You know
If Republicans put 10% as much foresight into economic policy that they put into cultivating a culture warrior base or planning to invade sovereign nations when they get power, we probably wouldn't be in the situation we're in now.
Pandagon
Culture warriors unite!
Gary Kamiya has a good article up at Salon about how McCain is reviving the culture war with Sarah Palin, and how frightfully enduring the culture war seems to be, able to revive dead Republicans that are besieged by ill-advised wars and economic ruin. And he's right, it is frightening, especially if it works.
But I have a question: Isn't Barack Obama enough for the culture warriors?
As Kamiya outlines, culture wars are not about positive things. Culture warriors aren't voting for something---they're voting against enemies established for them by fundamentalist preachers and right wing talk radio. If the Republicans truly feared that they couldn't get the minions out to keep a black man out of office (and let's not forget---racial hierarchies are critical to the culture warriors), especially one with a funny name that culture warriors believe is a sign that he's a secret Muslim (who they've deemed the Satanic enemy that must be defeated to bring Jesus back). Isn't voting out of fear and loathing for Barack Obama enough for them? I would think yes. And so I'm feeling more persuaded that the post-Palin jump in the polls is temporary.
I want to address the ideas in this paragraph:
The culture war is driven by resentment, on the one hand, and crude identification, on the other. Resentment of "elites," "Washington insiders" and overeducated coastal snobs goes hand in hand with an unreflective, emotional identification with candidates who "are just like me." Large numbers of Americans voted for Bush because he seemed like a regular guy, someone you'd want to have a beer with. As Thomas Frank argued in "What's the Matter With Kansas," ideology also played a role. As hard-line "moral values" exponent and former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer told the New York Times, "Joe Six-Pack doesn't understand why the world and his culture are changing and why he doesn't have a say in it." The GOP appealed to Joe Six-Pack by harping on cultural issues like the "three Gs," gods, guns and gays.
I liked "What's The Matter With Kansas" and really adore Frank's new book "The Wrecking Crew", but there is one flaw in the idea that the "three Gs" culture war is mainly a distraction, a way for people to lash out at increasing modernity. I don't think you can really understand the three Gs without understanding the tensions that are underlying them. "Guns" is a code word that has both aspects of anxious masculinity and racism in it---gun fetishists imagine themselves holed up protecting their female property from hoardes of grabby non-white men. This especially an important aspect that the NRA tries to conceal from the public with images of hunting, but sport guns aren't on the list of those things that people want to restrict nearly so much as assault weapons. With god and gays, though, I think the missing "W" or "F"---for women or feminism---explains a lot.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but a lot of the social issues are actually economic issues, if looked at in the right light. It's true that economic decline contributes to the red state sense that people are being left in the dust, causing them to lash out at "liberal elites". But it's also true that feminist advances have weaseled their way into conservative communities, and the subsequent transfer of so much power from men to women* happened at the same time as the economic decline and is, in the minds of many culture warriors, inseparable. So much of the nostalgia for the mythical 50s is a belief that things were just better when women provided a disempowered, unpaid labor force. Of course, the genie is out the bottle now, and anyway, women's salaries are needed to keep so many families afloat, so attacking the power shift directly isn't so easy at it might seem.
What's fascinating to me is that from what I understand, the gay marriage movement probably gained all its steam from conservatives bellyaching about the possibility of this happening once gays got rights. Why was gay marriage such a fear? I think we can take social conservatives at their word on this---gay marriage is an assault on "traditional marriage". It's a scapegoat cause for all the various forces that have dismantled traditional, male-dominated marriage where women have very little power or income, but lots of work to do. And let's face it. Feminism may have shifted the balance of power, but men still have more of it in marriage. Women still do more of the housework and child-rearing, and men still enjoy the ability to make final decisions for the family. When conservatives say that gay marriage is a threat to traditional marriage, I suspect what they mean is that de-gendered marriage will start giving women more ideas about what marriage could look like between equals. I'm skeptical that the monolith of male-dominated heterosexual marriage will be that easy to topple, but they do have a point that it'll help.
