Surprised by Colbert

I just saw on Ben Witherington's blog that Anglican bishop, New Testament scholar N.T. Wright - one of my favorite theological conservatives - was a guest on the Colbert Report on June 19.

I'm not quite convinced the segment "worked," but it was certainly interesting. And, of course, I'm all for theology being discussed anywhere, especially on a comedy show. So, here's video of that appearance, with Wright and Cobert discussing the bishop's new book, Surprised by Hope, shamelessly stolen from Comedy Central:

Fun on the Internets

Cracked's take on II Kings 13:20-21:

Adventures in Parenting

Adam just issued a bold, albeit unusual, proclamation:

I DON'T WANT TO HAVE FUN!!!

OK, buddy. I wouldn't dream of making you.

Offline

I'll be out of town for a family reunion until late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. I don't know if I'll have Internet access.

When I get back I'll catch up on comment moderation, and should have a new post or two.

Clowns at a Funeral

Sami, Adam and I went to a funeral this afternoon, for our good friend Harold, a clown. He died in his sleep last week. At the funeral, in the sanctuary of our downtown church, other clowns kept trickling into the service to pay their respects to their departed friend. The sight of these clowns - most of whom were in costume - so jolted and delighted me that I started scribbling this free-verse poem on the back of the bulletin:

I saw clowns at a funeral this afternoon.
Four of them.
Sitting right up front, in the center
of the church's front pew,
their cartoonish figures cutting through the would-be melancholy of grief.
Purple clouds of hair.
Plaid shirts.
Bold, orange suspenders.
Red hats, sparkling like Dorothy's ruby slippers.
The pastor couldn't look at them;
she kept staring at the ceiling
biting her bottom lip,
choking back giggles.
The image of those clowns among the mourners stood out
like the opening line of a Lyle Lovett song:
I went to a funeral, and Lord it made me happy...

I saw clowns at a funeral this afternoon.

To Catch a Troll

An individual who has previously remained nameless here, has been trolling and leaving nasty comments, necessitating my implementation of comment moderation.

In the spirit of Keith Olbermann's Worst Persons bit, I'm posting here a comment left this afternoon by this individual, who blogs under the name Jack:

You are, of course, an ignorant little cry baby. I see why you can't find a job.

That is the last comment of Jack's that will ever appear on this blog, and it stands as one of many examples of why he has been banned here.

Jack: Don't look now, but your character is showing. You are today's Worst Person in the Blogosphere, and exhibit number 3,438,942 in the case for the need for comment moderation, and some basic civility.

Can Vegetarians Be Kick-Ass Athletes?

That's the question ESPN.com Page 2 columnist Jonah Keri is asking. And, as a vegetarian, amateur athlete (and I do mean amateur!) with a sports fetish, I find it a question worth asking.

Taking on the stereotype of the athlete as a steak-chomping meat-head, Keri offers profiles of several professional athletes who are either vegans or vegetarians. A piece well worth reading for anyone who cares about either the ethics or the nutritional value of what they put in their body.

So, if baseball slugger Prince Fielder, future Hall of Fame football player Tony Gonzalez, rising Mixed Martial Arts fighter Mac Danzig, and others have anything to say about it, vegetarians can kick ass!

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Once again I'd like to note that no AP news articles were harmed in the making of this blog post. However, Tom did call my attention to an interesting conspiracy theory concerning the Unholy Trinity of the AP, the New York Times, and the Media Bloggers Association, published in Tech Crunch.

Bigotry is Not Just a Republican Sin

The Republican Party has long been rightly mocked for staging political events to portray a diversity by and large lacking in the party as a whole. The Obama campaign, alas, has just gone the other way.

It was with great sorrow and more than a little bit of disappointment that I read this article by Politico's Ben Smith, about two Muslim women who "were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women’s headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate."

Sen. Obama neither made nor supported this decision, and his campaign has apologized for it. Anyone who has followed this campaign understands that it happened in a particular context in which he - cast in many corners as the suspect "other" because of his race, must constantly fend off unsupported, far fetched, and often crazy rumors. Rumors such as that he is a "sleeper Muslim," a rumor ridiculously at odds with that other attempt to paint him as religiously suspect.

