Dobson Flip-Flops

Dr. James Dobson, the geriatric family psychologist who has long told conservative Christians how to vote, is not himself a candidate for office.  Therefore, we suppose, he does not need to fear being slapped with the dreaded label "Flip-Flopper."  Like other non-candidates, he is not only free to change his mind based upon new evidence, but even -- like those in swing states -- encouraged to do so by those seeking his vote.

Still, we are somewhat amused by his recent show of lukewarm support for John McCain.  In January, you may recall, Dobson made some minor waves by announcing that he "would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances."  The main issues seemed to be that Dobson disagreed with McCain's stand on stem cells and gay marriage, as well as the McCain-Feingold bill, which in addition to limiting the power of lobbyists to corrupt legislators, also required organizations like Dobson's own Focus on the Family to report their own attempts to sway voters.

Remarkably, McCain has not (yet) changed his position on any of those issues, although we expect he will eventually.  Nonetheless, Dobson has begun to say that he will probably vote for McCain, and may even endorse him.

Clearly, a flip-flop.  But why?  Maybe it's just old-age solidarity.  Or maybe it's not about mcCain so much as his opponent.  In an interview with Newsweek, a FotF lobbyist named Jim Daly explained that Dobson has just gotten around to reading Obama's 2006 speech on religion and politics, and concluded that it is "too radical."  McCain is therefore, to Dobson, the lesser of two evils.  This raises any number of questions for us.

First off, as the interviewer points out, this speech was made in June of 2006 -- it isn't exactly breaking news.  Daly says that Focus on the Family "didn't know about it."  So our first question is:  How stupid are these people?  They do all this political wheeling and dealing in the name of religion, but don't pay attention when a serious presidential candidate makes a major speech on the very subject?

Second, we wonder:  Why vote for the lesser of two evils?  Evangelicals have a long tradition of staying aloof from electoral politics, in part because they could not bear the inevitable compromises it entails.  Does Dobson really want to support a candidate whose positions he considers evil?  In the interview, Daly seems uncomfortable with this idea himself.  He talks about leaving ballots blank or write-in votes, concluding that "People should vote their conscience; if they object to both candidates, they don't have to vote in that category."

And third, we have to ask:  Did Dobson read the same speech we did?  The one in which Obama talks about his own adult conversion experience -- being born again?  In which Obama chides himself and other Democrats for their failure to take seriously the role that religion plays in American public life?  Calls Rick Warren and T.D. Jakes his friends?  The one which ends with something rare in  Democratic speechmaking, a reflection on his own prayerful recognition that political opponents, even on something as emotional as abortion, are not necessarily ideologues and fanatics?  Because this speech, it seems to us, is a far cry from radicalism; it is on the contrary an attempt to understand and interpret conventional Democratic policies from the position of religious faith.  

So.  Why the flip-flop, Dr. D?  Perhaps it isn't senility, ignorance, or a newfound willingness to support evil.  Perhaps it is simply this:  You liked politics better the old way, when the GOP=God and the Dems=Soviet Atheism.   You like your opponents to think of you as you think of them, in purely ideological terms, without any recognition of the human capacity for nuance or reflection.  And Obama, who is so evidently capable of these things, scares the Depends off of you.

Happy Birthday, St Mary Magdalene

a friend wrote this morning to observe that July 22 is the Egg's patronal -- err, matronal? -- feast.  That is to say, it is the commemoration of St. Mary Madgalene, whose image adorns our masthead and inspires our ranting -- in a sense, her birthday.

In a sense.  For those who don't always grasp the grim ironies of Christian tradition, a saint's dies natalis, or birthday, is in fact the day they died.  In the case of Mary Magdalene, the details of whose life are obscure and steeped in legend, we may presume that the date deserves an asterisk -- it was probably chosen later, following some now-forgotten train of monkish logic.  But it has been July 22, both East and West, since the AD 900s.

And look:  Dr. James Dobson has offered us a little birthday present to help celebrate!  For details, read the post above this one. 

If You Thought Liberals Lacked the Capacity for Self-Criticism ...

You could watch the video of Jesse Jackson talk about castrating Barack Obama. We expect it's all over the Net.

