It’s okay to be a pathological liar as long as your ratings go up (at least at Fox)

Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly –  or as I like to call him, Shrill O’Liarly – has been under the spotlight recently. In the wake of the Brian Williams controversy about made up, or heavily exaggerated, news stories, some of O’Reilly’s historic stories are also under scrutiny.

O Reilly has a slew of Walter Mitty like stories in his bag – being in an active war zone during the Falklands War, witnessing the immediate aftermath of the destruction of an entire village in civil war ravaged El Salvador, witnessing bombings in Northern Ireland, hearing the suicide gun shot of a key figure in the JFK assassination, surviving an attack of rocks and bricks during the LA riots and seeing nuns shot in the back in El Salvador. Wow, he’s amazing.

Or maybe not. Every one of those stories has been refuted by people who were there, people who were with O’Reilly at times that he claimed to be somewhere else and by actual news footage of supposed events. It’s become crystal clear, to anyone who has’t totally drunk the Fox News Kool-aid, that O’Reilly has a problem with the truth. Undoubtedly, there a lot more made up or exaggerated stories like the ones already under examination.

How has O’Reilly responded? He has, at various times, called his accusers liars, blamed the stories on left wing media out to get him and, basically, just blustered his way through it. More recently, he’s tried to spin the stories from being first hand, eyewitness accounts to being allegories or amalgams of events or representations of accounts from people who WERE there. That’s rich, considering the number of times Bill has told the stories as actual eyewitness accounts.

How has Fox responded? Their primary strategy has been to ignore the story and point out that, since the beginning of O’Reillygate, his ratings have gone up significantly. Now they can point to the latest survey indicating that Fox News is, once again, the most trusted news channel in America. You gotta wonder how much they’ve spent on that special Kool-aid. You also have to despair for a superpower with so many people who consider the Murdoch propaganda machine to be a legitimate news source. In recent days, they’ve been forced to acknowledge that some of Bill’s stories can’t be accepted verbatim but, even then, he has their full and undying support.

Bill O’Reilly is, in all likelihood, a pathological liar. That’s not unusual – they’re a dime a dozen. What makes this different, and alarming, is that millions of Fox cultists listen to him, form their world view based on his opinions and blindly accept whatever rolls out of his mouth.

That’s bad enough, but what makes it even worse is that a major news network is prepared to ignore the fact that their biggest personality is a bald-faced liar, because his ratings are going up and they’ve had a great result in the ‘Trust’ survey.

I’ve never had much time for Fox News, unless I’m looking for a little comedy, but this episode has seen them reach rock bottom in my eyes. For the first time, we’re seeing evidence that ratings are more important than truth to a major news channel.

That’s terrifying. Quick, give me my remote. Where’s BBC or ABC Australia or Deutsche Welle or Al Jazera or………..

Who will spend $10,000 for a new Apple watch?

Amid much fanfare, Tim Cook, Jonny Ives and co have filled in the all the blanks from last September’s announcement that Apple is now in the watch business.

You can start ordering on 10 April, Apple will start shipping on 24 April, you can download apps from the new Apple Watch Store, it’ll communicate with your iPhone by both Bluetooth AND Wi-Fi, you can talk to a friend’s watch and pricing ranges from $US349 to (drumroll) $US10,000. Yup, you heard right – $10,000 for the Apple Watch Edition. In fact, the really blinged out versions of the Edition can set you back as much as $17,000!

What do you get for ten grand? Apparently you get an 18 carat gold case. What else? An 18 carat gold case (didn’t you hear me the first time?). I can hear the sound of disbelief and increasing disinterest – except from a few 24 year old start up billionaire wankers in Palo Alto and Santa Monica.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not dissing the Apple Watch. Except for the viewers who’ve said that the icons are so small that they have trouble hitting the right ones with their chubby fingers, it sounds like it might be the best of the wearables out there. A few tech reviewers, who have had extended sneak previews, have said they found themselves using the watch much more than their phone. Sounds pretty cool. But $10-17,000?

At this point, I should disclose that I have a watch problem. I own a few of them – not necessarily cheap ones. As I write this, I’m wearing my Panerai Luminor Marina.  I love it:) It’s – in an Apple kind of way – a wonderful marriage of form and function. Panerai makes beautiful watches that lose nano-seconds annually and immediately look like family heirlooms. For me, they’re worth every penny of the RRSP. I could say the same things about my Hublot and U-Boat watches. Would I trade any of them for an Apple Watch Edition? Not before Hell freezes over.

