Month: April 2009

Bringing In The Sheaves

by digby

Yesterday I wrote about the reports of a possible retreat by the Religious Right and today I see that the liberal members of the Religion Industrial Complex are chasing after them, begging for the them to come back into the public square:

This past week the debate between the nascent Religious Left and the Religion Industrial Complex gained national attention when it was featured in a major article in U.S. News and World Report. We might not ordinarily focus on such matters on this site, but an important part of the criticism of the RIC has been how it has at once enabled the Religious Right while pretending that the culture wars of aggression waged by the Religious Right against the civil and constitutional rights of other Americans are over or are about to be.

As we have seen, RIC leaders based on a series of faulty assumptions and cynical political triangulations, have not only declared that the culture wars are over or about to be but promoted the power hungry ambitions of retrograde Religious Right figures like Rick Warren, who seem nice enough – until they talk about what they really believe.

[…]

Susan Thistlethwaite, a member of the board of Faith in Public Life and its parent organization, the Center for American Progress, takes to her the Washington Post/Newweek’s On Faith blog for a political tap dance and light show because her organization, which has earned a lot of media coverage as an agnecy of the Religious Left, was described by U.S. News as heading down a “centrist” road.

“I’m in favor of reaching out and I am less interested in labels. To me as a person of faith, I believe we should be engaging the public square in order to effect change. In order to effect change, you have to engage in the broadest possible coalition-building.”

Indeed, those of us who have been critical agree that the matter is about substance more than terminology. That is part of what has been so objectionable about the way that substantive debates are diverted and obscured by semantic slights of hand. There is hardly a better example than Thistlethwaite’s invocation of the “broadest possible coalition.” While most sensible people would agree that sometimes seemingly unlikely coalition partners are necessary and possible, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice for one, says that Thistletwaite’s idea of reaching out is almost exclusively to the Religious Right, while the religious mainstream — never mind the Religious Left — has been left out. So let’s be very clear: Leaders of mainstream Protestant denominations and major bodies of Judaism representing many tens of millions of Americans, are marginalized in favor of building relationships with a handful of conservative evangelicals of various stripes. This may be a strategic error of historic proportions, but Thistlethwaite et al, do not even want to discuss it.

These people have fashioned their entire enterprise as a bridge between the religious right and the Democratic party so they have a big stake in ensuring that the religious right is powerful. Otherwise, they would be superfluous.

This is an interesting subplot in the political story, and one to keep an eye on. Right now, people are rightly obsessed with the economic situation and the culture wars have retreated. But the organizing power of religious is still powerful and in the right hands can be used for political purposes.

Meanwhile, Job Meechum, the trendiest of religious trendies, declares in this week’s Newsweek the end of Christian America:

There it was, an old term with new urgency: post-Christian. This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory. To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of an evangelical theocracy and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey that got Mohler’s attention, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. The Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim, 0.6 percent. A separate Pew Forum poll echoed the ARIS finding, reporting that the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent; in terms of voting, this group grew from 5 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008—roughly the same percentage of the electorate as African-Americans. (Seventy-five percent of unaffiliated voters chose Barack Obama, a Christian.) Meanwhile, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. (That is about double the number of, say, Episcopalians in the United States.)

Why it seems like only a a few years ago that he was on every gasbag show proclaiming that religion was the driving force in American politics (while some of us were pointing out that the the numbers were actually going the other way.) But when Bush was in office religion was so “in” among the villagers, that the Rachel Zoe of Washington, Sally Quinn, even jumped on the bandwagon. Today, it’s as outre as ass antlers.

Meacham sees some disillusioned social conservatives becoming more radical (drawing some rather stupid comparisons to 60s liberals, naturally) and I think that’s entirely possible. If the right wing Christians are withdrawing into the private sphere it would be in keeping with their religious traditions and is something that’s happened many times in the past. But there is a fringe of social conservatives who are not really religious but rather simple authoritarians who could very well join up with the other wingnuts and organize themselves around the cause of abortion or gay rights in a far more radical way than we’ve seen in quite some time.

The paranoid style in American politics has always been most comfortable on the right, particularly when they are out of power. The Christian Right of Tom Delay and Justice Sunday will be right at home among the black helicopter crowd.

Impossible Things

by digby

“It is a revolutionary world that we live in, and history shows us that we can do improbable, sometimes impossible, things.”

Michael Hirsh has written a useful article in Newsweek, which drills down to the essence of what divides the Treasury and its critics. Considering that most of the critics are liberal, it’s an interesting question:

On one side are those who want to fix the financial house we have; on the other are those who think we should knock it down so we can build a brand-new one—a new Wall Street, in other words. The keep-the-house-intact crowd includes Geithner and Bernanke, as well as Obama-appointed regulators like Mary Schapiro of the SEC. They want serious fixes to the Wall Street system—new rules and regulations to repair the old house and ensure that it doesn’t burn down again in the future—but they don’t much want to change its structure. Having giants like Citigroup and Bank of America dominating the landscape is OK with them, as long as those giants follow the new rules. On the other side of the debate are critics such as Paul Krugman and possibly Paul Volcker and Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., who think the old house is structurally unsound. They believe that not only can’t we solve the present crisis by merely tinkering with the old house, but that we’ll assuredly find ourselves in another crisis down the line if we don’t dismantle it entirely. It’s a debate that encompasses all the back-and-forth over Geithner’s and Bernanke’s careful, intricate plan to fix the big Wall Street banks instead of nationalizing and dismantling them, as well as the cautious regulatory scheme they laid out last week. And it’s a debate that must be settled now.

