Swami Uptown Archive: March 2005

Thought for Today

March 31, 2005 | 12:00 p.m.

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

--Joseph Stalin

Terri Schiavo

March 31, 2005 | 12:00 p.m.

The grave conveys the ultimate privacy. All people of sensitivity must hope that Mrs. Schiavo's death will give her family some measure of peace. And, for all our sakes,we can only hope that her death will draw the curtain over the circus that Republican politicians and right-to-life extremists have convened in her name.

No such luck,I fear. My friend Gretchen sent me an e-mail this morning that explains why:

We in this country don't know how to die. (Now the pope's on a feeding tube...whatever happened to "Natural Law"?) We're supposed to die when the body fails, as humankind has died for millions of years. Is not the American way of death radically against natural law?

Everything these days is inflated. We have the very public dyings, dying as public spectacle, a last bit of attention-getting. We can't get enough suffering -- as long as it's someone else's. Then we can feel secure, if only for a moment. And why? We can't face death, our own death, the death of all of us. We're controlled by our fears, a fact that the administration and the religious right knows well. They play the American public like a tuba: blat! blat! blat!

And yet, as I brace myself for a weekend-long media orgy, I see a few blessings.

One is unverifiable: that Terri Schiavo, dead-in-all-but-name for 15 years, has finally had her soul liberated. Whatever's next for her spirit cannot be worse.

Two is that everyone now knows that you can easily become the plaything of the State if you do not have a living will.

Three is that the

11th Circuit Court of Appeals

not only delivered the final ruling in this case but put the matter in the bluntest possible language. Here is Judge Stanley Birch, appointed in 1990 by George H. Bush:

A popular epithet directed by some members of society, including some members of Congress, toward the judiciary involves the denunciation of "activist judges." Generally, the definition of an "activist judge" is one who decides the outcome of a controversy before him according to personal conviction, even one sincerely held, as opposed to the dictates of the law as constrained by legal precedent and, ultimately, our Constitution. In resolving the Schiavo controversy it is my judgment that, despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people -- our Constitution. Since I have sworn, as have they, to uphold and defend that Covenant, I must respectfully concur in the denial of the request for rehearing en banc."

"The legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people -- our Constitution." Never thought you'd see a conservative Republican judge say that, did you?

Fourth: the dialogue that

blogger Charles Lehardy

and I had over the last few days. In a time of polarization, we had a real exchange. I'm heartened--well, a bit. Read on....

Terri Schiavo: Facts and Opinions

March 31, 2005 | 12:00 p.m.

A few days ago,

Loose Canon

did the thing that drives me nuts on a regular basis. Instead of quoting a news source or expressing an opinion of her own, she adopted some thoughts about Terri Schiavo from a blog that had quoted, in turn, another blog. The item in question:

Relapsed Catholic, a good source of information and perspectives on Terri Schiavo, spotted this alarming thought from Another Think, a Christian blog:

"Men and women who are incapacitated, even when they face no immediate risk of dying, may now be declared unfit for further life-sustaining care. If an estranged husband can achieve this result over the objections of his wife's own parents, surely insurance companies, the Veterans Administration, Medicare, and other health-care funding agencies will realize that they might make use of this precedent as well, to cut off care for chronically ill patients when they have become a drain on our national healthcare resources."

I was startled by this last, because, as those who have been following the Schiavo case well know, this has already occurred--in Texas, thanks to a law signed by then-Governor George Bush--in the Sun Hudson case (scroll down to "

Where George Bush Really Stands

," posted on March 21.) The first reports of the Hudson baby's killing were published a few days earlier. But outside of the Houston newspapers--and the liberal blogs that picked up the story--the Hudson killing got little attention. I doubted that Charles Lehardy, who writes Another Think, knew of it when he weighed in on the 23rd. So I wrote him.

Lehardy replied:

I was not aware of this case and I thank you for bringing it to my attention. One difference that I think significant is that a committee of doctors reviewed Sun Hudson's case and decided, apparently, that he had no hope of improvement. In the Schiavo case, her husband has allowed no independent and dispassionate review of her condition, which I think is dangerous. The suspicions that he is acting with haste have to do with his unwillingness to allow an independent review of her health and prognosis.