Why are Panerai, Hublot, Breitling and IWC worth five figures and not the Apple Watch Edition? There are a few reasons.

High end Swiss watches are exclusive. If you pay $10,000 for your Apple, you’ll be one of millions wearing an Apple Watch – even if most of them paid less than $500. From five metres away, no one can tell the difference.

Expensive Swiss watches are considered pieces of art and, as such, they’ll appreciate in value. The Apple Watch Edition is largely considered to be technology – it’ll depreciate like any other cell phone or computer.

Swiss watches have an amazing legacy and that’s what drives many watch collectors to own them. It’s a piece of history, something you can pass down through your family for generations. Apple will bring out a new version of their watch next year and this year’s watches will end up in drawers and on eBay.

Great Swiss watches are the best timepieces on the planet. The Apple Watch Edition will notify you when you have a new email. That may be worth three or four hundred dollars – but ten grand?

Wearables are the craze of 2015 – Apple will sell plenty of watches. Maybe it’ll become as much a part of us as our iPads and iPhones. But it won’t replace the best watches on the planet so I predict the Edition disappears within two years.

But then, Tim Cook and Jonny Ives are a LOT smarter then I am:)

Debunking the Madison, Wisconsin myth

When I heard that the Madison, Wisconsin police department had shot and killed an unarmed black male, I was surprised.

After all, Madison is not like St. Louis or LA – it’s one of the safest, healthiest, best educated, most affluent cities in America. It’s a poster child for liberals, it’s possibly the most atheist friendly city in the country. It’s not embarrassing to be a vegan in Madison.

The heavily Republican state of Wisconsin hates Madison, calling if The Peoples’ Republic of Madison and Seventy-Seven Square Miles Surrounded by Reality. Governor Scott Walker will struggle to find many votes in Dane County.

So, how then, could the killing of Tony Robinson have happened? To find possible answers, you must first strip away the myth that racism doesn’t occur in affluent, educated liberal cities.

In early October 2014, Race to Equity–a Madison-based initiative started by the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families–released a report detailing racial disparities in Madison, and more broadly in Dane County, Wisconsin. The findings are staggering.

While living standards for the white population in Dane County are higher than the national average, for the Black population, the opposite is true. On every indicator, with only two exceptions out of 40 measures, statistics collected in Dane County demonstrated equal or higher racial disparities between whites and Blacks than the national averages.

Here are just a few examples of the extreme inequality that exists in Dane County.

•  In 2011, the unemployment rate was 25.2 percent for Blacks compared to just 4.8 percent for whites. Nationally, the unemployment rate was 18 percent for Blacks and 8 percent for whites.
•  In the same year, over 54 percent of African American Dane County residents lived below the federal poverty line, compared to 8.7 percent of whites, meaning Dane County Blacks were over six times more likely to be poor than whites.
•  More than 74 percent of Black children live under the poverty level as opposed to just 5.5 percent of white children. The report suggested that this 13 to 1 disparity ratio may constitute one of the widest Black/white child poverty gaps that the Census Surveys reported for any jurisdiction in the nation.
•  In 2011, African American youth in the Madison Public School District had about a 50 percent on-time high school graduation rate, compared to 85 percent for white students.
•  African American adolescents, while constituting less than 9 percent of the county’s youth population, made up almost 80 percent of all the local kids sentenced to the state’s juvenile correctional facility in 2011.
• African American men, in Wisconsin, are 26 times more likely to go to prison than white men.

These startling findings paint a picture of an All-American city with an underlying race problem. It’s not hard to imagine an ‘entitled’ white population harbouring unhealthy views of a ‘marginalised and angry’ African American population. And the Madison police force is disproportionately white (more than 80% of the force vs. 75% of the overall population).

For a liberal like me, this is a wake up call. Obviously, the left doesn’t have exclusive ownership of good and decent values and behaviour – that’s ridiculous. We have our fair share of idiots and morons – a decent percentage of anti-vaxxers are on the left. But, like most liberals, I’ve lived with the rather smug belief that there isn’t a substantial race issue on our side of the political divide. Apparently, I’ve been wrong.