That and reproductive rights are the big issues that drive so many culture warriors. I say no duh it's about making sure that women are put in a subservient position to men, especially those who claim them through the magical powers of penetration. Get 'em married early by making childbirth mandatory, putting women in a position where they have to marry. And make sure those marriages stay unequal by barring people from it who have a different model of marriage entirely. Some liberals scoff at the idea that Republicans will deliver these goals to social conservatives, on the theory that they won't have anymore issues to drive them to the polls with. Wrong! If they are able to put gay marriage to bed and criminalize abortion, next on the list are challenges to no-fault divorce and female-controlled contraception.
Anyway, I've gone on long enough about it. Here's more reading on Sarah Palin so that you can see what a vile sister-punisher and homophobe she is. I was curious how Palin, who belongs to a Bible-thumping "STFU ladies" church, reconciled the Christian mandate to be submissive to your husband with the fact that she outranked him as governor. Looks like she might do it by letting him make the final decisions about how she does her job. Scary.
*Mind you, men still have more power than women. But it's more like 60/40 or 70/30 instead of 90/10 nowadays.
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There's Words You're Missing
The Heritage Foundation weighs in on the financial sector meltdown.
Michelle Malkin says...something, and gets about as close as anyone to mentioning The Name That Dare Not Be Spoken.
The name, of course, is Bush. Conservatives have been weighing in on the great contraction of the banking industry by force of Jesus Christ where'd all the money go, but somehow, Bush's role in monitoring and regulating the entire system of finance in our country is mysteriously absent from any examination of What Done Happened Here.
The Republican message is stuck in a whirlwind of shit on this - Donald Luskin, who somehow wormed his way into McCain's camp of advisers in between furious scratching out the eyes on a 8 x 10 of Paul Krugman, is making the case that the American people are the worst imaginable judges of their own economic situation. John McCain is still declaring that the fundamentals of our economy are strong. Somewhere out there, Sarah Palin is listening to Who Is Mike Jones? and realizing that the real problem with the American people is their lack of realization that if you don't work, you don't eat and if you don't grind, you don't shine.
We're supposed to believe the following about the economy, courtesy of the GOP:
- Everything's fine, except the things that aren't.
- Everything that's fixable is fixable by tax cuts. And those things are massive problems that could destroy American society.
- The other things that aren't fixable are Bill Clinton's fault.
The GOP is, of course, lying. Because it's what they do. All the time. The intractability of the "stop your stupid whiny bullshit" dynamic is quite impressive - there's a section of economic theory (quite right, in many cases) that says that what's happening at the macro level of the economy doesn't always happen on the same timetable or in the same way that our own personal economics function, meaning that indicators may be leaning towards a recovery when we're still hurting. But what the McCain campaign is doing, quite openly, is then declaring that since this phenomenon can occur, it renders our own personal economic situations fundamentally invalid. If you just say the macro economy is strong, absolutely nothing else matters - you can even lie about the macro economy actually being strong, because economics says so!
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Rove promotes McCain lie about computer illiteracy due to POW injuries
Karl Rove lambasted the Obama campaign on Fox News Sunday for its recent ad criticizing Sen. John McCain for his supposed inability to use a computer.Asked by Chris Wallace to comment on negative campaigning by Sen. Obama, Rove said that McCain's injuries suffered in a Vietnamese prison camp were responsible for his computer illiteracy.
"But they then say he doesn't …send e-mail. Well, this is because his war injuries keep him from being able to use a keyboard. He can't type. You know, it's like saying he can't do jumping jacks," Rove said. "There's a reason he can't raise his arms above his head. There's a reason he doesn't have the nimbleness in his fingers."
Please. If anything, this excuse is horribly offensive, not just because it is a baldfaced lie, but because it ignores thousands of people with physical disabilities, some far worse than those of the Arizona senator, who can and do use computers all the time.
