Quietly Bereft

The usual holiday-related hiatus is in effect, as if you hadn't noticed. Yes, I've got more time on my hands and thus, theoretically, more time to write, but goddammit, I'm on vacation, and writing is hard work. Speaking of which, am I the only one who is sick and freaking tired of the WGA strike? Make no mistake, I'm with the scribblers on this one (goes without saying), but while I don't much miss the prime-time line-up ("when TV's brightest stars come out to shine"--thank you, Homer Simpson), I'm quite seriously jonesing for both Daily Show and Colbert. I suspect I'm not alone in this. A lot of good material is being lost to the ages because of the rapacity of studios--look, I know they've got nests to feather and shareholders to keep happy--I get that this is a business and as such, it depends on paying as little as you can for what you can sell for as much as you can. I get it; I really do. But writers are an absolute necessity--the process grinds to a halt without them, unless you want nothing but reality television and game shows, and do we? (Crap--we probably do, and by 'we' I mean that part of America that snobs like me always sneer at while not really having the vaguest clue as to who these people are or where they live.) Point is, I miss my Stewart/Colbert fix, and while I'm willing to ride out the strike because you've gotta let them fight the good fight, I feel, as I say, quietly bereft by their absence, a small cloud hanging over the holidays.

That, and having to fly back to fucking Chicago in the dead of winter for a bunch of interviews. That sucks, too.

I Suspect That I Am Going Mad

A brief note on the tenuous state of my sanity: I'm concerned. Bemusedly.

You see--and this is so very hard for me to confess--

Oh God.

All right:

I've been writing poetry.

I know, I know, I know. Nothing deep or meaningful, I swear. Rien d'importance, as Humbert Humbert would say. And yet I've done it two days in a row, and found it--again, the shame of it--oddly satisfying. It's not that I'm good at it, mind you; I suck. It's just that I'm doing it, well, impulsively. As in: I have a sudden inspiration to write a poem about a particular subject, and then--and this is the weird part--I go and do it.

I cannot fathom this. I don't much like poetry--the list of poets I'd read voluntarily can be tallied on the digits of a quadruped. And yet here I am doing it and liking it. It's like discovering you have a particularly unsavory fetish, and I don't like it.

Because of course I do like it. And I hate that.

I think, as I say, that this may be the final initial stage of a total mental breakdown. Should be quite a ride, if poetry is only an early symptom...

Requisite Bitch and Moan Session

Lest anyone should wonder--and that's a big 'lest'--whether or not I have reached the point in the semester when I am just bone-tired exhausted and thoroughly demoralized by the fact that I have to drag my sorry butt out of a warm bed every morning to trudge through snow and ice (uphill, I kid you not) to teach stuff that I'm so frazzle-headed that I have no idea what it is or what I'm saying or where I am when I teach it--lest you should wonder, then:

Yes. Yes, I am.

I remind myself, often, that most people have real jobs that require such efforts every day, and aren't given the benefit of substantial periods of vacation, like the one I've got coming up. I try to remember to be grateful that I am not one of those people. I try to remember that I live above the poverty line. That I have health insurance. That I'm good at my job and that I receive credit and appreciation for being so. I remind myself of all of these things.

It does not work.

Seriously, though, does it work for anybody? And what drugs do you have to take for this to happen? 'Cause I'll pay. I swear, I will.

Wanted: PR Experts

See, here's the thing about Christianity and all those people--Bill O'Reilly, I'm looking in your direction--not directly at you, mind, because I think that can cause irreperable damage to the cerebral cortex--who claim that The Dominant Voices Of Our Culture--i.e. movie studios, television executives, and newpaper/magazine editors--are endlessly colluding to smear, mock, debase, and otherwise sully the good name of the One True Faith--this claim may be true, or it may not be true (see if you can guess which option I favor), but it really doesn't matter. And here's why: Remove all the sneerers and deriders and lazy script-writers who, if they want to make a character instantly loathsome, just have him/her speak openly about his/her 'faith'--get rid of all these people, and Christianity will still be something to be pointed at while sniggering.

Why?