It seems to have been pretty much settled already. The administration has cast its lot with those who don’t believe fundamental change in the financial sector is necessary or desirable. Perhaps some tinkering around the regulatory edges and keeping a sharper eye on things will prevent some of this from happening in the future. But the critics think something much more fundamental is needed to fix the current economic problems and prevent this from happening again.
There is a lot of speculation about why the Obama administration is unwilling or unable to fulfill the promise of fundamental change on this particular issue, ranging from thinking that he and his crew are Wall Street lackeys to the belief that the lack of 60 Senators makes anything else impossible to the idea that the problem is simply too big and systemic to do anything more than fiddle a bit without triggering a cataclysmic meltdown.
Perhaps it’s a little bit of all of those, or something else entirely. But whatever the motives, it’s clear that Obama sees himself at best as an intermediary between the people and the bankers rather than an strict advocate for reform on behalf of the citizens.
He has said explicitly that the bankers have an IED straped to their chests and are threatening to blow themselves up if they don’t get their way, so maybe this is the only way he can manage this situation. I can sympathize with that. But there is something even more unnerving about the president telling the bankers that the administration is the only thing that stands between them and the pitchforks. I don’t think the wielders of the pitchforks are nearly as dangerous as the guys with the IEDs strapped to their chests. Indeed, at this point I don’t even see any pitchforks at all, but rather citizens being justifiably annoyed by millionaires whining about their bonuses and simply asking their government to step in and fix these problems the bankers have caused. It appeared that he was putting himself out there as the protectors of the elites against the people and no matter whether he truly believes that or if he’s just acknowledging the Big Money Boyz’s threats, that’s not a place any of us should want him to be.

Hirsh’s piece, by the way, is actually about the fact that the Geithner plan appears to be based upon a plan set forth by Warren Buffet. Buffet is a very smart investor and by most accounts a fairly liberal guy when it comes to politics. But this is way beyond partisan politics. Hirsch writes:

My point in raising this episode, which has not been reported until now, is not to fault Buffett, Gross or Blankfein—or even Geithner. Indeed, it appears that Buffett, the Berkshire Hathaway chairman (who, full disclosure, is a director of The Washington Post Co., which owns NEWSWEEK), was genuinely trying to help Paulson find a way out of the bank collapse. But the genesis of the PPIP plan does resurrect questions about who’s really running the show here, and how incestuous the relationship between Washington and Wall Street has become.

That’s the problem that everyone’s trying to grapple with and it looks incresingly as if the administration is throwing in his lot with the “best and the brightest.” That didn’t work out too well the last time a young, charismatic Democrats did it and it’s not likely to be any better this time.
Obama, April 3, 2008

We know that transformational change is possible. We know this because of three reasons. First, because, for all our differences, there are certain values that bind us together and reveal our common humanity: the universal longing to live a life free from fear and free from want, a life marked by dignity and respect and simple justice. Our two republics were founded in service of these ideals. In America it is written into our founding documents as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In France, liberte — AUDIENCE MEMBER: Egalite. PRESIDENT OBAMA: Absolutely — (laughter, cheers, applause) — egalite, fraternite. Our moral authority is derived from the fact that generations of our citizens have fought and bled to uphold these values in our nations and others. And that’s why we can never sacrifice them for expedience’s sake.

Hear, hear. Economic justice is one of those values as well.

Saturday Night At The Movies

The April fools: Top 10 Mockumentaries

By Dennis Hartley

Homeland security, circa 1984:Simpler times

OK, so April fool’s Day was 3 days ago, but who’s counting? Besides, I’ll milk anything for a Top 10 theme. I thought it might be fun this week to take a look at some filmmakers who have made it their mission to yank on our collective lanyards (does that hurt?). So, in no particular ranking order, here are my picks for the “Top 10 Mockumentaries”:

Best in Show-Christopher Guest’s name has become synonymous with the word “mockumentary”, and for good reason. He and his repertory company of actors and co-writers have delivered some of the more memorable examples of the genre in the last decade or so (Waiting for Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration), and I think this gentle poke at dog lovers represents his own “best in show” so far. Guest uses a Robert Altman-style framing device to deliver a revolving study of various eccentric characters as they all converge (with pooches in tow) to compete against each other at a national dog show. Of course, it is ultimately all about the owners and their egos, not the dogs and their poise (which makes me wonder if Guest took just a bit of inspiration from Errol Morris’ Gates of Heaven, a classic documentary about a California pet cemetery.) Perhaps it is unfair to single anyone out with such a tight comic ensemble in play, but Fred Willard is a definite highlight as a witless TV commentator (is that redundant?) and Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock chew major scenery as an obnoxious yuppie couple. More standouts: Catherine O’Hara, Michael McKean, John Michael Higgins, Jane Lynch, Jennifer Coolidge, Larry Miller and Eugene Levy (who co-scripted). Woof!

