Quotation of the Week

The commander of American-run prisons in Iraq says the military will not turn over any detainees or detention centers to Iraqi jailers until American officials are satisfied that the Iraqis are meeting United States standards for the care and custody of detainees.
-- The New York Times, in a news report that would be funny if it weren't so tragic

A Holiday Story

Last year, Swami partnered with a St. Louis country DJ to send essential supplies to our soldiers in Iraq. Those who participated may recall the thrill of making sure these men and women were decently outfitted.

This year, I decided it was time for my Head Butler readers to have the opportunity to help others. I featured a 'charity of the day' for a week, and then I decided to color outside the lines. The spark was an email from my friend Joie, who has passed on the charity gene to her daughter Heidi.

As it happens, Heidi lives in St. Louis. And there, through an organization called The Crisis Nursery, she found a family that could use some help: A 67-year-old woman was supporting her five grandchildren--the kids' mother, presumably on drugs, was unable to take care of them herself--on her $750 Social Security check.

What did they need? Gee, start anywhere. And Heidi and her mother did. They asked friends and business associates for donations, and then--although this was direct, person-to-person charity, and none of my readers knew Joie or Heidi, and no one would get a tax deduction for helping--I put the word out on Butler.

The response was gratifying. Each kid got a winter coat and gloves, 2 shirts, a pair of sweat pants and a pair of slacks, undies, socks, toothbrushes, and one or two toys from their short list of requests. For the Grandmother: a coat, gloves, 2 pair of pj's.

And then, because the contributions keep coming, Heidi bought the family a new Dell computer with software loaded for productivity, plus some interactive games for the kids. And a printer. And a vacuum cleaner, a set of cookware and bakeware. And, so the family could have a holiday dinner, canned hams, vegetables and fixings--plus a $100 gift certificate to a grocery store for future purchases.

A few days before Christmas, the grandmother suffered a stroke. (She remains hospitalized.) Friends took in the grandchildren. But the important thing is.....every present got delivered. It took two cars, but the holiday bonanza made it intact.

Joie wrote me this morning: "This type of Christmas giving has to give these children the feeling that somehow, during a time of many uncertainties, the world can be a safe and caring place."

Here's the thing about life: It's not neat, like a "Lifetime' movie. But sometimes-- as in this bumpy, sad story--goodness breaks through, and the struggle disappears, and, for a day, people who have nothing but one another can know what it feels like to have a generous, loving band of friends. I'm in awe of Heidi for pushing on when it would have been easy to stop, I'm so grateful to Joie for thinking of the Head Butler community, and to the Butlerites--well, they got the real gift of Christmas, didn't they?

Learning By Example: An Idiot Makes Up a Story

I recently wrote about a kid who got a visit from federal agents after he requested a copy of Mao's "Red Book" in an inter-library loan. Turns out that the kid made the story up.

What a frickin' idjut. And here you thought people on "our" side were smarter than people on "their" side.

I post this correction at the top of this week's blog, because I believe mistakes should be quickly acknowledged and given equal prominence to the wrongful report.

Year-end Quiz: What Country Is Being Described Here?

Last week, I posted the question below. The extra-point question: And at what period in history.

Behind a facade of legality, [they] dismantled the established protections of law. Not satisfied merely to crush a lively if troubled democracy, they used the mass media to dissolve traditional allegiances. Replacing most forms of organized social life with new, themed activities, they left citizens with no place to share heretical thoughts. The result was a nightmare version of a normal modern society, with popular entertainment manipulating public enthusiasms and hatreds, and the government intruding into intimate matters of the mind and body while demanding an end to the coddling of the weak.

The answer: Germany. During the Third Reich.

Source: The New York Times review of The Third Reich in Power.

Collateral Damage: Hey, This Means YOU

Collateral Damage means "unintended damage." As in: "We were bombing an ammo dump, and one bomb went astray and hit a hospital. A hundred people died--collateral damage."

It occurs to me that, from our government's point of view, we are all collateral damage. The War of Terror is the main event, and everything must be sacrificed to it--starting with our nation's prosperity, moving on to issues of 'truth' and 'freedom' and 'constitutional rights,' and ending up in a horrific botch.

The number of people who remember voting for George Bush keeps on shrinking. Soon it will be down to the 25% of true believers who can be counted on to swallow anything a strong-jawed elected official tells them. They fall into two camps: the poorly educated and the tax exempt.