Perhaps he has not heard of the Computer/Electronic Accommodations Program (CAP).
CAP supports Wounded Service Members (WSM) by providing needs assessments, assistive technology and training throughout all phases of recovery and transition to employment...Established by the Federal government, the Computer/Electronic Accommodations Program (CAP) is a centrally funded program that provides assistive technology (AT) and reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities. CAP's mission is to ensure that people with disabilities have equal access to information and employment opportunities in the DoD and throughout the Federal government.
There is an entire section on dexterity limitations and assistive devices:
Disabilities that impact the range of motion, from minor to major finger movement and include: quadriplegics, paraplegics, individuals with multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy, and individuals who have developed disabling conditions such as carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis. Below are a number of assistive technologies that CAP recommends as appropriate accommodation solutions for people with this disability.
And...
CAP covers the cost of training for Federal agency employees to learn to use all types of assistive technology accommodations. CAP provides personnel who teach the user how to operate the assistive technology in conjunction with the hardware and/or software while in the user’s office environment. CAP customers also have the option to request self-paced tutorials. Customers may request both on-site and tutorial training. If training is needed, please indicate on the CAP Request Form which type you are requesting at the time you are requesting the software or hardware.
Given the senator's power, privilege (and comprehensive health insurance), he's entitled to benefits many civilians in his circumstances are not. Moreover, this smear perpetrated by the McCain campaign and surrogates like Rove against the disabled who are able-bodied when it comes to computer literacy is disgusting.
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Greenspan's "once-in-a century" financial crisis counters McCain's economic hallucinations
"I still believe the fundamentals of our economy are strong. We’ve got terribly big challenges now, whether it be housing or employment or so many of the other — health care. It’s very, very tough times. It’s very tough. But we’re still the most innovative, the most productive, the greatest exporter, the greatest importer."
-- John McCain, on the Laura Ingraham program (8/21/2008)
How long can McCain keep up this fantasy that a few tax cuts will get us out of this economic mess? Alan Greenspan gives it a 50% chance we will go into recession.
The United States is mired in a "once-in-a century" financial crisis which is now more than likely to spark a recession, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan said Sunday.The talismanic ex-central banker said that the crisis was the worst he had seen in his career, still had a long way to go and would continue to effect home prices in the United States.
"First of all, let's recognize that this is a once-in-a-half-century, probably once-in-a-century type of event," Greenspan said on ABC's "This Week."
Asked whether the crisis, which has seen the US government step in to bail out mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, was the worst of his career, Greenspan replied "Oh, by far."
"There's no question that this is in the process of outstripping anything I've seen, and it still is not resolved and it still has a way to go," Greenspan said.
Obama's latest commercial:
What's happened to John McCain. He's running the sleaziest ads, ever.
Truly vile. Dishonest smears that he repeats, even after it's been exposed as a lie.
Truth be damned.
A disgraceful, dishonorable campaign.
After voting with Bush 90% of the time, he proposes the same disastrous economic policies.
It seems deception is all John McCain has left.
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Sarah Palin's diversity in action as governor: cronies and classmates - and definitely no blacks
(UPDATE: I highly recommend reading Alaskan Amy Jones's well-researched blog about this topic.)
While there aren't a lot of black people living in Alaska (4.46%), it would be interesting to know what Governor Sarah Palin thinks of her taxpaying black citizens and her approach to inclusion.
Wait no longer. The President of the African American Historical Society of Alaska, Gwendolyn Alexander, who is also one of the Juneteenth Directors in Alaska, released a statement that reveals quite a bit about the veep nominee. (via Electronic Village):
"As for Governor Sarah Palin's involvement in the African American community, the Governor's office hasn't participated in any of our Alaska Juneteenth Events. All previous Alaskan Governor's have traditionally attended and participated in our annual Juneteenth Celebration. Gov. Palin was the first governor not to send out a congratulatory letter or assist us in any way with our Juneteenth activities.I didn't have the courtesy of receiving a reply when I asked for a representative from the Governor's office to come and speak at our Juneteenth Celebration if Governor Palin was unable to attend. I never even heard of Gov. Palin until she was elected Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, in Mat-Su Valley.