Or you might click the link, and read an article from The Nation -- self-described "flagship of the Left" -- which in a more civil but no less purposeful tone ridicules Naomi Klein's "cookie-cutter" vision of world politics.  Apparently, she got pretty famous leading the charge against globalization, back when anybody gave a hoot.  Now she thinks that it (along with Milton Friedman, who is sort of like her Doctor Sivana) can explain everything from Tiananmen Square to Iraq. 

That's okay.  We at the Egg are notoriously receptive to both conspiracy theories and oversimplifications that explain everything.  Which brings us to Seminex ....

Lambeth: In the Background

"The average Anglican in our world today is black, female and in her late teens or early twenties."

So notes Cathy Ross, an Oxford missiologist, in an essay that helps set the scene for the G.A.S. Most of what she says will be familiar to anybody who studied world missions in seminary, or has bothered to read much of anything by Philip Jenkins. But it is still worth a look.

Here's the core, which we in the secularized West forget only at our peril: "The heartlands of the Christian Church are no longer in the West, but in Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia."

Air Defense

The USAF has attempted to launch countermeasures in response to the WaPo's story about "comfort capsules," noted below. Among the arguments raised in defense by spokesman Lt. Col. Mike Paoli are the Pattonesque "that's bunk," and the somewhat whiny "they aren't that nice."

But our favorite is this especially risible one: "An American would want their senior leaders to travel comfortably." Get it? A terrorist would want them to fly coach.  Pampering the elite while the regular joes suffer is patriotic.

Apparently, he hasn't seen the President's approval ratings. Many Americans would like at least one leader to travel in tar and feathers.

Lutheran Pastor Accused of Child Rape

Our gorge is rising.  One Peter Pilger, who has served various congregations in the ELCA's Northeast Ohio Synod, is in court today, arraigned for three felony counts of attempted rape and single counts of rape, kidnapping and gross sexual imposition. He is accused of abusing his stepdaughter, now 12, over a period of six years.

That means he began when she was six.

Bishop Eaton read a statement which offered prayers for the victim and her family, as well as for Pilger and his family. She did not specify what those prayers were, and we have one that comes readily to mind: "Almighty God, you have promised us that vengeance is yours and you shall repay. Now would be a good time."

I Don't Know, But It's Been Said ...

... Air Force generals' careers are made of lead.

At least we hope so.  Over the last year, the flyboys have sent nuclear warheads flying over the continental US, transferred secret nuclear material to Taiwan, and screwed up the funding of a $50 million air show.  (And why, we ask parenthetically, are there air shows that cost $50 million?).  Oh, and two USAF generals have been fired by the SecDef for their sheer incompetence.

Comes now the happy news that the USAF has spent three years designing "comfort pods" so that VIPs travelling in military aircraft can have flat-screen TVs and full-length mirrors.  The program has cost a bundle -- interior decorating always does.   Why, just changing the seat color and pockets ran a tad under $70,000. The total seems to run a little over $16 million, apparently, since that's what the USAF has repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked Congress to divert from the GWOT.

Now, by military standards, $16 million isn't a whole lot of money.  But let's consider two things.  First, that is taxpayer money, and if it didn't go to the military in the first place, it would buy a lot of hot lunches for poor schoolchildren.  We're just saying.  And second, that American troops are fighting a war -- technically, two -- and it is virtually certain that field commanders could come up with more creative ways to spend that money.  You know, like body armor.

Unsurprisingly, junior officers are kind of unhappy about this. We don't blame them.  We're kind of unhappy ourselves.  We are especially unhappy that, when there were cost overruns on this project (surprise!), the brass decided to cover them up by by transferring $331,000 in counterterrorism funds.  Because nothing keeps Americans safe from a dirty bomb better than an airborne comfort pod.

In defense of Generals Robert McMahon and Duncan McNabb, who seem to have created this project, we will admit that standard military transport is reported to be no more comfortable than commercial air-travel in business class.  Still, having travelled in business class once or twice and quite enjoyed it, we offer this piece of advice to the good generals:  Suck it up, you contemptible goldbricks.  There are people dying in Afghanistan while you piss away money worrying about a comfy airplane seat.

Lambeth - 1

The decennial Lambeth Conference is upon us, and we at the Egg are moved to pity poor old Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury.  He is a fine theologian, an apparently decent human being, and the man whom history will remember chiefly for presiding over the death of the Anglican Communion.