These people actually believe that Bush got a bump for the pre-holiday speeches in which he admitted to strategies that were less than perfect. People go for that human touch. Always have, always will. It helps them forget they are no more valuable to this government than the lives of Iraqi civilians.

Speaking of which: Collateral damage in Iraq, as reported by
The Washington Post:

RAMADI, Iraq -- U.S. Marine airstrikes targeting insurgents sheltering in Iraqi residential neighborhoods are killing civilians as well as guerrillas along the Euphrates River in far western Iraq, according to Iraqi townspeople and officials and the U.S. military.

Just how many civilians have been killed is strongly disputed by the Marines and, some critics say, too little investigated. But townspeople, tribal leaders, medical workers and accounts from witnesses at the sites of clashes, at hospitals and at graveyards indicated that scores of noncombatants were killed last month in fighting, including airstrikes, in the opening stages of a 17-day U.S.-Iraqi offensive in Anbar province.

The number of airstrikes carried out each month by U.S. aircraft rose almost fivefold this year, from roughly 25 in January to 120 in November, according to a tally provided by the military. Accounts by residents, officials and witnesses in Anbar and the Marines themselves make clear that Iraqi civilians are frequently caught in the attacks.

"These people died silently, complaining to God of a guilt they did not commit," Zahid Mohammed Rawi, a physician, said in the town of Husaybah. Rawi said that roughly one week into Operation Steel Curtain, which began on Nov. 5, medical workers had recorded 97 civilians killed. At least 38 insurgents were also killed in the offensive's early days, Rawi said.

Well, okay, they died because "the insurgents" don't like the results of the "democratic" election and so we had to bomb them. Ooops. The election, though seriously flawed, elected a government dominated by Shi'ites. For those who had too much eggnog to recall the politics of the players, these Shi'ites are theocrats, close to Iran, totally unsympathetic to the rights of women--from the American viewpoint, the election could not have produced a worse result.

Naturally, the government mentions none of this. In our bread-and-circuses culture, it gives American citizens what they want--troop reductions. This, too, is wrong-headed. One of the reasons almost 2,200 soldiers are dead is because there are not enough of them to preserve civic order. Now, to appease a public that's sick of this mismanaged war, the White House has callously decided to pull some troops out, leaving behind a reduced force that is almost certain to sustain a higher percentage of casualties than our current deployment. Know any soldiers likely to be in Iraq after, say, April? Better get down on your knees and pray.

Perfectly timed to get lost in the Christmas bustle was the news that the government has been illegally tapping our phones. Why illegal? Because, under existing law, the government could tap a phone and then apply for a warrant. That was inconvenient. And this government's record with warrants is not stellar. So the White House just pretended this was within the Executive's rights--notice how they seem to be limitless--and plunged ahead.

The conservative blogger at Beliefnet no doubt sees nothing wrong with phones being tapped, but at The Washington Times--the Moonie-owned paper that she once wrote for--Bruce Fein weighs in on this domestic spying:

President Bush presents a clear and present danger to the rule of law. He cannot be trusted to conduct the war against global terrorism with a decent respect for civil liberties and checks against executive abuses. Congress should swiftly enact a code that would require Mr. Bush to obtain legislative consent for every counterterrorism measure that would materially impair individual freedoms.

Here, I gather, is a true conservative--someone who, like a true liberal, remembers that the President's oath is not to protect the country but to protect the Constitution. There's a big difference. A thief and a liar may do all manner of things in a misguided effort to protect the country. But only a patriot cares about the Constitution.

Slowly, slowly, Americans are noticing that not all fascists wear high leather boots. Some wear expensive suits and have impressive credentials. Some wear the collars of the holy. And some are typists, who faithfully share the gospel of self-help for the poor and welfare for the rich. What they have in common is an intolerance for diversity and freedom and all the other values that turn you--indeed, everyone not in their coven--into collateral damage.

'Munich'

I've seen Spielberg's just-released movie. Color me: disturbed.

And I've reviewed a book that tells a version of that story:
"Striking Back."

Everything about the massacre of Jewish athletes and coaches at the 1972 Olympics is disturbing. As I wrote in my review:

The Germans were unprepared to deal with terrorists. They ordered the Olympics to continue. They devised an unworkable plan to kidnap the terrorist leader. The sole criterion for their rescue team was that a volunteer could fire a gun. And their final effort to save the Israelis pitted five exhausted, untrained marksmen against eight terrorists. Every Jew died.