However, this is simply not acceptable. Being victimized by racism, by our xenophobic fear of the "other," should create empathy for those who - for reasons of race, gender, class, religion, or any other reason - are discriminated against, feared and hated, in American society. That was not the case here.

Despite some transparent attempts by conservatives to claim that this incident sheds some light onto some long dark region of Sen. Obama's character and judgment - a tired trick employed at every "gaff," real or manufactured - I'm not sure we learned anything about Barack Obama here. But we did learn that Republicans do not own a monopoly on bigotry. They never have, and they never will. Bigotry knows no political allegiance. It is an equal opportunity sin.

My hope is that Barack Obama will personally reach out to these women, and - though he was not directly involved in the sin against them - take responsibility for the actions of his volunteers. This would, of course, mean that he's holding himself to a higher standard than any other presidential candidate, past or present. But isn't that what the politics of hope are about? An attempt to change the climate and conduct of politics. In reaching out to these women, in talking to them directly, apologizing to their face, and offering them the chance to appear with him in public, he would be explicitly communicating that the politics of preying on fear - especially the fear of difference - has no place in his campaign, and would have no place in his administration.

But in American politics, such a move may be too audacious to hope for.

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Update: 6-19-08, 2:18pm

Brian Francis at POLITICALINACTION.COM has a slightly different take on this story:

Volunteers for Obama's campaign prevented 2 Muslim women wearing headscarves from sitting behind him and Gore the other night. First, Obama has had women in headscarves sitting behind him before. Secondly, take off your damn headscarves. If the candidate you support, and will bring a differently level of respect for your faith than Bush/McCain, swallow your damn pride and take that nonsense off. 13% of the country believe Obama is some secret Muslim terrorist. When he fist bumps, they call it a 'terrorist fist jab'. Obama has an image problem, and all I'm saying is that people shouldn't wearing attire that would further that problem. It's not like black people show up with 'black power' t-shirts on or something. All Obama supporters now need to think of 'old white set in their ways narrow minded male swing voters' if they want change. These were 2 volunteers working in Detroit. I don't think it will happen ever again.

I don't entirely disagree with his take, but I am incensed at his line, "take off your damn headscraves," which is blatantly anti-Islamic. Such a suggestion, coupled with his connecting the decision of these women to wear overtly religious clothing to their "damn pride" smacks of the kind of bigotry that informed the young campaign volunteers who turned these women away in the first place. It fails to respect these women's faith, or how that faith functions in their decision to wear headscarves that overtly identify them as Muslims.

I understand that the Obama campaign is under fire from the right, who - because of his race, his name, his background, and a politics of fear and bigotry - wish to tie Sen. Obama to jihadist expressions of Islam, and, of course, radical Muslim terrorism. But - and maybe I'm naive here - let me suggest that anyone who would fall for that bullshit wouldn't vote for a black man named Barack Obama, anyway.

Headscarves on the Muslim women who choose to wear them are not fashion accessories that can be taken on and off at will. They are expressions of identity, and expressions of devotion to their God. While I do not share their religion, as a religious person in a pluralistic society, I do feel the need to respect their religion, and not to use the fear and bigotry of others as cover for prohibiting the free exercise of religion in a country whose Constitution expressly grants such a freedom as an inalienable right.

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Last update: 6-20-08, 9:53 am

Politico's Ben Smith: Obama apologizes to Muslim women; apology accepted.

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Once again, no AP news articles were harmed in the making of this blog post.

Sami's Happy Place

For those of you who rejoice in those rare moments when I turn this blog over to the only guest-blogger I'll ever tolerate, my dear, infinitely kind and patient (not to mention gorgeous) wife, I've got good news for you:

Sami's got her own blog!

She just started it tonight, while we were playing our favorite game - dueling laptops. So, right now, she's sitting next to me updating her brand spanking new blog, which I'm updating mine. I feel a family rivalry coming on.

Anyway, do yourself a favor and check our Sami's Happy Place.

Baracknaphobia?

I shamelessly stole this from Comedy Central:



Disclaimer: No AP news articles were harmed in the making of this blog post.