In Sun Hudson's case, the expense of longterm care was the reason for the original law and the use of the law to end his life. That's troubling, of course, but financial considerations always play some part in these health issues. Since we do not have a right to unlimited public-financed health care, we end up making hard, pragmatic choices.

I wrote back:

A busy day keeps me from giving you the exact number of court-appointed doctors who weighed in on TS's condition over the years--but are you saying that those doctors are incapable of "independent and dispassionate review"? If so, what constitutes "independent and dispassionate review"?

Lehardy's response:

In the Schiavo case, Dr. Chandler--the key neurologist consulted by the court--is famous for his support of right-to-die politics, having chaired a committee that favors changing legislation, etc.

It strains my credulity that he could be called dispassionate. If the court had gone instead to the ethics committee of the local Florida hospital and approached doctors who are involved in the daily practice of medicine and not lecturing and politicking, that would, in my view, have met the test of objectivity.

Once again, we were disagreeing because we weren't looking at the same facts. So I sent Lehardy the

report of Jay Wolfson, TS's third court-appointed guardian

. And directed him to pages l8-21, where we learn that the court, in response to a motion by TS's parents, ordered five doctors--five!--to examine TS. Two were chosen by her parents, two by her husband. The fifth was to be selected by agreement of the parents and husband, or, failing that, by the court. The findings: Michael Schiavo's doctor and the court-appointed doctor presented scientific evidence that supported the conclusion that TS had no significant brain function and that no treatment was likely to produce improvement. The parents' doctors presented "anecdotal" evidence which the court did not find convincing.

Lehardy's reply surprised me:

I read the entire Wolfson report last night and see that in fact you are correct and I was wrong. The impression I had received from reading about Schiavo was that the courts had not allowed a "dispassionate" review by doctors other than those appointed by Michael.

I'd be happy to offer a mea culpa about that erroneous assumption, but it isn't something I've said in public, nor does it go to the heart of my own objections about "pulling the tube." Nor is it particularly on point as to your original reference to the Sun Hudson case.

There are parallels between Schiavo and Hudson, but (and I'm no doctor) from the accounts of doctors in both cases, fetal dwarfism is nearly always fatal within days of birth, whereas PVS is not life-threatening in the normal sense of the phrase. In the case of Sun Hudson, the doctors claim that even with the ventilator, his lungs and heart would soon become so trapped by his small rib cage that he would die. In Schiavo's case, she is not in any immediate danger except for the lack of food and water.

I was agog. In almost a year of dealing with Loose Canon, I cannot remember a time when she has said "you are correct and I was wrong." Oh, on occasion I present an avalanche of facts and get a statement of surrender, but it's always on the order of an annoyed, weary dismissal, as if to say: "Oh, Swami, you obsessed fool, you just won't quit this boring assault, but if I tell you I agree with you, you'll just have to...move on."

And yet here I was, in an exchange with someone who disagrees with me completely yet was willing to engage in an actual dialogue. So I pressed on:

"I am concerned--"puzzled" might be a better word--that you seem to be saying that it's okay to pull the plug if a) death is inevitable and b) "the expense of long term care" is prohibitive. The rich and vegetative may live but the poor and doomed must die? Help me here, please...

Lehardy's reply:

I do believe it is ok to pull the plug when death is inevitable. The medical standard for this uses the word "futility," I believe. But I didn't say it was "okay" that money plays a role in making these decisions. That's your word. I merely acknowledged that this is reality.

The poor never have it as good as the wealthy. The per-capita spending on healthcare in America is obscene when compared with genuinely poor parts of the world: Haiti, sub-Saharan Africa, etc. As a good liberal, Jesse, I'm quite certain you have eschewed personal health insurance and are donating that money to the work of AIDS relief in Africa, right? :)

Well, no. I have health insurance for Mrs. Uptown, the Golden Child and myself, to the tune of $1,300 a month (it would be even higher if I'd signed up for dental and optical coverage). And on top of that ridiculous gouging, I give to organizations working with AIDS patients in Africa. But that's a private matter--no need to toot my horn here. Beyond that, Lehardy's response suggests a whole new area of conversation about personal choice and what the Republicans and their pro-life supporters seem to believe is an absolute right to life--unless the patient is poor. As Jon Stewart says, "In America, you're not dead until you're broke."