I encourage you to see the Spielberg film, not only because it's a stellar work, but because it raises important questions about how we deal with terrorism--and with one another. Without giving much of the story away, let me suggest a few discussion questions:

1) We don't see the climax of the massacre until the end of the movie, when it is intercut with an intense scene between Avram, the leader of the Israeli avengers, and his wife. It's hard to call that a "love scene"--in his head, he's seeing the massacre. What's the point of this intercut scene? What is Avram feeling? What is Spielberg's point here?

2) Avram's mother says no price is too high. Now that Israel exists, "we have a place." During the film, an Arab who Avram befriends talks lovingly of "home." Can two peoples share one home?

3) The last shot of the film is of the New York skyline. Why? What's Spielberg "saying" here?

Apology to Loose Canon

In my blog on 12/19, I assured my readers that, as one of Beliefnet's only two politicized bloggers, I was paid only by Beliefnet. And I challenged Loose Canon--Charlotte Hays--to do the same. I made no accusation and didn't intend to imply one. I simply asked a question.

Let me assure her that I never intended to blight her integrity in any way. I deeply regret any distress I have caused her. And I am delighted to note that she, like me, honors the traditional values of journalism.

The genesis of my post was my desire to separate Beliefnet's only two politicized bloggers from the sorry record of the past year. First, we learned that American journalists were contracted by our government to write articles supportive of its policies. Then we read reports of the government systematically paying journalists in Iraq to advance the American position in their dispatches. And, just last week, we saw two American columnists admit that they were in the employ of conservative think tanks, with one of them boasting "I do that all the time." The good news: When Loose Canon and I are writing for Beliefnet, we are paid only by Beliefnet.

--Jesse Kornbluth

Thought for the Holiday Week

I think people are sick of divisiveness, hate-mongering, disasters, war, loss; and need and want a reminder that sometimes love comes along that is strong and permanent, and that it can happen to anyone.
--Annie Proulx, author of "Brokeback Mountain"

Year-end Quiz

What country is being described here?

Extra-point question: And at what period in history?

Please post your answer on the message boards. Or send me an email.

Ready? Here's the passage:

Behind a facade of legality, [they] dismantled the established protections of law. Not satisfied merely to crush a lively if troubled democracy, they used the mass media to dissolve traditional allegiances. Replacing most forms of organized social life with new, themed activities, they left citizens with no place to share heretical thoughts. The result was a nightmare version of a normal modern society, with popular entertainment manipulating public enthusiasms and hatreds, and the government intruding into intimate matters of the mind and body while demanding an end to the coddling of the weak.

All I Want for Christmas Is America Back

So a senior at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth campus, goes to the college library and files an inter-library request for Mao's "Little Red Book"--an outdated, useless guide to living the Communist "revolution." There aren't ten people on the planet who would think this book has anything to do with international terrorism. Well, maybe there are.

From a Massachusetts paper:

The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.

Gee, those Feds sure have time on their hands, now that they've safeguarded our ports and protected our borders. Lots of time, as it turns out, because although the FBI computers still can't talk to the CIA computers, IBM seems to have stepped up to wiretap millions of conversations:

One of the most noteworthy comments was that the Government had specified 60 Terabytes of monthly storage for digital versions of conversations. MONTHLY! At about 11k per call, that is about 6 million conversations per month.

So, after 9/11/01, if you made international calls and/or the government had any reason to believe your views are antagonistic to "victory" in Iraq, there is a reasonable possibility that your calls were taped. And, quite possibly, data-mined for key words.

But, you say, I do nothing wilder than give the occasional contribution to MoveOn. The craziest blog I read is Swami. Well, too bad. You are living in an easy-listening, soft-rock version of a police state.

You heard the President say it today: He's above the law. He needs to move fast to fight terrorism and so he doesn't bother to apply for a wiretap--even though the law clearly says that he doesn't need to apply to the courts for a warrant until after the wiretap in place.

In a real democracy, the word "impeachment" would be in the first paragraph of most media discussing these latest revelations. Indeed, if Bill Clinton committed even one of the criminal acts that this President authorizes on a daily basis, Republicans and their media operatives would be choosing the tree for his hanging.

So here's my holiday prayer: that the Angel of Intelligence drop in on our leaders as they sleep, and deposit copies of the Constitution under their trees, and that these imperial rulers read it--apparently for the first time--and fall in love with America again and return this country to the rule of law.

And then, while they're restoring sanity, they either send more troops to Iraq and get serious about "winning" this war, or that they bring them home. All of them.