Currently, and somewhat comically, Williams is under assault from both the left and the right wings. A gay website has named him "Creep of the Week"for barring Bishop Gene Robinson from Lambeth. Meanwhile, the curiously-named Virtue Online rips into him for not going further, and barring the bishops who ordained.  And when Robinson claims that Anglicanism has not yet -- quite -- experienced a schism, Virtue calls his remarks "unadulterated garbage." (Failing, we may note, to exercise the virtue of charity.)

Meanwhile, Robinson may be locked out of the conference, but his passport has not been revoked, and he is in Britain, with a busy speaking schedule (heckling and threats included).  He is picking up support from public figures like the actor Ian McKellen, and generally going what he can to make his point in the public forum, since he has no opportunity to make it in the ecclesiastical one.

Also banned from Lambeth is Bishop Martyn Minns.  For those who forget, Minns is the pastor of Truro Parish, on whose vestry George Washington once served.   He is also one of the US priests who has been ordained as a missionary bishop by Peter Akinola, the Primate of Nigeria.  In sharp contrast to, say, Washington, Akinola's hatred of fundamental human rights is such that he has supported legislation to deprive gay Nigerians of free speech and assembly. He has also helped to organize the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a group of congregations which have broken away from the Episcopal Church.

It seems to us that barring both Robinson and Minns, while surely meant to permit a less highly-charged atmosphere at the conference, will have the opposite effect.  We think that it would be better to invite both men, lock them in a conference room with plenty of good food (and, being Anglicans, sherry) but no toilet, and tell them they can't come out until they are friends.

Baptists Disarm Teens ... For Now

A Baptist congregation in Oklahoma City hosts a yearly youth gathering, attended by teens from "as far away as Canada."  For reasons that are not entirely clear to us, this gathering features a shooting contest, and last year the winner was awarded a AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle.

The giveaway was planned for this year as well, but was cancelled because the pastor emeritus injured his foot.  We're not sure what that has to do with the price of bullets in China, but just go with it.

Our spineless liberal readers may squirm, but we think this is a great idea -- giving kids lethal weapons as a way to spread the Gospel.  It's part of a grand evangelical tradition.  Some churches give out little bracelets made of bent nails, but that's just gutless.  Do you know how long it takes to kill somebody with nails?  (Actually, we just checked.  About three hours.)

And can you imagine how much better things would have turned out for the apostles, if they had all carried  some heavy ordnance into the mission field?  Let's just say that St. Paul wouldn't have had to wait for an earthquake to bust him out of the slam, because he would have been prepared to defend his rights as a Roman citizen against any and all comers.  And as for Simon "Two-Gun" Peter, let's just say that the first pope wouldn't have needed any Swiss mercenaries in colorful costumes -- not if he was packing his AK-47.

Yes, the New Yorker

Its Obama fist-bump cover has garnered all sorts of comment -- click the link for a roundup of press remarks.  Falling asleep last night, we heard somebody of NPR going on and on, quite loudly, about what a shameful, disgraceful, thing it was.  

Oh, please.  New Yorker covers are famously obtuse.  Many are just whimsical, like the endless iterations of Eustace Tilley.  Others are make-you-look-twice sight gags.  And the political ones, more common these days than they once were, are a mixed bag; sometimes you laugh, sometimes you don't.  (The black-Hasidic kiss?  More wistful than funny).  But the smartest covers, for our money, are those that mock the mag's own readership and its pieties:  Steinberg's "Map of the World," or Maira Kalman's "New Yorkistan."

The Obama cover strikes us as something in-between the political and the self-mocking.  It digs at the rightist dopes like Fox's E.D. Hill, she of the "terrorist fist-jab" teaser.  It digs, less forcefully, at the liberal dopes, the Obamaniacs if you will, by asking what they really do know about their shining knight.  But it really doesn't dig at Senator or Mrs. Obama, who provide the opportunity for the joke but not its object.

Is it funny?  Eye of the beholder, of course.  We at the Egg would give it a wry chuckle, which is better than a roll of the eyes but not as good as a "Honey, look at this."

When Bad Vegetables Happen to Good Churches

Headline in the Duluth News-Tribune:  "Rhubarb’s mass appeal descends on Duluth's First Lutheran."  The blood runs cold.

Father Anonymous himself has been eating a little rhubarb this summer.  The experience has forced him to reconsider his enthusiasm for community-supported agricultural cooperatives.  Turns out they make you take the stuff in order to get your hands on their organic strawberries.  (Delicious, delicious strawberries).