Unfortunately, racism is deeply embedded across all lines – geographic, political, socio-economic and age. It looks nicer, on the surface, than it did fifty years ago in Selma, Alabama, but when we dig deep beneath the surface – when we expose our most deeply private thoughts and beliefs – maybe it hasn’t changed one iota.

This makes me sad. It also makes me more determined to do my small part to effect change – maybe not much in my lifetime but, hopefully, more in my children’s lifetime.

I have no idea what the real Tony Robinson story is. That’ll come out in the days and weeks ahead. I have, however, had another layer of my ever decreasing innocence stripped away.

Horror stories from the American Taliban

The more I see and hear, the more I’m horrified by the influence of the American Taliban on America. Who is this American Taliban you may ask?

American Taliban is a derogatory term for extreme Christian fundamentalists who would turn America into an oppressive theocracy. The point of the phrase is to compare these people – who wish Christianity to be the official state religion, capable of imposing its views and beliefs through government decree – to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Some of the rock stars of the American Taliban are:

Ann Coulter – “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”

Henry Morris – “When science and the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data.”

Bailey Smith – “With all due respect to those dear people, my friend, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.”

Bob Dornan – “Don’t use the word ‘gay’ unless it’s an acronym for ‘Got Aids Yet'”

J. B. Stoner – “AIDS is a racial disease of Jews and Niggers, and fortunately it is wiping out the queers. I guess God hates queers for several reasons. There is one big reason to be against queers and that is because every time some white boy is seduced by a queer into becoming a queer, means his white bloodline has run out.”

Rick Santorum – “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. … That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.”

I hope you get the idea. I could go on at such length that I wouldn’t have space left for this episode’s horror stories – so here goes!

Climate change banned in Florida

Officials responsible for making sure Florida is prepared to respond to the earth’s changing climate are barred from using the terms “global warming” and “climate change” in official communications, emails and reports, according to new findings from the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. Florida Governor, Rick Scott, is a firm climate change denier.

Being Gay is a choice

Republican presidential wannabe, Ben Carson, believes that homosexuality is a choice. His proof of this? “Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight — and when they come out, they’re gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question,” said Carson, a former head of paediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. I don’t know what’s more terrifying – that a paediatric neurosurgeon is spewing this crap or that 48% of Republicans believe him.

Putin’s BFF Franklin Graham

Last year, Vladimir Putin suspended adoption of Russian orphans by gay couples or any couples from countries where same sex marriage is legal. Franklin Graham, heir to the Billy Graham preaching empire, loves Putin for it. “I agreed with Putin. I think protecting his nation’s children, I think, was a pretty smart thing to do,” Graham told the Charlotte Observer’s Tim Funk. “I was very clear. I supported Putin in his decision to protect his nation’s children. And I think our Congress needs to do more in protecting our children.” Graham is also well known for his view that adoption, by gay couples, constitutes ‘recruitment’ into a deviant lifestyle. Nice one Franklin.

We’re slaves to Vegetables

TV preacher and all round moron, Pat Robertson, has declared that anyone who doesn’t take advantage of the dominion over  beasts that the Magic Invisible Guy has given us, is a SLAVE TO VEGETABLES. He’s also decided that marijuana and alcohol come from vegetables. Okay, I understand that potatoes feature prominently in vodka and a few other forms of alcohol, but when did grapes become an honorary veggie? I also get that cannabis is a plant but when did all plants become vegetables? I can’t decide whether this despot is more pathetically funny or dangerous.

Republicans invisible in Selma

Last weekend, the 50th anniversary of the Selma march – an occasion when 600 unarmed, peaceful protesters were beaten and gassed by Alabama ‘police’ – was commemorated. Everyone was there. The President, Dubya, hundreds of politicians, survivors of the event – everyone but a single member of the current Republican leadership. They couldn’t have sent a louder message. I hope sensible swing voters heard that message and will vote accordingly.

I’m speechless.

Google’s ‘truth rankings’ are freaking out deniers

Google is talking about an effort to keep trolls and bad information at bay by ranking websites according to veracity and sorting searches according to those rankings.

Currently, Google ranks sites according to popularity so, if enough idiots visit a climate change or flat earth or birther site, it’ll show up very highly in searches.