A Christmas Story to Cherish

From Americablog:

You remember the reality show "Welcome to the Neighborhood" where a bunch of not-run-of-the-mill families competed for the residents of a neighborhood to vote for them to receive a new house? ABC didn't broadcast it because of legal concerns, but one really terrific story came out of it, and is reported in the January 17 issue of the Advocate (the one with Heath Ledger on the cover).

One family that was already in the neighborhood was headed by a total redneck by the name of Jim, and he was particularly horrified when he saw that one of the families was a white gay male couple with an African American baby. (They ended up being the family that got the house.)

Well, there was another angle. It turns out that the redneck guy has a gay son from a previous marriage that he had basically cut out of his life--and this never came up during the show.

I'm typing in a few excerpts because I think this is so cool, but you should check out the whole article when it's up on the Advocate's website:

"During the six episodes, Jim (the redneck) had gotten to know the Wrights (the gay couple). 'I began visiting with the gay family and realized they are just like everybody else.' Over dinner one night, Jim asked John Wright what a day in the life of a gay man is like. 'John said he'd been chased, spit on, beat up, and humiliated,' Jim says. 'And I started thinking that discriminating against my own son was the worst discrimination there is. As the show went on, it dawned on me that being gay is not a choice. I didn't understand it's in the DNA. I realized prejudice is through fear and ignorance, and in my case, I had both.'

"Two weeks after the show finished taping and Jim had done a lot of soul-searching, he called Jason (his son). Jason was unprepared for what his dad had to say. 'The call came out of nowhere,' he says. 'My dad told me he loved me unconditionally and was a changed person and was ashamed of how he treated me in the past and that he would accept me and anyone in my life -- that was a huge decision. I was crying in my car."

"Jim showed his son he believed that gays should have the right to be families by standing on the state capitol steps at a rally opposing a state constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage (this was in Texas). The proposition passed on November 8, but Jason was proud of his dad."

An Actual Joke

And speaking of "Brokeback Mountain," here's a Western joke my pal Ken sent along:

One Sunday morning an old cowboy entered a church just before services were to begin. Although the old man and his clothes were spotlessly clean, he wore jeans, a denim shirt and boots that were very worn and ragged. In his hand he carried a worn out old hat and an equally worn out Bible.

The church he entered was in a very upscale and exclusive part of the city. It was the largest and most beautiful church the old cowboy had ever seen. The people of the congregation were all dressed with expensive clothes and accessories.

As the cowboy took a seat, the others moved away from him. No one greeted, spoke to, or welcomed him. They were all appalled at his appearance and did not attempt to hide it.

As the old cowboy was leaving the church, the preacher approached him and asked the cowboy to do him a favor. "Before you come back in here again, have a talk with God and ask him what he thinks would be appropriate attire for worship." The old cowboy assured the preacher he would.

The next Sunday, he showed back up for the services wearing the same ragged jeans, shirt, boots, and hat. Once again he was completely shunned and ignored. The preacher approached the man and said, "I thought I asked you to speak to God before you came back to our church."

"I did," replied the old cowboy.

"If you spoke to God, what did he tell you the proper attire should be for worshiping in here?" asked the preacher.

"Well, sir, God told me that He didn't have a clue what I should wear when I come here. He said He'd never been in this church "

The Beauty Part

Year after year, if you're like me, you buy a Farmer's Almanac. You do it because the local weather report is always wrong, and the Farmer's Almanac, you've heard, has a much higher percentage of correct predictions.

What I overlook (and you may too)--I'm not a farmer. I live in a city. I am, in Woody Allen's phrase, "two with nature." I don't even have a window box. So what do I care about the best time to plant corn?

Eric Utne--the long-ago founder of a great, self-named magazine--shrewdly saw the need for a new kind of almanac. Its readers would be urban/suburban, not rural. They would care more about the environment, fitness and spiritual development than about agriculture. And they might like tart proverbs, poems and alternative wisdom along with the weather.

Thus was born a 288-page paperback filled with the sort of reading you don't expect from a fact-based book. And speaking of facts: its weather forecaster--"Doc Weather"--claims to be more accurate (71%) than the Farmer's Almanac (51%). But the facts, as we used to know them, are regularly upended here. Indeed, the book's first quotation is "Start slow and taper off." Yeah, this isn't your father's Almanac. It's Cosmo Doogood's Urban Almanac.

Thought for the Week

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.