Governor Palin is a very energetic and spontaneous woman. With some of the things being said and going around this state right now, I'm surprised none of the national media have bothered to come here and get the words directly from the mouths of the people who have lived with her all of these years instead of 'surfing the net!'
My other opinion is why would an individual who, to my knowledge, has not hired any African Americans on her gubernatorial staff, insist so passionately on being on a television show owned and operated by an African American, Oprah Winfrey?
While meeting with Black leaders concerning the absence of any African Americans on her staff, Gov. Palin responded that she doesn't have to hire any Blacks and was not intending to hire any. What kind of attitude is this toward African American for who may be the first Vice-President of the United States?
It's an attitude that doesn't surprise me at all. It's right in alignment with a Values Voter Summit attended by many GOP luminaries that promotes the display and sale of Obama Waffles. It's in alignment with a party and campaign that is already working to cage voters through unclear ballots and contest voters from foreclosed homes.
What is Palin's history as governor in terms of appointments? Perhaps there were no qualified POC she could find to promote diversity in her government. Or maybe she has very specific requirements for the posts that no blacks could meet. Oh wait, look at this! (NYT):
As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church....Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.
“I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’ ” said a family friend, Kathy Wells. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help.’ ”
The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.
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The beginning of the decline of McCain
One thing I always think of when I think of David Foster Wallace is his coverage of the flaming out of McCain's campaign against Bush in the 2000 primaries. You can hear a segment on the South Carolina primaries here, and read more here. I remember listening to that "This American Life" segment and thinking that the character assassination that the Bush campaign pulled in South Carolina was the sort of filth that would become legendary, and to a large degree it was. If you were paying attention, the 2000 primary should have scared the ever-living shit out of you, because it gave you a solid taste of what kind of amoral monsters were in charge in the Bush camp. Wallace reported on it with a good mix of humor and solemn awareness of how seriously fucked up it all was.
What I couldn't have anticipated was that McCain would run a campaign against Barack Obama so deceitful, so filthy, so dishonest, and so contemptuous of the democratic process that it would make Bush's dirty campaign against him look like child's play. Bush's people put out whisper campaigns and push polls loaded with racism and weird insinuations about McCain's mental health. McCain puts that kind of crap in national TV ads. I should have guessed it. His entire career from 2000 on has been a slow motion display of fealty to the ugliest side of the conservative movement, because wingers showed him that they owned his party. Reneging on his negative comments about the far right and about the pro-torture policies of the Bush administration and physically and symbolically embracing the very man who spread ugly rumors about McCain's daughter were just a run-up to his complete capitulation to the worst kind of campaign tactics.
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Inconceivable!
Proud American, an uber-patriotic movie that was advertised exactly nowhere and sponsored by, I shit you not, Coca-Cola, MasterCard, Wal-Mart and American Airlines, just had the worst opening of all time for any wide-release movie ever.
There is a God.
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes*
Apologies for the sexism of the term "cunts". Really, the British need to hop to using a more gender-neutral word for the concept. Americans have a leg up in this department with the word "assholes", which doesn't, unfortunately, fit in the meter of this song.
The fact that the McCain campaign has resorted to a level of pants-on-fire lying, both about himself and especially about his opponent, has left me in the sort of funk that can only be treated by escapism. I like Ezra's analysis of how it's gotten so bad, but honestly, I think his analysis explains more how low the media has gotten that they won't call a lie a lie, proving how much they've sold out to the McCain campaign. That's unbelievable amounts of cynicism in the mainstream media.