But as the Sufis (and others) say, "The guest is God." And so I'd like to end this with Charles Lehardy having the last word. It's been a pleasure to have a civilized conversation with someone on the other side of these issues. Proves that it can be done. Maybe it will encourage others to reach across the line.

If you want to read Charles Lehardy on a regular basis, he's at

Another Think

. I'm bookmarking his site. I encourage you to do the same. And now, to Charles:

I've enjoyed our conversation, Jesse, and look forward to others. We get the impression these days that civility is disappearing, which is a shame. We can learn a lot more from dialogue than diatribe.

The Beauty Part

March 31, 2005 | 12:00 p.m.

"I hoped my intimate relationship with death, beginning with the death of my father, through the deaths of so many of the patients I cared for, would somehow lessen the fear, allow me to face the unknown with the sense that others I had known had passed before me, and all I knew would go after. The unknown would then be understood not as a terror but as a comfort, because it held within it the possibility that I would be reunited with those I loved who were gone, in some form and in some dimension, and that I might be linked, like my father, through memory with those I would leave behind."

That is Dr. Jerome Groopman, one of America's best AIDS researchers, in

The Measure of Our Days

. The book tells the stories of eight patients sentenced to death by AIDS and cancer. But it is even better as an instruction manual: how to live, how to die. While the rest of the country is hypnotized by the morons on cable TV, you could do a good thing for yourself and your loved ones--you could read this book.

Thought for Today

March 30, 2005 | 5:30 p.m.

We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

--George Orwell

Movies for the New Millennium: 'Billy & Bronto'

March 30, 2005 | 5:30 p.m.

I was thinking about that Creationist Theme Park soon to open in the midwest. And of all the Americans who don't want Darwin to darken their kids' classrooms. And it occurred to me that maybe I'm making a mistake in believing we're talking about a very small number of wingnuts here.

What if it turns out that the country really is populated by a majority of people who really believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old and that no one is born gay and that, with the right therapy, Terri Schiavo might have danced again?

In that case, there's a fortune in giving these people the kind of entertainment that supports their view of the world.

Okay. This is a rough draft idea. But read it with an open mind (before you write and tell me how fabulous it is).

The film is called "Bronto and Billy."

Billy is a cowboy. A young Bruce Willis. Tough. Funny. Sexy. Broke. Doesn't have a shekl to his name. (Yes, shekl. This is set 6,000 years ago.)

Billy enters a rodeo. The first prize: You get the animal you rode. Billy hopes to win the prize brontosaurus. (Remember, this is 6,000 years ago.)

Ride 'em, Jewboy! Billy lasts the required 8 seconds. Nobody else does as well. He gets the dino. They ride off into the West.

Bad guys galore. Billy smites them (this is before guns, remember) and rides off on Bronto.

Bronto is mad fun. He splashes lake water on Billy. He flips Billy into the water with his tail.

But then Bronto gets sick. Billy goes to town for a doctor. But all the local healer can suggest is prayer and leaches.

Bronto is desperately ill. Billy cradles his big head in his hands. He prays for a miracle. Ann Coulter appears (we want recognizable celebrities in this movie.) She takes Bronto's giant paw in her hand and commands God to transfer his sickness into her body.

Fire! Thunder! When the smoke clears....

Ah, but I'm not like those right wing meanies who spoiled "Million Dollar Baby" for you. This is as much as you'll ever read for free. The rest? Depends on a producer with imagination. Or maybe just greed.

From the Mailbag: 'I'm Scared'

March 30, 2005 | 5:30 p.m.

Tim, a concerned reader, weighs in on the article about censoring professors:

I just read Jacqueline Marcus' article, and it confirmed something I've been feeling (and fearing) with increasing dismay. The particular strain of conservatism that's currently in power is far different from those of the recent past, in that it's clearly anti-knowledge & anti-reason.