-- Yehuda Amichai, "The Diameter of the Bomb"

Six Degrees of Tookie Williams

Tookie Williams has been rebuffed by the California Supreme Court, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has refused to grant him clemency. So the convicted killer will be executed at midnight (Tuesday, December 13)--by the time most of you read this, he'll be dead.

Clemency--like "mercy," like "forgiveness"--is one of the sweeter words in the language. It's a word on the side of the angels, on the side of redemption. It says that the terrible bad acts of the past aren't the final judgment. It says that people can change. And that this change can be acknowledged, and rewarded, and held up as an example.

Clemency matters a great deal in a country that believes in second chances--in being, if you will, "born again." Tookie Williams, who founded the Crips gang and killed as many as four people, reformed himself in prison; he wrote a memoir and some children's books about the dangers of gangs. He was the ideal candidate for clemency.

But as a culture, America isn't very interested in reform. We much prefer retribution. There's something perversely appealing to us about overwhelming force: Cross us, and we'll nail you. That is how we currently have two million Americans--most of them black, most of them male--behind bars. Sure, most of them are in jail because they "did something." And so we have sent them to be punished, not rehabilitated.

Our appetite for revenge--almost always on black males--is riveting to me. Not every prisoner is on death row. Lots of these guys get out--indeed, for budgetary reasons, a lot get out earlier than they should. If we don't rehabilitate them in prison, what do we think will happen when they're on the streets again? You guessed it. Right back to the life of crime. And what if they don't stay in the ghetto and prey on "their own kind"? Then the victims are Whitey--that's most of you, Beliefnet readers, and me.

It has long been demonstrated that executions do not deter others from committing crimes. At the same time, if there's no possibility of clemency, they don't encourage anyone in prison to reform. Why bother turning yourself into a good guy? They're going to fry you anyway. If anything, executing Williams makes it more--not less--likely that, in the future, some punk with a gun will pull the trigger and turn an ordinary robbery into a murder. Hey, who wants a living witness who can identify you and testify against you?

Across the way, Loose Canon--an "a la carte" Catholic who never met a pope she felt obligated to obey or a belief system worthy of her full respect--makes light of Mr. Williams' reformation. Her argument closely echoes George Bush's shallow dismissal of Karla Faye Tucker. But of course LC does not dare make fun of George Bush's conversion; Rich Lowry and Ann Coulter would forbid her to link to their stuff. Then where would she be?

My doctor does not allow me to dwell long on Loose Canon. So let us turn our attention to another Catholic woman: Maria Shriver. Where was she in the conversations that led to her husband's cruel decision? She knows Arnold's checkered past, his callous dismissal of women as sex objects. Clearly, she also knows something about forgiveness, because she has forgiven him. You would think she'd put it bluntly to him--you must not do this. And you would think--because with his poll numbers fading, she is his biggest asset--he would listen. But I guess it didn't play out that way. And now the blood of Williams will stain her hands too.

The death penalty, Abu Ghraib, torture as policy--it's a long list, and it all connects. Readers of this column know the litany, and recognize the culture of death for what it is: a big show of manhood and courage from people who are deathly afraid. Afraid of so many things, starting with the harsh fact that there's a bit of Tookie Williams in all of us.

Tonight they'll feed the beast. Tomorrow they'll need new victims. They forget that they’re the ones who believe that an all-seeing, all-knowing God will someday judge us all. Good luck to them on that day.

'Brokeback Mountain' and Ford: First there is a Jaguar, then there is no Jaguar, then there is?

In the early user phase of their virtual lives, a lot of men take feminine screen names and dive into lesbian chat rooms, the better to score some of that torrid girl-on-girl sex. I was one of those men. And the joke was surely on me--looking back, I'd bet most of the wild women who tumbled into private chat rooms with me were male.

Which makes the gay sex I had a whole different thing from the gay sex I thought I was having.

I wrote a piece about that experience: You Make Me Feel Like a Virtual Woman. A magazine wanted to run it. With a photograph. I'd be wearing a silk Victoria's Secret robe, fake nails, mules. And, of course, sitting in a "come hither" pose.

When I told my then 14-year-old stepdaughter what I was going to do, she wept. "My friends might see the magazine," she said. "Please. Don't."

My stepson, then 10, was calmer: "Everyone will think you're gay--but what do you care?"

I thought of those reactions--and, in the 1990s, my ability to be, or pretend to be, any damn thing I wanted--as I watched "Brokeback Mountain," the story of two cowboys who fall in love in 1963 and dare not tell a soul. The frisson of seeing Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal go at it fades fast; the tragedy of love hidden, love denied, sticks with you long after the movie ends.