Am I more freaked out than when George Bush pants-on-fired lied to the public about Iraq, 9/11 and WMDs? Well, that was five years ago, so it's hard to say. It sure felt different then. I remember feeling very Cassandra-like, because I was absolutely positive that the Bush administration were lying straight up to get a war they'd planned before, but also that people I expressed this feeling to largely scoffed. It seemed impossible that the administration would pants-on-fire lie, probably especially in light of the trust extended after the events of 9/11. So while I was unbelievably frustrated to be treated like a bit loony, like a conspiracy theorist because I was so damn sure that they were lying, I think it was mildly comforting that most people bought the lie, because that meant that the mainstream media was at fault for being lazy and overly trusting, not that they were conspiring with the Bush administration to get us into war.
They can't hide behind naivete any longer. It's obvious to anyone who knows anything about politics at all that McCain has resorted to blatant lying in order to win this election. Not bending or stretching the truth, or telling stinky lies by justifying them with some sort of technical truth claims (classic example: "I did not have sex with that woman"), refusing to tell the whole story or lying through using empty phrases that you don't really care to live up to, like Bush did with "compassionate conservatism". These sorts of lies are sadly standard in politics. No, McCain has crossed into a new territory of wild lying, just making shit up.
Since July, John McCain and his campaign have made 11 political claims that are barely true, eight that are categorically false, and three that you'd have to call pants-on-fire lies—a total of 22 clearly deceptive statements (many of them made repeatedly in ads and stump speeches). Barack Obama and Joe Biden, meanwhile, have put out eight bare truths, four untruths, and zero pants-on-fire lies—12 false claims.
Just like during the WMDs fiasco, my heart keeps yearning for someone to swoop in and correct the record, to shine the light of truth and make the lies shrivel up and die. So much depends on this. But that's not going to happen. I mean, you have Rachel Maddow on TV, and that's a big help, because she's willing to use the toxic but accurate word "liar". And the women on "The View" apparently let the truth about lying be spoken out loud. But so far, we're seeing a taboo forming around calling John McCain what he is---a big, fat, motherfucking liar.
I'm confident in the Obama campaign, but even if they run the perfect campaign, they are handicapped by the media. They've made a couple mistakes, but on the whole, it's a tightly run, confident campaign. And of course, they can't turn around and lie right back. They simply won't be extended that privilege of being able to bald-faced lie without getting called on it, because they're Democrats and probably because Obama is black. The media would turn back on their referee duties if Obama started lying, so even if he wanted to (and that is not something I believe), he couldn't return this fire. The high road is the only option, and let's hope the voters reward that.
But what we've learned this campaign is that the mainstream media has completely abandoned even the pretense of ethical journalism. Even during the run-up to the Iraq war, they could plead ignorance and terror of terrorism. Now, there's no reason to coddle the liars, outside of complicity with the project to dismantle our democracy.
*I just finished finally reading "The Watchmen" last night, after being told that I had to by everyone ever. The ending is great, if depressing. So much for my commitment to escapism, huh? Anyway, thus the quote.
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Bummer
I just found out that David Foster Wallace died. Unfortunately, by his own hand.
Suicides by writers are uniquely unsettling situations, at least if they, like Wallace, bared their soul to the public for our perusal so many times. There's a collective complicity. So many thousands, probably millions, of people saw that he had that tendency because he told us. And somehow, he wasn't stopped. It's irrational to think that way---a suicidal person's nearest and dearest are often unable to stop it, even if they know it's a strong possibility. But still, the whiff of complicity is there. Maybe it's because writing is always an uneasy transaction between the writer and the audience, well at least if the writing is personal in any way. You're sharing with the world what is commonly expected to be held to your heart or only shared with your intimates. You can write something and publish it for strangers to read, but you wouldn't speak it at a cocktail party. That's a tension that's never going away.
Condolences to his loved ones.
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How Do You Determine When Something's Racist?
James, when a bunch of black people tell you something about black people is racist, it's most likely racist.
And no, for the 148,000th time, George W. Bush as a chimp is not racist. It never has been. It never will be. There is no racist history attached to the idea of Caucasians as monkeys, and you can't manufacture it just because it's racist in another context.