In the past, conservatism had a long & honorable intellectual tradition, one that respected learning & questioning. I might not have agreed with the conclusions or viewpoints of many conservative thinkers, but it was clear that they were indeed THINKING.

I don't get that impression today.

What impression do I get? I see more & more people who not only scorn & dismiss learning, but proclaim their pride at doing so. I see more & more people who don't read a book, who don't even read intellectually challenging material by classic conservatives. They're apparently content to let others do their thinking for them, and to let those people provide short, succinct sound bites that pass for argument.

I see more & more people who dread & fear thought, art, nuance, complexity, uncertainty, mystery. More, they dread & fear anyone who raises such topics. And what they dread & fear, they attack & do their best to destroy. I am truly worried about the direction our culture is taking. Ignorance is wisdom, apparently -- Orwell saw that coming, sure enough!

So what do we do? How do we oppose what looks like a coming Dark Age? It might be a short one, but even a few years can do a horrendous amount of damage, e.g., the reign of the Taliban. And what if it's a long one? I'm actually afraid that I'll live to see libraries & museums burned in the near future. And perhaps people, as well.

Radiant Church of Surprise, Arizona: Part 3

March 30, 2005 | 5:30 p.m.

A few days ago, in response to a reader who worked in a crisis center and got calls from troubled people who said they could only speak to Christians, I wrote:

Some questions: There are "human" problems and "Christian" problems? Are infidelity, alcoholism and depression "different" for Christians? And beyond "Christ is the Answer," are there "Christian" solutions to these problems that mere humans might test-drive?

Two fresh questions have occurred to me: Why are Christians calling a hot line anyway? I mean, if Jesus is The Answer, then what questions remain?

The Beauty Part

March 30, 2005 | 5:30 p.m.

"I hear all the people of the world/In one bird's lonely cry/See them trying every way they know how/To make their spirit fly." As a kid, the woman who wrote those lines used to put her thumb out, hitch a ride and end up "two or three states away." She was tossed out of high school. She became a drifter, and, as drifters will, she ended up in Los Angeles. Occasionally she slept behind the HOLLYWOOD sign. Mostly she hung out in Venice. She waited tables. She sang in clubs. And she wrote. One song was called "Chuck E.'s in Love." A few years later, she recorded music even more beautiful, just not as popular. Consider

Rickie Lee Jones

.

Thought for Today

March 29, 2005 | 3:00 p.m.

How old are you, small Vietnamese boy?

Six fingers. Six years.

Why did you carry water to the wounded soldier, now dead?

Your father.

Your father was enemy of free world.

You also now are enemy of free world.

Who told you to carry water to your father?

Your mother!

Your mother is also enemy of free world.

You go into ditch with your mother.

American politician has said,

"It is better to kill you as a boy in the elephant grass of Vietnam

Than to have to kill you as a man in the rye grass in the USA."

You understand.

It is easier to die

Where you know the names of the birds, the trees, and the grass

Than in a stranger country.

You will be number 128 in the body count for today. High body count will make the Commander-in-Chief of free world much encouraged.

Good-bye, small six-year-old Vietnamese boy, enemy of free world.

--Eugene McCarthy, "My Lai Conversation" (For those too young to remember, Senator McCarthy ran for President so forcefully against Lyndon Johnson in l968 that the President decided not to run for re-election. The Senator celebrates his 89th birthday today.)

Will Jesus Be Bigger Than Trump?

March 29, 2005 | 3:00 p.m.

"Revelations" will soon be on NBC. It's just the start of religious drama on TV. By fall, God--well, the Christian one--will be getting more airtime than Donald Trump. Needless to say, I am hoping all these shows fail. Not because I am a mean-spirited atheist, but because I have a bit more respect for God than these TV programmers and their sponsors.

My bet: Given a choice between Cleavage and Calvinism, guys will choose Cleavage. And women are going to have a hard time developing fantasies about the square-jawed preacher come to save them from Hell. Newsflash: At least in our fantasies, the Vegas pole-dancer and the Fabio knock-off are a lot more attractive than Preacherman and the Choir Singer.