My wife and I left the theater in silence, thinking the same thing: the unfairness--the criminal stupidity, really--of one set of people presuming to pass judgment on another. Those who are all riled up about homosexuality--to say nothing of those who turned gay marriage into the big issue of the '04 election--seem to think that homosexuality is only about sex. But for Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist in "Brokeback Mountain," their sexuality is a curse, a jail sentence: life in solitary, with infrequent, secret conjugal visits.

This is the movie's power--the ability to make you feel the weight of two decades of desire and guilt, loneliness and recrimination. Ennis and Jack want the sex, but even more, they want the relationship, the dailiness of romantic partnership. Jack dreams of how it could be. Ennis won't let himself go there; he knows how two ranchers, living together, would play out in the West. "If you can't fix it, you got to stand it," Ennis says, and you have to admire the rugged cowboy wisdom that makes him affirm a miserable reality instead of embracing a deadly dream.

Watching the movie in New York, I couldn't help but be glad I live in a big city in a blue state, where my neighbor's sexuality is none of my business.

So it was astonishing last week--the same week that "Brokeback Mountain" opened--to see anew how tentative "progress" is: Ford Motor Company made the news for pulling its Jaguar and Land Rover ads from gay magazines and announcing that it won't sponsor any future gay and lesbian events. In exchange, American Family Association--the Christian group whose members are not the likeliest readers of gay magazines--ended its six-month boycott of Ford vehicles. [John Aravosis, at AMERICAblog, has the full story--and the email addresses of key Ford executives for those who feel like weighing in.]

Ford's was a dumb decision on the only two metrics that matter--public relations and business. Even minimal research shows that AFA boycotts are hot air; they've made scarcely a dent in the earnings of major corporations. I'm going to guess that AFA members are likely to buy Fords and Ford trucks, and that the AFA boycott cost Ford a few thousand sales. On the other side, Ford's decision to bow to the Christian right will mean that tens of thousands of gays--and who knows how many Americans who hate this kind of discrimination--will decide not to buy Jags and Land Rovers and Lincolns. The profit margin on a Ford is modest; the profit on a fully-equipped luxury car is significant. So what was the gain for Ford here?

On Tuesday, Ford executives will meet with representatives of nineteen gay organizations. I can't imagine what Ford can do to appease them. The company has put itself in a box, wedded to an indefensible position; it can't satisfy the gays without agitating Rev. Wildmon and the AFA all over again.

And yet that is exactly what Ford ought to do. It ought to take out full-page ads in every newspaper in America and put Bill Ford on TV. The headline: WE MADE A MISTAKE. The message: "Recently, under pressure from a crusade to protect the 'family,' we agreed to stop advertising in gay publications. That was the wrong decision. Ford makes cars and trucks for Americans--for every man and woman in the American family. If anyone has a problem with that, that's their problem."

The effect? I'd like to think that Americans would cheer. Decency is in such short supply in government these days that the bar is low--even a modest effort at doing "the right thing" might look heroic. But even to think in those terms is to give the auto executives credit for being real men--for being "Ford tough." Which is to say, about half as tough as Ennis Del Mar.

Thought for the Week

Al Qaida leaders Bin Laden and al-Zarqawi haven't been found "primarily because they don't want us to find them and they're going to great lengths to make sure we don't find them."
--Porter Goss, the genius who is Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

How to 'Save' Christmas: Get Christ as far away from shopping centers as possible!

Bill O'Reilly and other deep thinkers have renewed their annual attack on those who would prefer to hear "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas."

Like so many national "conversations" these days, this is an utter waste of time. Millions of middle-class Americans are so burdened by credit-card debt that they're only a few missed paychecks from financial ruin. Thirty-odd million Americans live below the poverty line, with millions of children going to bed hungry each night. Iraq, Pakistan, Darfur: war, earthquake, holocaust.

But thanks to some C-students who ditched school the week their Civics teacher covered the Founding Fathers and their views on religion, what we might do to be good Christians--that is, to address our problems and alleviate the world's suffering--is of less interest than wedging a creche in front of The Gap at the local mall.

And they say liberals have screwed-up priorities!

I can understand why these so-called Christians are working overtime to put Christ back in Christmas shopping--Jesus has become the poster boy for holiday spending. Really, they ought to work up slogans to get you to whip out that Visa card faster: 'He gave all. Why don't you give some?' Vulgar, but it would work--shopping is easier than being a Christian.