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Lou Dobbs photo/story scrubbed from Obama Waffles site
CNN's Lou Dobbs stopped by the booth and exclaimed, "My wife will love this!"
Hmmm...why would the page on the Obama Waffles site linked above suddenly get pulled? After all, Lou Dobbs, a speaker at the Values Voter Summit, stopped by the vendor table to give a slamming endorsement of the product; it depicts Barack Obama as a Muslim bug-eyed Aunt Jemima. The photo, as you can see, shows an approving Dobbs with a box of the mix in his hand.
For those of you who may have missed yesterday's post, Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two aspiring Klansmen writers from Tennessee set up a booth sponsored by Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council to sell the Obama Waffles, asserting it was "political satire."
After Think Progress covered this story, the page was yanked from the ObamaWaffles web site, and FRC issued a feeble press release trying to distance itself from the product, claiming it didn't vet the vendor's product and didn't realize the boxes on display were "offensive material."
The vendors were smiling and enjoying brisk sales before FRC realized this was bad PR for the professional "Christian" organization.
Gee, with a big banner at the display table (see the video below the fold), it's odd that no one affiliated with the pious womb-controlling, anti-gay FRC noticed something amiss with the Muslim Minstrel party going on over there and thought about ringing the big boys about a potential PR problem. Ahem.
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Maybe Anyone Can Write A Book
So, how do two wild and crazy guys end up selling racist waffle mix to fundamentalist Christians while not being under the influence of at least mild opiates?
Jack and Jill Politics has a video of the two men explaining their thought process, which pretty much comes down to them making up an implausibly stupid cover story to draw attention away from their massive drug use.
Looking into the gentlemen a bit more, I ended up fixating on Bob DeMoss, the swea...the one with the awful...the one on the left. Bob, you see, isn't just a "freelance writer". He's written a series of Christian teen literature with Tim LaHaye. Yes, Left Behind Tim LaHaye. Meaning, of course, that this wasn't just some guy shilling his flash-in-a-pan election year product, but he's a full-on foot soldier who has the full faith and credit of the fundamentalist movement. Let's look at what DeMoss would have been selling had he not stumbled on the idea of Nigger Jim's Magic Mix. First up, we've got The Last Dance, which introduces us to our recurring protagonist, Jodi Adams:
Spring is about to give way to summer and love is in the air. It's the weekend after Memorial Day and the students of Huntingdon Valley High School are anxiously awaiting their prom. Heather Barnes has found the guy of her dreams, John Knox, a senior at a nearby high school whom she met in a Christian chat room. Although Heather has never actually "met" John in person, she plans to go to the prom with him against the advice of her best friend, Jodi Adams. Soon, Heather will discover John's true identity. Can Jodi, Bruce, and Kat rescue Heather before it's too late or will the prom be her last dance?
Having no intention of ever reading this piece of shit, I'm going to make the assumption that John Knox works like every other non-Christian male in Christian literature does. He's charmingly smooth - too smooth - until he makes a complete 180 and starts grinding against Heather's cap-sleeved gown with his pre-condomed penis and demanding she drink wine coolers with him at Planned Parenthood's afterprom.
I'm not sure if there's some epidemic of Christian-chat-room-prom-dating-rapist-alcoholics out there - and if there is, I will gladly put up a link to the charity or charities who deal with preventing and punishing these people - but the object lesson here seems to be that trusting Christians will get you in severe trouble unless you have a backup Christian to once again save your ass.
Case in point? The Rave:
It was the first night of the Memorial Day weekend and Kat Koffman figured she'd dance the night away at a massive, East Coast rave. She'd go to the beach in the morning with friends from school. At least that was the plan. But when classmates Jodi Adams and Bruce Arnold found her, Kat lay unconscious on the second floor of a rat infested warehouse. Beside her was an empty syringe--and a dead boy. Jodi wanted answers--and justice. How did the boy die? Was Kat next? Why did the syringe look familiar to Bruce? And why did the police refuse to help? Nothing could prepare Jodi for the fact that some kids are worth more dead than alive. And, just when she thought she'd uncover the truth, she got more than she bargained for. The Russian Mafia.
