April 2007

“looks like you’ve got some light fiction reading,” I said as I sat down next to the young man.

 He laughed and said it was a fascinating book - Assassin’s Gate by a New Yorker writer. 

I didn’t bring up what I knew would be a controversial subject until later in the flight.  We went down the road of tabo subjects - politics and religion.

“I don’t always follow the party line on political issues,” I said.  “I’m against the death penalty as a deterrent to murder, but I’m also against gun control.  I believe if someone wants to kill, it’s not because of the weapon they hold in their hand, but because of the condition of their heart.  If they want to kill, and they don’t have a gun, they’ll find another way to do it.” 

It’s odd that I said that on the day that someone killed 32 people with a gun.  Perhaps stricter gun control would have saved more lives.  Perhaps he would have found another way. 

I’m not sure that I’m as against gun control today as I was yesterday. 

I live in the state of Michigan

• Where unemployment exceeds the national rate
• Where major companies like Pfizer, Comerica, and KMart moved their national headquarters
• Where Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler are cutting jobs
• Where major Tier One automotive suppliers are declaring bankruptcy at a staggering rate

So what do Michigan people do when there’s a declining economy?

If you live in my county, you’d think that you’re supposed to go out and buy a newer, bigger SUV (in spite of continually climbing gas prices and long commutes), larger house, and spend massive amounts of money on entertainment and other luxury items. Even our own state government got into the mood a couple of weeks ago when, in the midst of trying to solve their billion + dollar deficit, they announced a plan to provide every school child in the state with an iPod.

I don’t get it!

No, not the car, although there’s one a couple of houses up the road, and I was tempted to ask them how much they’d sell the car for.  If you don’t know, the Reliant K was one of the cars built by Chrysler on the “K-car” platform.  It was an innovative concept - platform building, compact car with front wheel drive - but an ugly car.

Back to Relient K.  They are a band my girls have listened to for years.   And I really like to listen to them.  They’re fun, and somewhere in the middle of those fun songs, they manage to say something important.  And their newest album has a song that hit me between the eyes.

 Lyrics from the song “Bite My Tongue” on their new album:

I said I’m always close-minded, With an open mouth
And the worst of me seems to come right out
But I’ve never broken bones
With a stone or a stick
But I’ve conjured up a phrase
That can cut to the quickAnd sometimes I say things that
I wish that I could take back
And the smartest thing to say
Is to tell myself to keep

Years ago, I used to listen to Imus in the Morning. He was acerbic even then. After a while, I decided that while there was some humor, the bad outweighed the good, so I turned him off. In a recent show, his description of the predominantly African American Rutger’s women’s basketball team created quite a stir.

While he used a term that is commonly found in today’s contemporary music, many found it offensive and the normal group of protestors - Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and even Barack Obama - demanded he be fired. I read a comment by someone that said, I can call my brother ugly, but if you do it, then you’re in for a fight.

But the captain of the Rutger’s b-ball team said hurtful words are wrong, no matter who’s saying them.

Another person thought it was wrong to protest Imus’ words, since it was a double standard to do so. This brought a long group of people agreeing with him and commenting about how tired they were of the double standard that allows black people to get away with bad behavior while demanding whites to live up to a different code of ethics.

Sigh. The playing field hasn’t been even for minorities. And life isn’t fair. And we don’t make choices about our behavior based on whether someone else does it or not.

Double standard or not, calling young women on a basketball team “nappy-headed ho’s” isn’t nice.

I was reading the April 2 edition of Time Magazine.  I usually start with the short, easy to read articles, then move on to the larger ones.  This edition’s cover was “why we should teach the Bible in public school.”  I still haven’t read the article.  Mainly because I started at the back and read an essay by Bono on the West’s responsibility toward its neighbors.

“There’s an Irish word, meitheal.  It means that the people of the village help one another out most when the work is the hardest.  Most Europeans are like that.  As individual nations, we may argue over the garden fence, but when a neighbor’s house goes up in flames, we pull together and put out the fire.  History suggests it sometimes takes an emergency for us to draw closer.  Looking inward won’t cut it.  As a professional navel gazer, I recommend against that form of therapy for anything other than songwriting.  We discover who we are in service to one another, not the self.

 Today many rooms in our neighbor’s house, Africa, are in flames.  From the genocide in Darfur to the deathbeds in Kigali, with six AIDS patients stacked onto one cot, from the child dying of malaria to the village without clean water, conditions in Africa are a affront to every value we Europeans have ever seen fit to put on paper.  We see in Somalia and Sudan what happens if more militant forces fill the void and stir dissent within what is, for the most part, a pro-Western and moderate Muslim population.  So whether as a moral or strategic imperative, it’s folly to let this fire rage.”

The rest of the essay is an interesting read, providing some thought-provoking challenges.

Interesting commentary from Roland Martin found at cnn.com.

Some of the responses were surprising.  I wonder, sometimes, what Jesus would really do?

I like the new layout, but my comments don’t show up.  I keep getting the same two comments on each post.  Any suggestions on how to get that fixed?

The picture in the header is a giant Lego spider.  It was huge.  We saw it in Chicago when I was there.  I love Chicago.  I love cities in general.  Can’t wait to go to NYC!