Clarification, and the Beatles

Here's something I apparently didn't make clear:

The reason Suskind's article didn't shock me was because I've already read so much stuff about Bush's evangelicism. I've followed every article written about it since he was inaugurated. I already knew about Bush's frequent references to his "instinct," about the mandatory prayer meetings he holds for his staff, about his complete lack of intellectual (or other) curiosity, about his uncertainty on the difference between Sweden and Switzerland. Suskind's article was merely an unusually articulate summary of the information I'd already absorbed.

I used the word "acclimated" very deliberately in my last post. I, and I venture to guess many people, have been acclimated to W's integration of religion into public realm, slowly but surely. Bush has brought religion to the forefront so surely, so deliberately, and, I must admit, masterfully. It is suddenly, unmistakably, an essential part of the public discourse. It shouldn't be, but it is. What should be is out the window at this point. We have to deal with what is.

More on this later. I'm sick of politics.

Anyone watch Lost tonight? I love that show. It's one of three shows I'm watching right now--I'm about maxed out. Charlie's tatoo ("Living is easy with eyes closed") inspired me to pop in the Beatles. I was really wanting Strawberry Fields, but I don't have it, so I listened to Let It Be while catching up on e-mail and am now on to the White Album. What's up with Jack's demon daddy? Quality brain-dead T.V. shows are truly a gift. It's about time for online poker, folks.

ANNIE UPDATE: Tonight I again watched Annie Duke win a poker tournament. I can't keep track of exactly which tournaments they're talking about . . . it seems that every night there's a new one, and I can't figure out the hierarchy of the whole thing. Anyway, there were two consecutive tournaments going on, a women's and a men's. Annie declined to play in the women's tournament and instead played in the men's . . . AND BEAT THEM ALL. This woman is my hero.

In closing, I've typed up a partial transcript of the final Bush/Kerry debate. I will freely admit that this is not an official transcript--it's mostly (O.K., entirely) from my memory, but I think most of you will agree that it's pretty accurate. Enjoy.



Moderator: President Bush, what do you have to say to those families who have loved ones fighting in Iraq and who question your decision to go to war?

Bush: Well, one thing I would say to them is, there’s nothing more important for our soldiers in the army of compassion, who are out there in harm’s way, than to have a good education. In my first term I passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which guarantees that every soldier, whether they’re a minority or whatnot, will get the same education as everybody else who’s not a soldier. You see, there was what they call a learning gap between folks, but now that there’s No Child Left Behind, there’s not that gap anymore.


Moderator: Mr. President, your opponent lays out some pretty strong figures on job loss during your first term, and he claims that no other president since Hoover has overseen a bigger job loss than your administration. How do you respond to that?

Bush: You see, it’s very simple. While we did have a job loss, we’ve also had a job gain in the past few months. When you have a loss but then you have a gain, that’s not a loss. My opponent can’t see that, because he can’t decide whether there’s a gain or loss. But I’d also like to say that the bipartisan legislation I did during my first term, the No Child Left Behind Act, is actually a jobs act. It has guaranteed a level playing field when people are competing for jobs. Because we have standards now, and we’re going to hold people accountable.


Moderator: Mr. President, some have claimed that you don’t really seem to have any plan at all for healthcare. Can you describe for the American people what you intend to do about the rising cost of healthcare and the millions of people who are currently uninsured?

Bush: I’d love to take the opportunity to outline my plan to the American people. See, in order for people to make informed choices about healthcare, people have to be educated. I can’t explain how important education is in this decision. That’s why the No Child Left Behind Act, which I wrote with Republicans and Democrats across the aisle, will guarantee that no child can just be passed on through the system. Even if your parents don’t speak English or if you live in the inner city, you will get the help you need to not be left behind. And contrary to what my opponent claims, I have fully funded this program. In fact, I’ve overfunded it, as evidenced by the 1,000 new Pell Grants that are now out there and available for folks who want to go to college and can’t afford it.

Faith No More

This week there was an excellent article by Ron Suskind in the New York Times Magazine entitled "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush." Many of you may have read or at least heard about it by now. For those who haven't, the title pretty much says it all. It should come as no surprise to learn that we have a president "of faith." What should surprise, and shock, and appall, is the extent to which he relies on this faith of his to run the country.