The Blair Witch Project-This may not fit the standard definition of a mockumentary in a traditional “ha-ha” sense; and perhaps it was ultimately the audience who was being mocked here, but (love it or hate it) there is no denying the impact that this cleverly marketed trifle has had on modern filmmaking. Keep in mind-this film came out a few years before any yahoo with a cell phone camera could file an “I-report” on CNN or become a viral video star. In the event that you spent most of 1999 in a coma, this is the one where several young amateur actors were turned loose in some dark and scary woods, armed with camping gear, video cameras and a plot point or two provided by the filmmakers, who then proceeded to play creepy, “gotcha” mind games with their merry troupe. The result was surprisingly effective, because after all, it’s the IDEA that “something” in the woods is out to get you which brings on the nightmares-not some guy in a rubber monster suit lurching about in front of the camera. There are still some “chicken-egg” debates raging over whether the very similar low budget fright, The Last Broadcast (1998) or possibly an obscure cult item from 1980 called Cannibal Holocaust (don’t ask) deserves the kudos (or the blame) as the kick-starter for this sub-genre.

Borat -I think the closest I have ever come to literally passing out laughing was when I watched a faux-newsmagazine segment on HBO’s Da Ali G Show featuring a visiting Kazakhstani “journalist” named Borat, leading a barroom full of drunken, happily obliging all-‘murcan rednecks in a rousing chorus of a “traditional” song from his homeland called “Throw the Jew Down the Well”. Appallingly tasteless? To a channel-surfer, perhaps…but since I knew going in that the obliviously coarse ‘Borat’ was really a brilliant, Cambridge-educated British satirist (and nice Jewish boy) named Sacha Baron Cohen who was only illustrating a point about the inherent racism that still runs rampant here in the good ol’ U S of A, I was in full ROTFL mode (while crying on the inside, of course). Cohen teamed up with director Larry Charles in 2006 for a feature-length extrapolation on this loopy, “must be seen to be believed” sketch character, basically expanding on the premise already established on the HBO series. Cohen commits himself with Andy Kaufman-esque intensity; never once breaking character as he befuddles, outrages and enrages the hapless yokels he encounters (who we assume are not in on the joke). A unique blend of expert, hilarious crank-yanking and smart, incisive social satire.

Drop Dead Gorgeous-Making a mockery of beauty contests may be tantamount to “shooting fish in a barrel”, but as far as guilty pleasures go, you could do worse than this faux backstage documentary from 1999 about a Minnesota pageant that goes horribly, horribly wrong (on so many levels). Director Michael Patrick Jann went on to direct 40 episodes of Comedy Central’s outrageous Cops parody, Reno 911, which should give you a clue as to what you’re in for here. Star Kirsten Dunst plays it fairly straight, and is easily out-hammed by Ellen Barkin (an absolute riot as her trailer-trash mom) and an extremely over-the-top Kirstie Alley as the Stage Mother From Hell. Gorgeous Denise Richards shows a real flair for comedy with a show-stopping, jaw-dropping “so bad that it’s good” performance number dedicated to the “special fella in her life”, a Mr. J. Christ. Also in the cast: Alison Janey, Brittany Murphy and Amy Adams. The film is a bit reminiscent of a (gentler) beauty pageant spoof from 1975 called Smile (recommended).

F for Fake– “This is a promise,” Orson Welles intones, looking directly into the camera, “For the next hour, everything you hear from us is really true and based on solid fact.” Ay, but here’s the rub: This playful ‘documentary’ about Elmyr de Hory (“the world’s greatest art forger”) and his biographer Clifford Irving (infamous for his own fakery) runs for 85 minutes. Ever feel like someone’s having you on? That’s the subject of Welles’ 1974 rumination on the meaning of art, and the art of the con (something that the creator of the infamous “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast knew a thing or two about). Not for all tastes; some may find it too scattershot and even incoherent at times, but there is a method to the madness, and attentive viewers will be rewarded. A musical score from the great Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) is a nice bonus. Even toward the end of an admittedly chequered career, with his prowess as a filmmaker arguably on the wane, any completed project by the great Welles demands your attention (at least once!).

Hard Core Logo-Frequently compared with This is Spinal Tap, this film from iconoclastic Canadian director Bruce McDonald does Reiner’s film one better-it’s got real substance. Now, obviously I love Spinal Tap (otherwise it wouldn’t have been included on this “Top 10” list), but it relentlessly opts for the quick yuck, sometimes at the expense of becoming slightly smug and condescending toward its subject matter. McDonald’s film, on the other hand, mixes its humor with genuine dramatic tension and even some surprising poignancy, particularly in its portrayal of the complex, mercurial relationship between the two main characters, Joe Dick (Hugh Dillon) and Billy Tallent (Callum Keith Rennie). Joe and Billy front a “legendary” D.I.Y. punk band called Hard Core Logo, who hit the road for a belated reunion tour. McDonald plays himself, as the director who is documenting what could turn out to be the band’s final hurrah. The film is full of great throwaway lines (“I can’t come to the phone right now. I’m eating corn chips and masturbating. Please leave a message.”). There are also a ton of obscure references in Noel S. Baker’s screenplay that truly dedicated rock music geeks (guilty!) will delight in. This is part of a trilogy (of sorts) by McDonald that includes Roadkill and Highway 61.