Here's

one show that seems like a lock to tank

:

In "Book of Daniel," actor Aidan Quinn plays a pill-popping Episcopal priest who has the ability to talk about his drug addiction with a hip, modern-day Jesus. The show is still a work in progress, but for now Mr. Quinn's character also is dealing with a daughter arrested for selling marijuana, a brother-in-law who embezzles money from the church and is found murdered, and a gay son.

How hip will that Jesus be? Will he have a family? A hot-tub? A Tommy Hilfiger robe?

The Danger of Teaching Philosophy

March 29, 2005 | 3:00 p.m.

Jacqueline Marcus

has written a terrifying, must-read piece about the danger to free thought in colleges. Called "Targeted by Conservatives for Teaching Philosophy," it shows how conservative kids may--if legislation passes--be able to file lawsuits against professors who don't give "equal time" to conservative ideas. As she reminds us:

Socrates was accused by the mob for being unpatriotic because he didn't believe war with Sparta and the poorly planned Sicilian invasion were good ideas. As it turned out, he was right and they were wrong. Athens was demolished. He was promptly executed on trumped up charges, "Corrupting the Youth" and "Atheism" (gee, that sounds familiar!). In other words, Socrates was found guilty for being a critic of society, which made him an "enemy of the state."

Radiant Church of Surprise, Arizona: Part 2

March 29, 2005 | 3:00 p.m.

Interesting email from a reader:

I live in a very small community which is very "born again." I volunteer on a crisis hot line. I quite often get phone calls from people who want to know if I'm Christian because they can only talk to people who "understand" them and can give them a Christian perspective. We also have a lot of callers who want a "Christian" therapist.

One woman now recognizes my voice, since I told her that I am not a Christian (Normally we do not share that sort of thing about ourselves but if a caller asks me point blank I'm not going to lie), and will kindly tell me she'll call on the next shift but she can't see a point in talking to me.

I've also spoken with callers who have been told to drop family members who do not fit their church's idea of being a proper Christian, because being exposed to "those" people is harmful.

Some questions: There are "human" problems and "Christian" problems? Are infidelity, alcoholism and depression "different" for Christians? And beyond "Christ is the Answer," are there "Christian" solutions to these problems that mere humans might test-drive?

Should Robert and Mary Lou Menard Go to Heaven?

March 29, 2005 | 3:00 p.m.

Just when you think you'll never find another heartwarming story, here come

Robert and Mary Lou Menard

:

When a college-aged Barbara Menard told her parents she was gay, they didn't want to tell her they already knew. But she was their 12th child, and if there's one thing about which Robert and Mary Lou Menard are experts, it's their own children.

They wanted instead to tell her they loved her, and nothing could change that.

Barbara says now, "They were waiting for me to tell them."

This from practicing Catholics, catechism teachers, readers of the Scripture. In fact, those Scriptures tell them to love that daughter. And that's what separates the Menards from so many in the hierarchy of their faith - and from others who use holy texts to condemn homosexuality and thwart the drive toward civil unions or gay marriages in Connecticut.

What follows? A terrific love story. With this climax:

A couple of years ago, the Menards celebrated their 50th anniversary with a Catholic Mass, and Barbara and her 8-month-pregnant partner carried the bread and the wine for Communion. And the roof of the church held firm.

Bet: Barbara and her partner stay together a lot longer than many of the heterosexual marriages celebrated at that church.

Thought for Today

March 28, 2005 | 5:00 p.m.

There used to be all those talk shows back in the '50s and '60s, when I was on television a great deal. People would talk about many important things, and you had some very good talkers. They're not allowed on now. Or they're set loose in the Fox Zoo, in which you have a number of people who pretend to be journalists but are really like animals. Each one has his own noise--there's the donkey who brays, there's the pig who squeals. Each one is a different animal in a zoo, making a characteristic noise. The result is chaos, which is what is intended. They don't want the people to know anything, and the people don't.