But maybe I'm being too demanding of the readers, and of the voters. Because the truth is, I myself am not shocked by this article. The reason I'm not shocked is because I've become slowly acclimated to the idea that the president, like Nancy Reagan before him, feels that his actions, actions that affect the lives and fates of literally millions of people, are guided directly by a higher power working through him. And because he calls that power "God" instead of "the voices in my head" or "my invisible friend Harvey," people buy it, accept it, shrug it off, downplay it, or roll-around-on-the-floor rejoice over it, depending on their own points of view.

George Bush has his fans, no doubt about it. And my assessment is, this article won't, and perhaps shouldn't, have any effect on the vast majority of them. A lot them fall into the category of, "I don't care if he speaks in tongues and foams at the mouth, as long as he cuts my taxes and goes out and kicks the world's ass!"

Others do believe like him. Or at least believe him. Yes they do. God help us.

We are no longer permitted to be secular in this nation. It's just not tolerated. We will not be suffered to not tow the line. The longer and harder we are driven to fight the religious extremists in other countries, the more and more religious we are required to be in the public realm. I'm not given to conspiracy theories, and I'm not one to draw a hard line on too many issues. (One of those rare, hated types of people who see grey areas in almost everthing. Obviously, I have no morals.) But I do believe this, that religion is being more and more embraced every day in the public realm. Everyone, whether they're on the left or right, is dragging their religion out into public, brandishing it, and using it as a political sword or safety net. I seriously doubt if I could find anyone in this country, this completely divided country, who believes that an atheist, or even an agnostic, could make a serious run for president. It simply couldn't happen. You've either got to have the faith, think you have the faith, or pretend you have the faith.

Suskind's article merely sums up what should be obvious to anyone who has watched Bush over the last four years. Bush's faith is not only worn on his sleeve, it's practically branded onto his forehead. It's been out there from the start, from the faith-based initiative to the biblical language that always makes its way into his speeches to his hard-line stances on reproductive rights, stem-cell research, and gay marriage, to his lust for preemptive war. The longer he's in office, the more his crusade reveals itself. The goal is to make his faith your faith, my faith, whether we like it or not. Sound familiar?

One Small Step for Womankind

Tonight, a woman named Annie Duke won the World Poker Series Tournament of Champions. To clarify, this was not a woman's tournament--she was playing with the big boys and beat out a lot of top contenders and former World Series of Poker winners, including her brother, Howard Lederer, who was at the final table with her. Am I wrong to feel vicariously triumphant? The funny thing is, I wasn't even rooting for her at first, mostly because I like Howard and wanted him to win. But as the tournament progressed, and she kept hanging in there, I started to notice some stuff that gave me pause. Some of the announcers' comments, for one thing, were really kind of outrageous but not surprising. "Annie's feeling a lot of emotion right now," one of the commentators said at one point. Of course, she's a woman, so she's going to be emotional--that's such a girl thing, after all. At another point, one of them actually said, and I quote, "First we gave them (women) the right to vote, then we put them on the Supreme Court, now we're letting them play poker . . . when will it end?" Ha, ha. It was meant to be a joke--and isn't it just hilarious? Can you imagine if he'd said the same thing, but in reference to African Americans, or Asians, or any other group besides women? Yeah, that would have been really funny . . . possibly lawsuit-level funny.

At any rate, I was proud of Annie and very happy that she won. She was awesome, actually. And an interesting thing to consider--I doubt very much that her final heads-up opponent, Phil Helmuth (or, as Jackspatula calls him, Phil Hellmouth), was thinking much at the end about her being a woman. He was just thinking about how to beat her, and he failed. (And then bitched about it incessantly, but that's just him--he's kind of an asshole.) I have experienced that myself, actually, albeit under more modest and mundane circumstances. I too have sat at a card table full of men for up to eight hours, in Vegas, multiple times. And the same thing always happens. At first there is some joking, some flirting, a lot of not-taking-me-seriously. Then, as I continue to sit there, and win sometimes, and neglect to respond to the flirting and the chit-chat, eventually I am just another player at the table, and the whole woman thing kind of fades away. Maybe that's why I love playing cards so much--it is a great leveler. Ditto pool and chess, two of my other great loves. If you know what you're doing, nothing else about you--gender, race, physical ability--matters at all. And you can compete. And you can win.

Congratulations, Annie!!

Sunday Breakdown

Re. the subject of how much time childless people actually have, here's a breakdown of how I spent my relatively obligation-free day yesterday:

[Disclaimer: Not all of my weekend days are like this. Even yesterday, my sister was supposed to bring my nephew Punky Doodle down for a visit, but he was sick, so they couldn't make it. Jackspatula was also sick and spent most of the day sleeping on the couch. And, since I didn't have anything else planned for the day . . . well, you'll see.]