Real Life-Stylistically speaking, this underrated 1979 gem from writer-director Albert Brooks presaged Christopher Guest & company’s successful mockumentary franchise by at least a decade. In fact, the screenplay was co-written by Guest alum Harry Shearer (along with Brooks’ long-time creative collaborator, Monica Mcgowan Johnson). Real Life is a brilliant take-off on the 1973 PBS miniseries, An American Family (which I suppose can now be tagged as the original “reality TV” experiment). Brooks basically plays himself-a neurotic, narcissistic comedian who decides to direct a documentary that will intimately profile the daily life of a “perfect” American family. After vetting several candidates (represented via a montage of hilarious “tests” conducted at a behavioral studies institute), he decides on the Yeager family of Phoenix, Arizona (headed by the ever-wry Charles Grodin, who was born for this role). The film becomes funnier and funnier as it becomes more about the self-absorbed filmmaker himself (and his tremendous ego) rather than his subjects. Brooks takes a lot of jabs at Hollywood, and at clueless studio execs in particular. If you’ve never seen this one, you’re in for a real treat.

Take the Money and Run-This is one of Woody Allen’s “earlier, funny films”. It’s also one of the seminal mockumentaries, and an absolute riot from start to finish. Woody casts himself as bumbling career criminal Virgil Starkwell, who is the subject of this faux biopic. Narrated with tongue-in-cheek gravitas by veteran voice-over maestro Jackson Beck, the film traces Starkwell’s trajectory from his early days as a petty criminal (knocking over gumball machines) to his career apex as a “notorious” bank robber. In one of the most singularly hilarious gags Allen has ever conceived, Virgil blows a heist by arguing with a bank manager over his penmanship on a scribbled stickup note that he has handed to a teller, who is very confused by the sentence that appears to read; “I have a gub.” Although I’d have to say it’s a tossup between that scene and the one that involves an on-the-lam Virgil, knocking on a farmhouse door and asking to use the phone whilst still connected via leg irons to an entire chain gang of fellow escapees, who each offer a polite nod to their kind host as they shuffle through the door one by one. A true comedy classic, not to be missed. BTW-if you ever plan to break out of jail by wielding a fake revolver carved from a bar of soap…a word of advice? Check the weather report!

This is Spinal Tap– Sometimes, I have to be reminded that it was Rob Reiner who directed this cult fave from 1984; because it features several of the key players who went on to form the creative core of Christopher Guest’s mockumentary franchise. Reiner generously shared screenplay credits with his three stars-Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean, who portray Spinal Tap founders Nigel Tufnel (guitar), Derek Smalls (bass) and David St. Hubbins (lead vocals), respectively. “Screenplay” might be a loose term here; as much of the dialog was allegedly improvised on the fly by the actors. Reiner is “rockumentary” filmmaker Marti Dibergi, who is tagging along with the hard rocking British outfit on a grueling tour of the states. By the time the film’s relatively brief 84 minutes have expired, no one (and I mean, no one) involved in the business of rock’n’roll has been spared the knife-the musicians, roadies, girlfriends, groupies, fans, band managers, rock journalists, concert promoters, record company execs, A & R reps, even record store clerks…you name it, they all get bagged and tagged. Admittedly, a lot of the jokes are pretty “inside”; I’ve noticed that the people who tend to dismiss this film also tend to not be rock music aficionados (or perhaps even more tellingly, have never played in a band!). Nonetheless, a classic of its kind. Remember-you can’t dust for vomit.

True Stories-New Yawk musician/raconteur David Byrne (that’s MISTER Talking Heads to you) enters the Lone Star state of mind with this subtly satirical Texas travelogue from 1986. It is not easy to pigeonhole this one- part social satire, part long-form music video, part mockumentary. The episodic vignettes about the quirky but generally likable inhabitants of sleepy Virgil, Texas should hold your fascination once you buy into “tour-guide” Byrne’s bemused anthropological detachment (some might say, “conceit”, but there is no detectable mean-spiritedness here). Among the town’s “residents”: John Goodman, “Pops” Staples, Swoosie Kurtz and the late, great Spalding Gray. The outstanding cinematography is by Edward Lachman. Byrne’s fellow Heads have cameos performing “Wild Wild Life”. Not everyone’s cup of tea, perhaps- but for some reason, I have an emotional attachment to this film that I can’t even explain (shrug).

Previous posts with related themes:

The Hoax/Color Me Kubrick

My Kid Could Paint That

Update: Here’s some weird synchronicity. I swear, I didn’t plan this (and no, I am not a shill or a programmer for the network), but I was looking at my cable schedule for tonight, and beginning at 5pm, Turner Classic Movies is having a mockumentary film festival! And in an even weirder bit of kismet, all four films are on my Top 10 list. They will be airing Take the Money and Run, Real Life, Best in Show and This is Spinal Tap. You start the popcorn, I’ll go melt some butter…

Itchy Fingers

by digby

Following up on tristero’s post this morning about Dave Neiwert’s new book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right it’s especially interesting to note that today’s gun rampage in Pittsburgh may be related to recent paranoid rightwing rants about Obama’s alleged “gun grabbing” proclivities.