--

Gore Vidal

, in a cogent and frightening "must-read" interview

Terri Schiavo: Who Gained What?

March 28, 2005 | 5:00 p.m.

Spent an outrageous percentage of the weekend sacked out. As did Mrs. Uptown. Looking back, we agreed: We felt "beat up" by last week's Republican assault on the law and the courts and the sanctity of marriage. And, over the weekend, when we thought the Schiavo circus was winding down, there was fresh outrage aplenty.

By now, you all have heard that Tom DeLay pulled the plug on his own father after the old man fell into a--where have you heard this phrase before?--persistent vegetative state.

But did you know that Terri's father also pulled the plug on a parent? From

The Guardian

:

....given the vehemence with which he has been fighting to prolong Terri's life, it is a little surprising to learn that Robert decided to turn off the life-support system for his mother. She was 79 at the time, and had been ill with pneumonia for a week, when her kidneys gave out. "I can remember like yesterday the doctors said she had a good life. I asked, 'If you put her on a ventilator does she have a chance of surviving, of coming out of this thing?'" Robert says. "I was very angry with God because I didn't want to make those decisions."

And did you know that

Tom ("I love the American family") DeLay hasn't spoken to his mother in seven years

?

For all of Tom DeLay's public espousal of Christian values, particularly his deep commitment to family, he privately has nursed a terrible estrangement from his own mother and three siblings. After the 1988 death of his father and the rise of his career in Washington, DeLay cut off contact with all three siblings, and seven years ago he stopped attending DeLay family gatherings. He has not seen or talked to his mother, Maxine, in two years, even though she lives about 10 miles away from Sugar Land; nor did he invite any of them to his daughter's 1999 wedding or even mention his mother in the published wedding announcement.

All through his roomy home are many photographs of his wife, his daughter and his in-laws -- but not a single one of the DeLays. Throughout our conversations, this rift is the only subject that he adamantly will not discuss.

And did you know--same source--that DeLay's business ethics may leave something to be desired?

DeLay, while still in the state legislature, had signed a deal to buy out a small exterminator, Robert Bartnett, for about $40,000, but only paid him an initial $8,000, Bartnett recalls. DeLay claimed he stopped paying because Bartnett sold him a failing business. "When I was able to go look at his records," Bartnett says, "I learned that a great number of customers had quit because they didn't feel they were being serviced properly." The court ordered DeLay to pay Bartnett the $32,000 he was owed.

Whew. Nasty stuff. And if we would never have known any of it if these guys had kept their yaps shut. So when all is said and done, what was gained here? A Bush aide leaked that the President hadn't really wanted to fly back to DC from Crawford to sign the "Save Terri" bill. And Republican members of Congress who are now willing to speak up for Terri are harder to find than Democrats with a spine. Why is this? The polls.

The polls are just devastating for the President and Congress

. 75% oppose Congress's involvement in the Schiavo case. 70% oppose the President's intervention. 65% think the President's motivation was politics, not values.

So here is the conundrum. Guys don't want the in-laws mucking about in their marriage. Nobody sane wants the government legislating his/her personal behavior. And if you can read, you know that most of the "activist judges" in this case are, in fact, Conservative Republicans.

Who, then, beat the drums for the "Save Terri" movement? A handful of people. What used to be called "the lunatic fringe"--folks at the extreme edge of Christian evangelism. Standing with them has now been shown to be deadly for a politician--but why is it these are the only citizens the President and his minions have time for?

A Good Surprise--or a Scary One?

March 28, 2005 | 5:00 p.m.

There was a huge piece yesterday in the New York Times Magazine about

Radiant, an evangelical church in Surprise, Arizona

. It's more of a community center than a church. Or it's a church that serves also as a community center. The models for this are the churches of Rick Warren and Joel Osteen.

The Krispy Creme budget is $16,000. There's a barista serving Starbucks-quality drinks. Lee McFarland, the preacher, dresses like Jimmy Buffett. It looks very casual....but it's very thought-out.

