, as per the basic rules of our country, to build places of worship near their places of residence, his pronouncement was national news. THIS JUST IN: Obama Supports Freedom Of Assembly! BREAKING NEWS: Obama Consults Constitution In Crafting Opinion!

Excuse me, but Duh.

Only somehow, Not Duh.

Newt Gingrich, this past Sunday, on Fox: "Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center."

GOP congressional candidate Elliott Maynard (W. Va.): "Do you think the Muslims would allow a Jewish temple or Christian church to be built in Mecca?"

I could point out that Gingrich just equated attending a religious service with genocide, and that Maynard thinks that we should exchange constitutions with Saudi Arabia, but I have faith that their words fail on their own, without my help. (Oops.)

Important data on its way. Aaaaaaaaaaand... go:

61 percent of Americans: "Muslims have the right to build a mosque near Ground Zero."

64 percent of Americans: "Muslims should not build a mosque near Ground Zero."

(Those figures come from a Fox News poll. That's all I'm going to say about that. Actually, their polling is not the worst in the business, as long as you)

Sarah Palin read the poll results and chimed in. (I like her. But maybe not in the way you think.) On her twitter page recently, which I really really won't link to: "We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they? This is not above your pay grade. " Sarah is awesome. She manages to say, like millions of others before and since, that freedom is fine as a CONCEPT. Just don't try and exercise it. Well, not you guys at least.

As for Democrats who deserve a flogging, I give you Senate Majority "Leader" Harry Reid, who opposes, for stupid reasons, the building of the mosque at that location. "The First Amendment protects freedom of religion," wrote Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid. "Sen. Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built someplace else."

(Like maybe in Harlem? Or Brooklyn? How far is far enough, people? What degree of inconvenience do we need to impose on Muslims to make ourselves feel better about... well, whatever it is we need to feel better about at the time?)

Now Reid I can forgive. Sort of. He's in a tight re-election race, he needs to move to the center by taking some positions to his right, to move beyond his base. Those kind of tactics are covered in Intro to Beginners' Basic Elementary Campaigning, Level Zero. I bet Reid doesn't even believe the statement his camp published. He's a Mormon, for crying out loud. He knows about religious intolerance. At least in theory.

But how is it even possible, in the first place, that party lines are drawn over this issue? How is it possible that Reid pissing all over the Bill of Rights is a "move to the center?" I so do want to write "What have we come to as a nation," but I permit myself only x+1 cliches per post.

Unless... unless... the right wing is the side that stopped believing in freedom of religion. Which would be an interesting stance for the party which depends on fundamentalist Christian votes to survive.

RNC Chair Mike Steele: "Mosques are a luxury. We Christians will decide where they may be built, if we allow them at all."

Fundamentalist Stooges: "OK."

Steele: "We'll do the same for the synagogues."

Stooges: "Well, all right."

Steele: "And no more parishes. Until I say so."

Stooges: "Er."

Steele: "Oh, and Rush says no wards outside of Utah."

Stooges: "Uh-"

Steele: "Also, let's say, no-"

Stooges: "Later guys. Let's go make our OWN party."

(Wet dream ends.)

Does it occur to nobody that if the situation were reversed, that the Christian fundies would howl -- and rightfully so -- that their rights were being denied by an oppressive Islamic majority? (It occurs to me. I've thought about it, and I'm only six or seven times more intelligent than your average cable news host or candidate for office, so you'd think some of them would have caught on by now. Or decided that they've been pretending too long to not catch on.)

(Holy punctuation overload, Batman. If this keeps up, my parentheses keys are going to fall off.)

Other Western countries are playing the I Slam Islam game, too. France's congress banned the burqa last month. Canada isn't donating to disaster relief in Pakistan at nearly the rate it gave to Haiti. For a disaster affecting 14 million people in Pakistan, Canadians have cobbled together $200,000 dollars in the first week. Haiti received 17 times more -- $3.5 million in the first seven days. Even more stats: Haiti's TOTAL population is 70 percent of Pakistan's 14 million flood-displaced humans. Phood4thot.

However this ends up playing out, I believe Obama can make some serious hay here. I earnestly -- if naively -- believe that if he were to spend the next few days emphatically driving home the point that people of all faiths are welcome to build houses of worship near their houses of sleepship, and that this is what religious freedom is all about, that he could convince a vast majority of Americans that he is right. Not because he says it's right, but because the guys who wrote the Constitution said so. But he has to be clear, forceful and he has to call out the opposition for putting themselves above the Founding Fathers. (I'm not hopeful here: he's already gone back once on his opening statement, to add that "I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to our founding.")

Even so, forget for a moment that he'd be constitutionally correct in defending religious freedom. (God, do I REALLY have to write that sentence??) Consider instead that the number of non-Christian believers in this country is holding steady or increasing while the number of Christians is dropping precipitously. (Here are the numbers and the pretty charts: visit infoplease.com and religioustolerance.org.)

If he can establish that non-Christians and non-Christian believers have no home in the GOP, and let the demographics work in his favor, he and his party can reap the electoral benefits for years to come.

Although it's probably OK, in the short run, to do the right thing because it's the right thing. That's acceptable too.

Or if desperate measure are called for, Obama could always buck up and quote his predecessor, who, somehow, once said this: "Al Qaeda's cause is not Islam. It is a gross distortion of Islam."

If Bush were president today, and my brain just died a little from typing that, I'd like to think we'd hear him spout something similar. Something like: "Well, um, if Al Qaeda wants to build a mosque dedificated to worshipping terrism, and they want to, uh, build it two blocks from Ground Zero, then I say, Nuh-uh, No Way Hossein. Now them Musslems, theyk'n build whever they wanna. That's Merica. Land of the brave, home of the free, and all that, y'know."

That's probably enough for now.

(Although, honestly, there are so many other angles to take on this issue.

A) Why should peaceful Muslims pay for the sins of hateful terrorists who desecrate the name of Allah with their actions?

B) What's next to be politicized and debated? Trial by jury?

C) What is the significance of Ground Zero, and how are the various political forces using to their benefit? And is this OK?

D) Scapegoats are forever.

E) How is it possible that the party that defecated all over habeas corpus and now freedom of religion continues to be viable?

F) That's it for me. I'm moving to New Zealand and becoming a Hobbit.

Discuss amongst yourselves.)