Neiwert writes:

Some of the early reports out of Pittsburgh indicate the man who shot three cops today was fearful that the Obama administration was going to “take away his guns.”

[…]
He feared an Obama gun grab? Gee, I wonder where he could have heard that. Indeed, a story replete with NRA-style fearmongering about the looming “grab” — which has been fueling a run on guns at local shops — ran just three days ago in the Pittsburgh Tribune. We’ve been reporting for awhile on the surge in gun sales, and how the paranoia around guns is making the more unstable elements of the right particularly edgy. Inevitably, that edginess is going to break out into actual violence — as it appears to have done today.

This is one of the wierd fault lines in American politics — the police who have to face the armed citizenry and the macho right wing zealots whose only answer for anything is for everyone to carry more guns. It’s incidents like today’s that bring home the fallacy of that argument in living color — the cops are all armed and three of them got mowed down today by a gun nut.

The black helocopter crowd went underground during the Bush years, blithely unconcerned with the Cheney police state, (which proves just what a bunch of gullible tools they really are.) They only get aroused when someone tells them a liberal is in office and so it’s time to stock up on weaponry to repel the jack-booted thugs.

Yesterday, I asked what the hell was going on with all these killing rampages. Eric Boehlert pointed out that the press had completely fallen down on the job by failing to note that there had been 30 people killed in gun rampages in just the last six days (three more today) by treating each incident as if it were a a one day story. (That seems to be changing a little bit with yesterday and today’s killings.)

But I can guarantee you that no matter what, nobody will be allowed to intelligently or coherently discuss whether or not the availablility of all these guns might be a factor. The right has successfully made that a taboo subject akin to atheism or communism. Indeed,for these people, it’s the only part of the Bill of Rights which is not subject to the old saw, “the constitution isn’t a suicide pact,” (which is kind of ironic since so many of these rampages seem to be just that.) Why, even though we are arming the drug cartels that are turning the the border into a shooting gallery, Lou Dobbs has an aneurysm at even the suggestion that easily available guns in the US might be contributing to the problem.

If Neiwert is correct, this is probably only the beginning of some unpleasantness. The radio gasbags are getting more and more incoherent and wild and the population most subject to their violent rants are armed to the teeth. I think we can all see where this might be headed.

Going Back To Church

by digby

I think this is good news, but I’m not entirely sure:

Is the Christian right finished as a political entity? Or, more to the point, are principled Christians finished with politics? These questions have been getting fresh air lately as frustrated conservative Christians question the pragmatism — defined as the compromising of principles — of the old guard. One might gently call the current debate a generational rift. The older generation, represented by such icons as James Dobson, who recently retired as head of Focus on the Family, has compromised too much, according to a growing phalanx of disillusioned Christians. Pragmatically speaking, the Christian coalition of cultural crusaders didn’t work. For proof, one need look no further than Dobson himself, who was captured on tape recently saying that the big cultural battles have all been lost. Shortly thereafter, in late March, Christian radio host Steve Deace of WHO Radio in Iowa aggressively interviewed Tom Minnery, head of the political arm of Focus on the Family. Minnery, whom Deace described as “the Karl Rove of the religious right,” accused Deace during the interview of ambushing him when he had expected a chat about Dobson’s legacy. Indeed, Deace was loaded for bear — or Pontius Pilate. It wasn’t exactly a Limbaugh-Obama matchup, but it was confrontational, and corners of America’s heartland and Bible Belt have been buzzing ever since. Deace’s point was that established Christian activist groups too often settle for lesser evils in exchange for electing Republicans. He cited as examples Dobson’s support of Mitt Romney and John McCain, neither of whom is pro-life or pro-family enough from Deace’s perspective. Compromise may be the grease of politics, but it has no place in Christian orthodoxy, according to Deace. Put another way, Christians may have no place in the political fray of dealmaking. That doesn’t mean one disengages from political life, but it might mean that the church shouldn’t be a branch of the Republican Party. It might mean trading fame and fortune (green rooms and fundraisers) for humility and charity. Deace’s radio show may be beneath the radar of most Americans and even most Christians, but he is not alone in his thinking. I was alerted to the Deace-Minnery interview by E. Ray Moore — founder of the South Carolina-based Exodus Mandate, an initiative to encourage Christian education and home schooling. Moore, who considers himself a member of the Christian right, thinks the movement is imploding. “It’s hard to admit defeat, but this one was self-inflicted,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Yes, Dr. Dobson and the pro-family or Christian right political movement is a failure; it would have made me sad to say this in the past, but they have done it to themselves.” For Christians such as Moore — and others better known, such as columnist Cal Thomas, a former vice president for the Moral Majority — the heart of Christianity is in the home, not the halls of Congress or even the courts. And the route to a more moral America is through good works — service, prayer and education — not political lobbying.