Because its proponents are its own worst enemies. Know why Buddhism is a universally respected religion? Because Buddhists are capable of shutting the fuck up about their religion, and when they do talk about it, it's in measured, self-conscious, self-critical tones that bespeak thoughtfulness and a desire to know the truth in whatever way it manifests itself. Know why Christianity and Islam are universally reviled? Take everything I just said about Buddhism and reverse it. Mind you, I don't mean actual Christians and Muslims. I don't mean people who live lives in the real world and turn to their religions as a source of meaning and comfort--who are able to balance faith and reason as necessary counterpoints to one another--who find a structured mode of faith the form that gives them the most fulfillment, and who emerge from the church/mosque enlightened and enlivened and determined to help the next guy with a flat tire on the side of the road. Would that those people got more coverage. They don't. Know why? Because the leaders of Christianity and Islam don't want you to know about them. Because the power of the Pope, or Pat Robertson, or pick-your-favorite Ayatollah lies in their ability to instill fear of the religion in those who do not practice it. The air of Vatican is rife with menace--the 'joy' that Robertson speaks of in describing the armies of his followers is an implicit threat to those who are not card-carriers--the fervor of the mullahs expresses itself in an endless series of threats to the infidels. (Islam is, in this respect, a much less hypocritical religion, in that its leaders do not pretend for one second to have anything but murderous loathing for non-believers--you've got to concede that you know where you stand with such people, and that's something.) In short, these people are *mean*.

But that's not why they're truly failing to win over the hearts-and-minds of the mainstream. I mean, if George Wallace and the fascists of the 20th century proved anything, it's that organized hate has its appeal, and the charisma of its leaders can overcome any squeamishness we might have. But--and this is key--we've got to, somehow, admire the son-of-a-bitch. Wallace was a political genius--can't take that away from him--he makes Karl Rove look like a feeble little piker. Hitler, Franco, Mussolini--oh sure, they might look silly in the news-reels in retrospect, but put yourself in the shoes of the there-and-then audience, and trust me, you'd've followed them to Hell after one of their speeches. Why? Because these guys were genuinely bright. When they spoke for their beliefs, they spoke with eloquence and intelligence--they knew that you win over the fence-sitters not simply with passion, but with reason. They knew that you don't amass a majority by preaching to the choir--they're already there behind you--you pitch your product to the folks lingering on the church doorstep, coaxing them in with plausible, careful discourse.

Name me one prominent Christian who does this. One. One. C.S. Lewis is dead, folks, and not just in the literal sense. The Pope insists that when people have to choose between the vicious suffering inflicted by a strict obedience to hierarchical dogma (overpopulation and and AIDS pandemic due to a ban on birth control, say) and blind obedience to a church that has shown itself more than willing to bend the rules for its own members, we gotta go with the bitter pill, while Father McPedophile gets transferred to a new parish. And he wonders why people question his infallibility? And don't get me started on that lunatic wench on The View who isn't sure if the world is round and who doesn't believe that there are any religions that predate Christianity. Because yes, she's obviously a clown put there to say stupid shit like that and get ratings, but at the same time, if I were a prominent Christian leader, I'd get her the fuck off that show in a heartbeat, because what she says will get smeared all over my religion.

Look. The religious impulse isn't going anywhere. Christopher Hitchens (speaking of fucking lunatics) can write a billion more books sneering at the pointless mendacity of faith, and it won't stop that atavistic impulse to carve a little abstract image of the divine out of driftwood and offer it a toke and a drink every so often when you want the weather to change. That's just going to happen.

The problem lies in the fact that Christians and Muslims have a terrific product to sell, and they're letting their CEOs make terrible marketing decisions. It's time for a change in management--we're not going to change the product--look what happened when they tried to do that with Coca-Cola--but we need to fire the board and boot out the upper-level management on a case-by-case basis. We need, in short, to drive the money-changers from the temple, because they're just making us look bad. Then we need to take a deep, cleansing breath, crack open the Book again, pay closer attention to the nuances, and recognize that a fundamental principle in Christianity is the ability to make personal moral choices and enabling the moral choices of others. Start from there--I'll give you a slogan: "Christianity--What Can We Help You With?"

And seriously, get that bitch off The View. Now.