Although I am somewhere between a Jew and a Buddhist, I think I know something about what Christianity is like. I saw Jesus in the flesh one time. And another, I felt Him in me.

Seeing Jesus: In 1987, I was doing a story about a lynching in Mobile, Alabama. One evening, Michael Donald, an 18-year-old kid, went out to the store. Some Klansmen came by, forced him into their car, beat him, lynched him and left him hanging. And they were going to get away with it until Morris Dees, founder of The Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a civil suit against the KKK on behalf of Michael's mother, Beulah Mae Donald. She won--and in the process, bankrupted the Klan.

I visited Mrs. Donald in her sweltering apartment. She was serene: "From Day One, I turned this over to God." Although she was on welfare, she knew what to do with the money: "I'm going to give it to people who are really hurting." That was when I got the shiver--this was what Christ was talking about. More: this was the word made flesh. God bless that amazing woman for revealing His Spirit to me.

Feeling Jesus: It was my senior year in college. I was five months away from being drafted and, presumably, shipped off to Vietnam. On a December night, I went to hear Marion Williams, a gospel singer I knew nothing about. She was magic. I came out, flying, into a night as clear as it was cold. Everything sparkled. Everyone shone. I grasped that the universe was held together by strands of love. That I had no enemies. That everything was exactly as it should be.

That high lasted for a week. I've sought it ever since, with no success. And I'm certainly not feeling it this month. Just the opposite--every bomb that explodes in Iraq seems to go off in our living room as well. We're royally bummed. Because there's a child involved, we'll go through the motions and make sure she has presents and lights and family, but that's it. As I wrote on Head Butler:

My wife's holiday cookies--a tradition for more than a decade--aren't happening this year.

And if you're waiting for a holiday card with a fetching photo of the little one, better send me an e-mail and I'll reply with a jpeg of the kid.

What's wrong?

More or less total absence of the holiday spirit.

This year, for whatever reason, we feel over-burdened by situations that, individually, we cannot hope to change. So we are buying ourselves exactly one costly present--a professional-grade espresso maker and an insanely expensive coffee grinder. But we've done the math, and it removes all guilt; in just four months, the money we save not buying triple grande lattes at Starbucks will pay for these machines.

After that whopper, everything else gets scaled back. There are children to buy for, and we will meet those obligations. Everyone else is getting small things: books, CDs, movies. Then comes the charity part. Because the hurricane inspired many people to give to the Red Cross and other disaster agencies, charity giving in New York is running behind last year's figures. At supermarket checkout donation boxes, The Food Bank for New York City has collected about 50% of what it got during this period last year. Donations to The Salvation Army are off $160,000. Citymeals-on-Wheels is running 15% behind last year.

"First feed the face, then talk right and wrong," Bertolt Brecht wrote. We're with him. And so the money we don't spend on expensive presents and the money we save by not baking cookies and sending Christmas cards will go mostly to hunger-relief causes. We're partial to Share Our Strength and Second Harvest, but I suspect we'll spread our giving around. On the international front, we'll donate to Doctors Without Borders, which is working frantically to provide shelter for victims of the Pakistan earthquake.

And then, along with our small gifts, we'll enclose a note to our loved ones, explaining what we're doing--in their honor--around the country and around the world.

Let me emphasize: We're not scaling down on presents and amping up our charity giving for any 'holier than thou' reason. We're not trying to 'set an example'. We don't seek admiration. We're celebrating the holidays this way because, this year, it's the only way we can think of to get through them without feeling small and silly and sad.

This column produced a tsunami of email. Let me share just one:

Several years ago I worked for the gas and electric company in customer service. The week before Christmas I got a phone call from a woman who had just lost her mother and been left a bit of money. She wanted to do something nice and asked if I knew of someone she could anonymously help. I told her about a family of five I'd just spoken to--they had their electricity cut off and had no money to turn it back on. She offered to pay, I got everything sorted out, and, along the way, I told everyone how the woman who had lost her mother was helping this family and how it had inspired me to buy a few gifts and take them by this family's house on my way home to my family. My colleagues began opening their wallets and giving me money, the meter reader who turned the electricity back on took them food, others from his local office took a tree with lights and decorations, my friends asked me if they could pre-pay on the people's electricity bill and on and on. The generosity of these people was wonderful and heart warming.