It may be true that the conservative Christians, specifically conservative evangelicals, are retreating from “worldly” politics. Historically, that’s been their stance more often than not.
And this idea has been brewing for some time. Here’s a book review from a couple of years ago in Christianity Today:

The unfolding story of American evangelicals’ involvement in politics has a certain rhythm to it. Like a pendulum swinging from one extreme to another, evangelicals have swung from a kind of pietistic stance of withdrawal and suspicion to a strident, triumphalistic program for “taking America back for God.” The Myth of a Christian Nation, a new book by St. Paul pastor and former professor at Bethel College Greg Boyd, provides a sign that the pendulum might be headed back the other way. But first we need to first appreciate the story thus far. Once upon a time, evangelicals considered the Great Commission their primary mission and calling. What mattered was eternity. What was most urgent was the salvation of souls. While evangelistic work was often attended by charity and acts of mercy, few evangelicals could justify expending energy on “worldly” tasks such as politics. In the early 1970s, some influential voices began to argue that this understanding of the church’s calling was truncated. In particular, Ron Sider and Jim Wallis argued for a more holistic approach to the gospel, noting that Jesus’ model for ministry attended to concrete, “worldly” matters of poverty and illness as occasions for redemption (Luke 4:14-20). At the same time, Richard Mouw, from a Reformed perspective, invited evangelicals to see the dualism of the status quo: that their concern with souls and eternity ignored God’s affirmation of the goodness of bodies and the temporal world. By ignoring politics and culture, evangelicals were unwittingly giving over these spheres of creation to forces of distortion and destruction, rather than redemptively redirecting them. Mouw invited evangelicals to take up the cultural mandate as a complement to, and expression of, the Great Commission. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Capitol. If Wallis, Sider, and Mouw were trying to pull evangelicals away from their isolationism, they likely didn’t anticipate the way in which the pendulum would swing the other way. In fact, evangelicals today have became such zealous converts to the cultural mandate that one can argue it has nearly trumped the Great Commission. Christian leaders spend more time worrying about activist judges, Venezuelan dictators, and constitutional amendments than their forbears could ever have imagined. Devoting themselves to political strategizing and superintending the machinations of government, evangelicals have so embraced participation in the “earthly city” that one wonders whether they’ve lost their passport to the City of God. Or worse: Some suspect that evangelicals in America have collapsed the two, confusing the City of God with America as a city set on a hill. And so we have Boyd’s book. Boyd’s intervention into the discussion is welcome. He is bold (1,000 members of his congregation left after hearing the sermons that gave birth to the book), passionate, and discerning, while still attempting to be charitable. Boyd doesn’t pull punches, denouncing the nationalistic “idolatry” of American evangelicalism, which often fuses the cross and the flag. “Because the myth that America is a Christian nation has led many to associate America with Christ,” he writes in his introduction, “many now hear the Good News of Jesus only as American news, capitalistic news, imperialistic news, exploitive news, antigay news, or Republican news. And whether justified or not, many people want nothing to do with it.”

So, this alleged retreat from the world isn’t really new, but merely the pendulum swinging back the other way.
As a liberal, I’d obviously be very happy if the social conservatives stick to private conversion rather than public coercion. The reason I’m not sure this latest skirmish is good news is that I’m not entirely convinced that the new generation isn’t simply shoving aside the elders in order to take the worldly power for themselves. And it’s very hard for me to see the Republican party simply giving up the organizing clout that the churches have brought them without putting up a fight. I guess we’ll see.However, more power to them if this is the way they plan to go forward. I have no problem with religion going out there and making its pitch. If people choose to follow them, that’s certainly their right. My beef with the Christian Right has always been their desire to use the state to enforce their Biblical instruction and with the conflation of religion and patriotism which made any dissension against religion or the flag into both heresy and treason. If they are now taking the private over the public road, then we can all get along just fine.

Lucky Duckies

by digby

CNN’s week-end “money” show did a story on how the recession is affecting people in California. They interviewed an 84 year old waitress. That’s right, an 84 year old waitress:

Professor Michael Shires: Right now it comes down to fear…

Thelma Guttierez: Fear for people like Mildred Copeland, who’s 84 and still waiting tables after 34 years.

Shires: Unlike the recession in the early 90s that was driven by the collapse in aerospace, employees from all sectors of the economy feel like they’re at risk of losing their jobs.

Guttierez: Already tens of thousands have lost their jobs this year. In February, unemployment in California reached 10.5 percent and going up.

Shires: most of the projections get us up somehwere around 12 percent between now and this time next year.

Guttierez: That translates to loss of nearly a million jobs in the golden state, according to economic forecasts.

84 year old Mildred Copeland (video) : Would you like hash browns or home fries?

Guttierez: Bad news for Mildred. She’s eager to hold on to her job.

Mildred: You get to a time in your life where you say well, I can sit back and relax a little bit and not have to worry, but it’s not like that.

Guttierez: Especially for California homeowners. The state has the third highest foreclosure rate in the nation, with 1 in every one hundred and sixty five homes in foreclosure. But that’s not something Mildred has to worry about. Her home is paid for.

Mildred: I thank God every day.

Guttierez: for what?

Mildred: For my job and a home that’s paid for. That’s one thing I don’t have to worry about.

It’s shocking that in the richest most powerful nation in the world, an 84 year old woman has to be grateful that she still has a job and a paid-for roof over her head. The CNN correspondents must have been shocked, as I was, to see this woman, bent over with osteoporosis, carrying plates and taking orders ar her age andwondered what had gone wrong in our society that such a thing could be necessary, right?

Well, not exactly:

Ali Velshi: That woman who you had in your story, the woman who’d been a waitress, I almost wonder whether people who live close to the edge, but don’t carry a lot of debt are not as affected by this recession. They’ve sort of been living in that state for a while. There’s not a lot of room they’ve had to fall.