Briefly put, any mention of rhubarb's mass appeal sound suspicious to us.  In Minnesota, however, it appears they actually like rhubarb, or at least pretend to.  The paper claims that "you’re going to find it in some type of baked good at just about every picnic or potluck you go to."  One more example of the Scandinavian capacity for self-punishment.

We already have a list of states we try to avoid during summer:  Texas, Arizona, Mississippi, and the one where Houston is, we forget the name.  We are, somewhat sadly, putting Minnesota on the list, despite its gazillion Lutherans.

"Let's Kill the Baby"

In case you didn't already think Robert Mugabe had to go, by any means necessary.

McCain Channels Thoreau

No, not the pacifism.  Just the tax-evasion.

Per the HuffPo, Newsweek is about to report that the McCain family owns a house in La Jolla on which they have defaulted on the last four years of real-estate taxes.

The GOP faithful will not doubt be pleased to learn that McCain is so serious about his objection to taxes that he refuses to pay them. 

Obama is a Psychic!

In Jacksonville last week, he predicted that his opponents would use his race as a weapon against him.  In a chat with the Times this week, Grover Norquist did precisely that, calling Obama "John Kerry with a tan."  Holy cow -- Obama's like Kreskin! 

In between Prophecy A and Fulfillment B, there was a week or so in which conservative commentators accused Obama of "pre-smearing the opposition," "casual slander," airing "imagined grievances" and of course "race-baiting."  Which suggests merely that their predictive powers are weaker than his.  Maybe that's why they thought Iraq would be a cakewalk.

The Faces of Evil

Contempt of Congress is part of the American character.  As Mark Twain once said, "reader, suppose I were a congressman.  Now suppose I were an ass -- oh, but I repeat myself."  Or as the delightful C.J. Cregg put it more recently, "We need to be investigated by someone who wants to kill us just to watch us die. We need someone perceived by the American people to be irresponsible, untrustworthy, partisan, ambitious, and thirsty for the limelight. Am I crazy, or is this not a job for the U.S. House of Representatives?"

That said, Dana Milbank's WaPo description of recent testimony by David Addington and David Yoo should cause the blood of even the Twains and C.J.s among us to boil.

These are the two men who, while working for Dick Cheney, did more than any others to chart the course which cost America its credibility as a voice for morality, human rights, or the rule of law.  These are the men who turned us into a nation of torturers.

And when asked about it by Congress, they did not attempt to defend their behavior, nor even to lie about it.  Instead, they simply mocked the Congress itself -- over and over again.  Their favorite dodge was to pretend that they could not answer questions because they did not understand them, and to run out the clock.  Oh, it was all very lawyerly, on the order of Bill Clinton's exegesis of the word "is."  

But this was not a discussion of an embarrassing comic-opera adultery.  This was about the systematic torture of prisoners by a nation that claims not to torture; this was about elaborate steps which these men personally took to change our nation's policies in ways that violated the international agreements by which we are bound, and which when revealed would imperil the delicate diplomatic relationships necessary to effectively combat terrorism. 

This was not, in short, a matter on which their preening and posturing is welcome, or should be tolerated.  These men are criminals.  They are traitors.  They should be punished.

It may very well be that Addington and Yoo cannot be prosecuted under American law -- that remains to be seen, but they are smart, smart lawyers and have probably kept their hands clean enough to pass muster in our courts.  Probably.  But this does not mean that the cannot be punished.  First off, it is unlikely that either will ever travel to Europe again; they are likely to wind up in a dock at the Hague, like Milosevic and all the other international war criminals.  But for many Americans, America is all the world they need, and travel restrictions inflict no pain.  So what else can we do?

Ruin them.  These men should be disbarred.  Failing that, any firm that hires them should be subjected to intense public pressure to reconsider.  So too should any law school.  Clients and students should be urged to avoid them.  Journals should refuse to publish their articles, publishing houses should reject their books.  Having squandered it before Congress, they should never be given another forum in which to defend their indefensible behavior.  

But neither should they be allowed to slip away, gracefully, into either a peaceful retirement or the dimly-lit world of policy intellectuals, from which they might someday return to harm their country further.  Their government papers should be released, so that their monstrous activities should be investigated and reported to the public, and become a cottage industry for historians.  Their secret work is should be made public, over and over, with the inevitable result that their names (like McCarthy's) become codewords for behavior which is unacceptable to America or to Americans. 