With my carload of gifts and money, I stopped unannounced in a very poor part of town at the family’s very small, run-down house. The young mother was sitting in the front window staring blankly out onto the dirty street, a beautifully lit Christmas tree twinkling with lights behind her. When I came to the front door, she was a bit puzzled--but obviously thrilled and incredibly thankful for all the gifts.

I explained the story of the anonymous donor and the desire of so many people who just wanted to help make her family's Christmas bright.

What she said to me has stayed with me all these Christmases since: "She's lost her mother here at the holidays! What can I do to help her?"

In that spirit, I ask: What can I do to help you? What can we do to help each other--and people we don't know?

Condi Rice: What a Difference One Word Makes

Condi's in Europe, lying to our allies about torture. But she doesn't think so. She's had lawyers write her remarks. From The New York Times:

"It's clear that the text of the speech was drafted by lawyers with the intention of misleading an audience," Andrew Tyrie, a Conservative member of Parliament, said in an interview. Mr. Tyrie is chairman of a recently formed nonpartisan committee that plans to investigate claims that the British government has tacitly condoned torture by allowing the United States to use its airspace to transport terrorist suspects to countries where they are subsequently tortured.

Parsing through the speech, Mr. Tyrie pointed out example after example where, he said, Ms. Rice was using surgically precise language to obfuscate and distract. By asserting, for instance, that the United States does not send suspects to countries where they "will be" tortured, Ms. Rice is protecting herself, Mr. Tyrie said, leaving open the possibility that they "may be" tortured in those countries.

"May" and "will"--all the difference in the world. Unless you're the one being tortured.

Email Going Around: Lies, Lies, Lies

A reader sent this on:

If you consider that there have been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000.

The rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington D.C.

No, that's not the conclusion. The real conclusion is that dead Iraqis don't count as people. If you counted 30,000 to 50,000 dead Iraqis--conservative figures--you would conclude that the cities of Iraq are so dangerous we should immediately pull out of Iraq.

Or you can reduce this to common sense: Where would you rather spend the holidays ---Baghdad or Washington? Thought so.

Here's another email that readers keep sending:

1. There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq during the month of January. In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January. That's just one American city, about as deadly as the entire war torn country of Iraq.

2. When some claim President Bush shouldn't have started this war, state the following: FDR led us into World War II. Germany never attacked us: Japan did. From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost, an average of 112,500 per year. Truman finished that war and started one in Korea. North Korea never attacked us. From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost, an average of 18,334 per year. John F. Kennedy started the Vietnam conflict in 1962. Vietnam never attacked us. Johnson turned Vietnam into a quagmire. From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost, an average of 5,800 per year. Clinton went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent Bosnia never attacked us. Clinton was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three times by Sudan and did nothing. Osama has attacked us on multiple occasions.

3. In the two years since terrorists attacked us, President Bush has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran and North Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.

The Democrats are complaining about how long the war is taking, but...It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation. We've been looking for evidence of chemical weapons in Iraq for less time than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records. It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard than it took Ted Kennedy to call the police after his Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick, killing a woman.

Readers ask: What shall I respond? I say: Don't respond at all. Making sense with people who think like this is like making sense with Loose Canon--it ain't gonna happen in this lifetime.

But to make a small start: Clinton helped Bosnia to stop a genocide in progress. There are no nuclear inspectors in North Korea, nor in Iran. And the Libya deal was in the works with Britain and other EU countries; Bush did not do that one. Afghanistan is slipping away from us, Iraqis seem to hate us even more than they hated Saddam, and if you could judge by the screams of the detainees, our methods of torturing the innocent would sound like duplicates of the screams of Saddam's victims. And as for those "combat-related killings," pray tell how the 30,000 to 50,000 Iraqis died?

Video of the Week

I Need Some Soldiers.

Cartoon of the Week

Get Your War On

The Beauty Part

There is no 'fountain of youth.' There is no magic elixir that extends life. 'Sixty is about the time that organs of the body begin to fail, when the first signs of age-related disease begin to appear.'

Can aging be reversed? No. But you can age gracefully. And if you are smart and careful and active and lucky, you will 'live as long and as well as possible, then have a rapid decline at the end of life.' That is, you're healthy and vital right into your '80s and '90s, and then you get sick and die quickly, with your dignity--and your wits--intact.

How does Andrew Weil know? Well, he's studied widely. And he's seen his own mother-- who went to Antarctica at 89--die at the end of a happy day when she was 93. You'll want to check out Healthy Aging.