Guttierez: Ali, you’re absolutely right. I think that’s the lesson here. You look at somebody like Mildred, she’s 84 years old. She’s still waiting tables, but she’s doing it to supplement her social security income. The most important thing here is that she has no mortgage..

Ali: right ..

Guttierez: She doesn’t have the monkey on her back that we all have and so she doesn’t have to worry. She feels that she can move through this crisis because she lives simply, she was able to pay off her house, and she doesn’t have the big worry so many people out there have, which is mortgage.

Velshi: We hear a lot of people talking about their grandparents who experienced the recession, or the depression and how they learned the value of a dollar. That might be the silver lining to this thing. We might have a new generation who knows how to stretch a dollar and how to stay clear of as much debt as we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Guttierez: Absolutely. And that’s Mildred’s point. You have to learn from this crisis. You have to take it to the future, you have to learn to live within your means, and make sure that you pay off that house and that you buy a house you can afford. She says that that’s really the way that she’s able to sleep at night.

Lucky, lucky Mildred. After all, she could be out of a job and then where would she be? I guess if we all play our cards right we too can be waiting tables when we’re 84. As long as we live prudently, of course, and make sure we don’t have any housing expenses at that age. Otherwise, it could get dicey — and we’d only have ourselves to blame.

Meanwhile, we learned that the most fortunate people in this recession are those who had nothing to begin with because they didn’t have so far to fall. (The real victims of the recession are Thelma and Ali who have jobs and the “monkey on the back” of mortgage payments.) These people at the low end of the economic scale like Mildred are used to being “close to the edge” and are actually much better off than everyone else because being poor is acceptable for them. They can sleep at night. Lucky duckies all.

Ali Velshi, by the way, was wearing what appeared to be at least a five thousand dollar suit as he piously lectured America about learning the value of a dollar.

The Eliminationists

by tristero

Last night, Dave Neiwert’s brilliant new book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right arrived. I’ve already read half of it and man is it a page turner of the first order. More importantly, it is essential reading if you want to understand clearly the danger posed by the likes of Limbaugh and Beck. Dave makes a convincing case that they are not mere buffoons whose eliminationist rhetoric can be downplayed or safely ignored, as it was recently in a disgracefully misleading front-page Times article on Beck. (Nowhere in the article did Brian Stelter or Bill Carter (or their editors) find the space, for example, to mention, as Dave does, that when he was on CNN Headline News, Glenn Beck publicly endorsed the John Birch Society or that Beck has continued to push Birchers in his new job on Fox.)

But Neiwert also points out that, to the extent that the term “fascist” means something specific, Limbaugh, Beck, and others are not exactly fascists (yet), although they have served as mainstream transmitters for various memes in circulation among genuine American fascists. Lest you think Dave’s trying to let these scoundrels off the hook, let me point out that Dave’s purpose is clear: we cannot successfully parry the challenges of the modern conservative movement unless we understand precisely what it is and how it operates. Neiwert proposes the term “para-fascism” to describe the movement and that seems about right. (I should note that I tend to think that the rightwing is more openly fascistic than Dave does, and although it’s a subject that I try to follow, I am hardly an expert and scholar of the Right as Neiwert and Chip Berlet, for example, are.)

Following Paxton, Dave writes that fascism feeds upon – thrives on – democracies in crisis. With that in mind, I had a frightening thought this morning.

It has often been noted that to the Right, 9/11 provided an opportunity to “get Vietnam right,” by invading Iraq and “winning” rather than ignominiously withdrawing. Despite the fact that by any rational metric, the Bush/Iraq war was an unmitigated disaster and the situation today is only slightly less anarchic than a Hobbesian State of Nature, it is a given among movement conservatives – and their enablers in the press – that the “surge” worked and “we” are winning in Iraq.

What if, I woke up thinking, the current economic crisis is perceived by the Right as nothing less than a splendid opportunity to get the Depression right? In fact, around the time Roosevelt took office, there were nationwide calls for a dictator to take over the government, a call Roosevelt wisely, and fortunately for the world, ignored. But according to the Right, both then and now, Roosevelt was a socialist, barely distinguishable from Stalin (!) and a class traitor who prolonged the economic hardship and established a godless, feminized, communistic America.

Perhaps the Right, in its typically delusional state, finds the current worldwide financial collapse a perfect opportunity to do today what Roosevelt derailed, ie, implement a dictatorship. They would then reason that for the political climate to be ripe for such a takeover, it would require that Obama fail and that the rightwing be held in no way responsible for that failure.

Suddenly Limbaugh’s publicly uttered wish that the president fail, the lockstep Republican opposition to Obama’s economic proposals, and the “disappearing” of the true cause of our woes – the spectacular incompetence of the administration of George W. Bush – from polite public discourse takes on a deeply ominous cast.

In any event, buy Dave’s book. It’s absolutely fantastic.

Putz

by dday

After all that sturm und drang, all the speeches about values, all the high-minded talk of massive debts and staying true to conservative principles, Mark Sanford chickened out.

Gov. Mark Sanford will comply with a midnight Friday stimulus deadline and become the last governor in the nation to seek millions of dollars in federal economic-recovery funds for his state, aides said late Thursday.