Why Did Clear Channel Ban Harry Shearer?

I dunno.  Lemme think.

Obviously, the notoriously conservative radio monopoly banned advertising for Shearer's new album because it felt the album cover, pictured at right, cast unfair aspersions upon nose-piercings.

The funny part, though, is that Clear Channel is a radio monopoly.  Radio.  So it's not as though listeners would actually see the album cover.

Asparagus on Mars

Astronauts are advised to pack hollandaise.

"Flabbergasted" NASA investigators report -- and we're serious about this -- that Martian soil contains the nutrients required to support life, "past, present or future." Specifically, Sam Kounaves, the lead investigator for the wet chemistry lab, told journalists, "It is the type of soil you would probably have in your back yard, you know, alkaline. You might be able to grow asparagus in it really well."

Newsflash: God Deserts G.O.P.

This must be driving them crazy.

Kirbyjon Caldwell, the Methodist minister who introduced President Bush at the 2000 Republican convention, and who performed Jenna Bush's wedding ceremony, has started what amounts to a pro-Obama website. Technically, it's more of an anti-James Dobson site, which serves a far more useful public purpose (and is less likely to endanger his congregation's tax-exempt status). The Bush White House would once have fumed with public rage over this seeming disloyalty, but these days they probably just shrug their shoulders in despair. There isn't a lot of loyalty left over there.

There's also an article in this week's New Yorker called "The New Evangelicals," which reveals the shocking fact that not all evangelical Christians are die-hard Republicans, that some have mixed feelings about abortion rights, and that many both care about the earth and dislike war. This news, we expect, will shock few Egg readers. Indeed, we expect the only Americans who will find it truly shocking are the New Yorker's target audience of secular liberals -- and the Republican leadership.

And that is what galls us, and has galled us for years, about the GOP. They present themselves, over and over, as the Party of God, and have claimed to have a lock not only on "values voters," but on specifically Christian values. But let's be serious. Ronald Reagan was not a member of any church, and rarely attended one. George H.W. Bush sought his bishop's approval for a war in Iraq and, when that approval was not forthcoming, ignored his bishop. His son 's neocon cronies sought the Pope's approval for another war in Iraq, and when that approval was also not forthcoming, ignored the Pope. Not mention his son's bloodthirsty use of capital punishment, even against women and men with the IQs of children. Oh, and Nixon was Satan.

Meanwhile, prominent Democrats have included Gary Hart and Al Gore, both former seminarians; George Stephanopoulos, who almost followed his father into the priesthood; and Jimmy Carter, whose Southern Baptist evangelicalism got him teased by sophisticates for admitting to adultery in his heart, but also earned him that Nobel Prize. Bill Clinton, another Southern Baptist, was practically a televangelist (big hair, adultery, fried food). More to the point, in recent years it has been Democrats who consistently push government toward the few social policies that Jesus actually articulated -- feeding the hungry, healing the sick, making peace rather than war. (And yes, okay, paying taxes).

Nonetheless, there are surely GOP leaders who feel betrayed and, worse, bewildered these days. They have gotten so much mileage, over so many years, out of the emotional issue of abortion, that they had simply assumed that those "values voters" were their forever. This is a sign of their own shallow grasp of Christianity, or of Christians. It never occurred to them that there might be other values than the ones they talked about. Worse yet, it never occurred to them that evangelical voters might have a loyalty which was far, far deeper than any passing attachment to a political party.

Literary Classics in 3 Lines or Less

Click for the brilliant McSweeney's feature (Sullivan saw it first).  Here's a sample:

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

C.S. LEWIS: Finally, a utopia ruled by children and populated by talking animals.

THE WITCH: Hi, I'm a sexually mature woman of power and confidence.

C.S. LEWIS: Ah! Kill it, lion Jesus!

Who Cares What the President Thinks About Economics or Foreign Affairs?

Not Americans, it would seem.

Now James Dobson and Jim Wallis are in a spitting match, as they (like FoxNews) argue over the nuances of Barack Obama's theological doctrine and Biblical exegesis.  Because after all, there is no qualification for high office more important than theological prudence.  Right?

To be charitable, maybe they are making all this fuss over Obama's religious opinions because, unlike McCain, he seems to have some.