I was lulled by the piece until I hit two passages. One was about a community that segregates itself--that becomes a kind of cult:

When you ask people how Radiant has changed their lives, they will almost invariably talk about how it helped open their hearts. But there's a kind of narrowing going on here as well, which became clear a few minutes later, when Tom flipped to another passage from a recent sermon. "'Some seed fell among the thorny weeds, and the weeds grew up with them and choked the good plants,'" he read, quoting Luke 8:7. Then he added his exegesis: "We've had friends who were not Christian, and for me they were like the thorny weeds," he said. "We've had to commit ourselves to friends who could help us grow spiritually."

The following night I heard this same message, communicated more explicitly, at Radiant's youth service. "If I asked how many of you have close friends who are unbelievers, a lot of you would probably raise your hands," the pastor told the crowd of about 150 teenagers, most of whom looked dressed for a rock concert. "I'll tell you right now, if one of you is a believer and the other is not, your relationship is doomed."

The other, of course, is about homosexuals--who are definitely not welcome:

Even when he tackles a subject like homosexuality, an issue about which the Assemblies is unambiguous in its condemnation, he frames his message as one of compassion, entitling the sermon "What to Say to a Gay Friend." This happens to be something McFarland has personal experience with. His younger brother, who lives in Southern California, is gay. When I asked McFarland to repeat the gist of his sermon about homosexuality, he told me it was the same speech he's given to his brother at least 20 times: "I don't believe you were born gay. I was your brother; I grew up with you. I was there. I see that you got involved with a tennis pro who was gay when you were 18, and that's when everything switched."

I urge you to take half an hour and read this article. Then please tell me: Is this the next stage in the evolution--okay, wrong word--of evangelical churches? Or is this a social corporation that looks like a church but is really something else entirely?

The Car in the Road

March 28, 2005 | 5:00 p.m.

One more time, the

botched rescue of the Italian journalist

:

One of the things that we keep hearing is that she was fired on on the road to the airport, which is a notoriously dangerous road. In fact, it's often described as the most dangerous road in the world. So this is treated as a fairly common and understandable incident that there would be a shooting like this on that road. And I was on that road myself, and it is a really treacherous place with explosions going off all the time and a lot of checkpoints.

What Giuliana told me that I had not realized before is that she wasn't on that road at all. She was on a completely different road that I actually didn't know existed. It's a secured road that you can only enter through the Green Zone and is reserved exclusively for ambassadors and top military officials. So, when Calipari, the Italian security intelligence officer, released her from captivity, they drove directly to the Green Zone, went through the elaborate checkpoint process which everyone must go through to enter the Green Zone, which involves checking in obviously with U.S. forces, and then they drove onto this secured road.

And what Giuliana Sgrena really stressed with me was that she -- the bullet that injured her so badly and that killed Calipari, came from behind, entered the back seat of the car. And the only person who was not severely injured in the car was the driver, and she said that this is because the shots weren't coming from the front or even from the side. They were coming from behind, i.e. they were driving away. So, the idea that this was an act of self-defense, I think becomes much more questionable. And that detail may explain why there's some reticence to give up the vehicle for inspection.

Changes everything, doesn't it?

Yummy

March 28, 2005 | 5:00 p.m.

Ok. We're off to Burger King for breakfast. You could have:

The Enormous Omelet Sandwich. It carries 730 calories and 47 grams of fat and comes with two eggs, sausage, three strips of bacon and two slices of melted American cheese on a bun. It's heftier than a Whopper hamburger, which weighs in at 700 calories and 42 grams of fat.

Or you could order the other new Burger King breakfast:

The Western Omelet Croissanwich. It's a lighter pick with 320 calories and 17 grams of fat. It has fire-grilled onions, ham and melted American cheese inside a folded egg on a croissant.

Which would you choose? Or rather, do you want your heart attack/stroke sooner--or later?

Thought for Today

March 25, 2005 | 12:30 p.m.

We have a president who believes he's doing the right thing. He's perfectly serene. He's not reachable. We can't reach him. He's surrounded by 1,500 body bags. It's okay because he sees that he's on a crusade. His mission is to bring peace to the Middle East.

--

Seymour Hersh

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