(Times are approximate.)
9:00 a.m.: Get up.
9:00 - 10:00 a.m.: Read New York Times, drink coffee.
10:00 - 1:00 p.m.: Play online poker, drink more coffee. (Yes, for THREE HOURS. My time is truly my own.)
1:00 - 2:30 p.m.: Eat snack, read. (Snack: half a honey-mustard chicken breast and two pieces of toast with pepper-berry jam. Current book: Clinton's biography. How is it? Well, it's kind of like reading this list, documenting every minute of every day of someone's life, for about 50 years, in narrative form. Sound tedious? Yes! But I'm over 200 pages in now and feel committed.)
2:30 - 3:00: Clean up kitchen
3:00 - 4:00: More online poker (so bad!)
4:00 - 4:30: Walk to local hippie store to pick up stuff for dinner
4:30 - 5:00: Drive to Giant Eagle to pick up single key ingredient that the hippie store doesn't have (a common occurrence)
5:00 - 5:30: Take dog for walk
5:30 - 6:00: Watch World Poker Tournament on ESPN
6:00 - 8:00: Cook dinner (Roasted squash and potato enchiladas. This is a very time-consuming recipe involving a food processor that tends to spew bits of sauce out from its ill-fitting lid. You can see where this is leading. See below.)
8:00 - 8:10: Take 10 minutes to eat meal that took 2 hours to prepare. Jackspatula still sick and can't eat; lies on the couch looking pathetic while I eat.
8:10 - 9:00: Clean kitchen. (Not only did preparing the enchildas involve using about 3/4 of our total stockpile of dishes, pans, bowls, and utensils, but the sauce from the food processor managed to land bits of itself all over the splashboard and on all the canisters, the coffee pot, the toaster, etc.)
9:00 - 11:00: Exhausted from hours in the kitchen, I veg out in front of the TV for the rest of the night. Shows watched: "Desperate Housewives" and "Boston Legal." Time wasted? You decide.
11:00 - 12:00: Up to bed for an hour of reading. More Clinton minutia. No problem falling asleep after that.

So, that's it. A whole day. The major accomplishment? We will have enchiladas to eat all week! The major un-accomplishment? FOUR HOURS of online poker. But think of it this way. How many people would think nothing of spending four hours on a Sunday watching football? LOTS! And how productive is that? Not very! Kind of puts a different perspective on it, doesn't it?

Negligence, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

This is not going well. If I'm going to let days, weeks go by without posting, then what's the point? And why, pray tell, have I not been posting? Let's list the reasons and then deconstruct them, shall we?

1. Lack of time. This one is obviously a blatant if convenient lie. Though I'm married and work full time, I do not have children, and as anyone with children will tell you, anyone without children has plenty of time--they just don't realize it! And it's true! I can't tell you how much time Jackspatula and I spend watching movies (or crappy T.V.), reading, cooking elaborate meals, playing chess, fooling around on the computer, going out, visiting friends, etc.--and don't even get me started on the online poker thing. I do not lack time. It must be something else.
2. Lack of energy. There is some truth to that sometimes, but . . . nah, see above. Another lame excuse.
3. Lack of desire to write after spending all day at work writing, editing, composing e-mails, etc. Ah, we're getting warmer. Still not quite there, though. It must be a combination of this (actually very valid) reason and . . .
4. Lack of focus. Eureka! That's it. What is this thing supposed to be about, anyway? Why am I doing this . . . why does anyone do this? Other people I know do not seem to have this problem of overanalyzing their reasons, motives, trying to find a "blog theme," etc. They just hit the ground running. So typical of me to worry about it too much--so much so that I wind up abandoning it altogether. I worry about the topics, the audience (as if I even have an audience), the tone, the direction . . .

So, no more! No more worrying! Don't think, just write!

Part of the problem is that I think I conceived this whole thing as having a political theme, but I'm so sick of politics I could scream. It's ugly out there. Ugly and tiring. I've had some not-very-pleasant confrontations with friends over the election lately, and I'm frankly sick of the whole thing. Not one person I know is one of those freaks known as "the undecided voter." Not one of us is going to change the mind of any of the others. Why are we bothering, why do we continue to have these never-ending circular arguments? Even worse than how annoying the whole thing has become, it's also started to bore me. Why would I be inspired to write about something that lately is boring me to death?

We're definitely making progess here.

On to the random thoughts and brilliant observations that everyone who bothers to read a blog is looking for!

As soon as I have one, I'll let you know.