Sanford will continue contesting $700 million in education and law enforcement money for South Carolina, but his 11th-hour move to meet the deadline buys time for schools fearing mass teacher layoffs and draconian cuts.

Sanford’s month-long fight over stimulus money placed South Carolina in the national spotlight and put him at loggerheads with President Barack Obama.

“Tomorrow the governor is going to send the (Section) 1607 certification for everything except the stabilization funds,” Sanford’s spokesman, Joel Sawyer, said Thursday evening. “The governor will apply for that (additional) money if the General Assembly is willing to compromise and pay down some debt with it.”

They are all a bunch of frauds. Republicans won’t call him on it – they’ll consider him a big hero – but now every time Sanford tries to contest this or that provision of funds, lawmakers in his state can point to this decision. And laugh.

.

Finger On The Button

by digby

I think one of the things I find most reprehensible about the Republican Party and their Big Money backers is that they think it’s ok to play Russian Roulette with the country (and the world) by nominating people to power who have completely inappropriate temperaments for it. George W. Bush, with his thin skinned, shallow understanding of the world, bottomless need for flattery, is a good case in point. Here’s another:

“He was angry,” one source said. “He was over the top. In some cases, he rolled his eyes a lot. There were portions of the meeting where he was just staring at the ceiling, and he wasn’t even listening to us. We came out of the meeting really upset.” McCain’s message was obvious, the source continued: After bucking his party on immigration, he had no sympathy for Hispanics who are dissatisfied with President Obama’s pace on the issue. “He threw out [the words] ‘You people — you people made your choice. You made your choice during the election,’ ” the source said. “It was almost as if [he was saying] ‘You’re cut off!’ We felt very uncomfortable when we walked away from the meeting because of that.”

Thune, Martinez and McCain communications director Brooke Buchanan disputed the idea that McCain lost his temper. “It was a spirited discussion, but this sort of incendiary-type way that some people are characterizing it just doesn’t fit at all the tone of the meeting,” said Thune. Regarding the use of the phrase “you people,” Buchanan said it was “in response to a question about people in general who had voted for Obama and was not meant to refer to Hispanics.” To imply otherwise is “character assassination,” said Buchanan. But, as National Journal notes, “one person’s straight talk is another person’s vitriol”:

But one person’s straight talk is another person’s vitriol. “My hands were shaking,” one source said. “I was nervous as no-end.” The senator’s comments went on for several minutes at least. And by the end of the meeting, another participant, who had supported McCain in last year’s presidential election, was so shaken by the display of temper that he decided it is good that McCain isn’t in the White House.

No kidding.

This was obvious to anyone who had been watching politics for some time. McCain and Bush, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Steele, all of them have “issues” in one way or the other. Indeed, the raps on Bill Clinton — that he needed people to love him too much and that he screwed around — seem positively inane compared to the violent, short tempered, intellectually hidebound freakshow that is the leadership of the Republican party.

PSAby digby
Campaign For America’s Future is looking for heroes:

What does it mean for an unsung hero of the progressive movement to be recognized for his or her behind-the-scenes work with the annual Maria Leavey Tribute Award? The annual award will be presented at America’s Future Now! convening June 1-3. While nominations remain open for the Third Annual Maria Leavey Tribute Award, we asked our prior winners how the award has continued to inspire their work. Our inaugural honoree Ari Lipman, of the Industrial Areas Foundation and lead get-out-the-vote organizer for the Faith Vote Columbus project, spoke of inspiration that kept him going: Most days-in days-out, you’re getting recognized by the vacant house in front of you. To get to step outside of that, and have people recognize your work, is really inspiring. Last year’s recipient Jim Gilliam, then of Brave New Films and now of the participatory democracy effort White House 2, discussed how the honor affected his outlook: The award sort of made me … re-evaluate what it was that I was working on, because all of sudden it made it more important, what it was that I did. … It kind of forces you to think a little bit beyond yourself, what makes you most excited about your work. Who do you know that toiled quietly away from the limelight to bring about progressive change in the past year? Click here to nominate an unsung progressive hero for the Third Annual Maria Leavey Tribute Award. Our prior award recipients continue to honor the legacy of the quintessential unsung progressive Maria Leavey. Ari led the largest, independent volunteer get-out-the-vote operation in Ohio last year, assembling 650 volunteers from 30 religious congregations and community organizations to knock on 60,000 doors and help give voice to the otherwise disenfranchised. While Ari knocks on doors, Jim is connecting citizens to their democracy online through White House 2, where thousands are showing “how the White House might work if it was run completely democratically by thousands of people on the internet” and helping set the nation’s priorities. Who do you know that embodies the same spirit, connecting the progressive movement, smashing obstacles, generating fresh ideas and selflessly organizing to get it all done? Click here to nominate an unsung progressive hero for the Third Annual Maria Leavey Tribute Award.[…]
Help us deliver that message by helping us recognize another unsung progressive hero. Nominations must be received before the newly extended deadline: 11:59 PM ET on April 10, 2009. Click here to learn more about the rules and process, as well as about Maria’s wonderful life and selfless service. And we look forward to seeing you in Washington, DC from June 1 to 3 at America’s Future Now! when we announce this year’s honoree.