That's the back cover. The description lets us know that, once again, Satan's Future Semen Receptacle Heather is back:
It's Labor Day weekend - and it is turning out to be a holiday that will not soon be forgotten. More than 15,000 ravers have gathered for a 72-hour dance party at the waterfront warehouse in Philadelphia. Kat is strung out on drugs and next to her lies the body of a dead boy who overdosed; Heather falls in love with a college freshman who threatens to leave her with nothing but feelings of rejection and serious regret. Experiencing firsthand the dangers of an unguarded heart, the girls are forced to reevaluate God's true place in their lives.
NOT A COLLEGE FRESHMAN!!!!one! The only thing worse than an internet predator is a college boy.
It's either Labor Day...or Memorial Day. The book's inability to determine exactly which is probably a function of the authors' in-depth research into the rave scene; after all, waving around glowsticks in the dark and trying to act like raves still have any relevance to people's lives does often leave one highly disoriented. Huntingdon Valley apparently treats all of its honorific holidays as chances to engage in quaint drug-fueled bacchanals, leaving the exasperated Jodi Adams to clean up after her friends' life-altering messes. It seems as if the smart move here isn't to toil away doing God's work in Mid-Atlantic Gomorrah, but instead to do like sane people do and come to the comfortably agnostic Midwest where your Labor Day is mainly spent trying to find a grocery store that still has yellow mustard.
And who knows what the hell the Russian Mafia is doing in the middle of the HV, but I do hope they can answer Bruce's syringe-related inquiries. Or, at the very least, get those pesky rats out of the death warehouse. If you're going to pointlessly die in order to bring perpetual screwups marginally closer to Jesus, you at least deserve to do so without having vermin scamper over your corpse.
Jodi, however, doesn't just sanctimoniously lecture her dumbass friends. She works, too. Black Friday is the story of her pre-senior year summer work experience in the liberal media.
Jodi Adams has landed her dream job as a summer intern at the local city paper, The Montgomery Times. This killer summer job will launch her senior year with a bang as she goes after the hard angle on an investigative piece on area hospitals. But when Jodi's reporting reveals information her employer doesn't want to hear-much less publish-Jodi and Stan Taylor find that the information trail is vanishing before their eyes. Lives are at stake, and it looks like theirs could be next. Watch your back on Black Friday.
I actually have nothing to mock about this. This is the exact experience 17-year-old high school interns have at small papers. They find out things about area abortion clinics hospitals that risk life and limb but could result in baby killers great truths burning in hell being revealed. Well, at least the Christian teenagers. The atheists have to figure out a way to finish the copy editor's assignment, because he's in the bathroom sneaking a drink before his court-mandated AA meeting.
Last but not least, we have Bob branching out to write The Mind Siege Project:
In the tradition of MTV's The Real World, eight high school juniors volunteer for a week on a houseboat in the name of experimental education. Rosie Meyer, the former Olympic silver medallist turned social studies teacher, dreams of her students learning first-hand the realities of tolerance and diversity. And learn they do. Although the students sail for a single week, the issues faced, the truths uncovered, and the lessons learned leave them changed for a lifetime. Followed by six short Bible studies, Tim LaHaye and Bob DeMoss offer a hands-on guide for students who grapple with the unbelievable social pressures and tough choices that face teens in the twenty-first century.
This could make less sense - if Dennis Miller described it.
It's not even clear what culture war myths this plays on. Big gay houseboats? The moral decadence of runner-up Olympians? Sailing?
In light of this output, what's surprising isn't that DeMoss made racist waffle mix. What's surprising is that he isn't also selling black licorice nooses to go along with them. That's funny!
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