According to New Scientist‘s Hal Hodson, the new system will tap into the vast store of facts that Google has pulled off the internet. Facts the web unanimously agrees on will be considered a reasonable proxy for truth, while Web pages that contain contradictory information will be bumped down the rankings.

Google has recently implemented a lite version of the proposed Knowledge-Based Truth score with its medical search results. Now, doctors and real medical experts vet search results about health conditions, meaning, for instance, that anti-vax propaganda will not appear in the top results for a measles search.

Even though the program is just in the research stage, some anti-science advocates are upset about the potential development, because their websites will become buried under content that is, well, true.

“I worry about this issue greatly,” said Anthony Watts, founder of climate denying website Watts Up With That, in an interview with FoxNews.com. “My site gets a significant portion of its daily traffic from Google… It is a very slippery and dangerous slope because there’s no arguing with a machine.” What you should have said, Anthony, is that there’s no arguing with truth.

Watts is not alone – scores of wacky websites in the areas of science denial, 9/11 conspiracy theories, Kennedy assassination theories, anti-vaccination theories, Obama birth theories, Noah’s personal relationship with dinosaurs theories, young earth theories and – closest to my heart – anti-Chelsea FC conspiracy theories are in deep trouble if Google goes through with this.

Most of these shysters are running businesses – some of them hugely profitable enterprises – and they’ll drop to the ass end of the class making it very difficult for new suckers to find them.

I have no sympathy for the website proprietors who will be negatively affected by this. For years, they’ve been peddling anything from naive crap to dangerous misinformation and there have been plenty of morons out there lapping it up. The results have ranged from harmless whack jobs who insist the Moon landing was staged to parents who have been encouraged not to vaccinate their children – putting their kids, and others, at serious risk.

If Google can even slightly reduce the amount of misinformation, bad science and right wing mischief being accessed on the internet, they get my grateful thanks. Bring it on – it can’t happen soon enough:)

The Amerusa School – Chapter Three

While the new head teacher was thinking about the old, sick man with the dirty, smelly beard, something new was happening in Amerusa – and the people from the northern part of town weren’t happy about it.

All over town, people with brown clothes were appearing. There hadn’t been people in brown clothes in Amerusa before – they all lived in a faraway town called Mecksyville. What were they doing here? How did they get here?

The fat, angry man on the radio – Mush – said the people in brown clothes would break into homes at night and murder everyone in their sleep. And worse still, they would steal all the beans and rice from supermarkets to make their strange meals.

Soon, the people in brown clothes, from Mecksyville, wanted their children to attend Amerusa School. Some students and parents thought it was a good idea but other students and parents – mostly the ones from the big houses in the northern part of town that went to the special clubhouse on the weekend and learned about the Magic Invisible Guy – hated the idea.

A special meeting was called by the Parent Teacher Association. All the townspeople met at the school and the new head teacher lead the meeting. Everyone got to say what they thought – half the people wanted to welcome the new people and half the people wanted to throw them into jail until they could be loaded into trucks and driven back to Mecksyville. Half the people thought the kids from the famiies with brown clothes should be allowed to attend Amerusa School, and half thought that all the policemen should stand guard at the front door of the school and make sure none of the Mecksyville kids got in. They wanted to send the people in brown clothes straight back to Mecksyville where they belonged. Mush said it was the new head teacher’s fault and he should be sent back to Kenrica where HE belonged. People were not happy.

The next day, the new head teacher met with some of the other teachers – but not the old ones who had been appointed by the old head teacher –  to talk about the problem. They decided that it would be good to let the kids in brown clothes, who were already in Amerusa, attend the school but other people would have to ask for permission before they left Mecksyville to come to Amerusa. The head teacher wrote everything down, made lots of copies and put them up all over town.

Next day, Mush was especially angry. He shouted even more than usual about how stupid and evil the head teacher was and how he wan’t even from Amerusa and how, if the people in brown clothes from Mecksyville were allowed to stay, the world would probably come to an end.

Another angry, shouting man called Shrill O’Liarly said the same kind of things on his TV show. He said the world was spinning around and he would make it stop.All the people from the northern part of town nodded wisely when they heard Mush and Shrill shout.

Meanwhile, in his trailer, at the edge of a neighbouring town, the old, sick man with the dirty, smelly beard was planning ways to get even with Amerusa. He laughed an evil laugh while he thought evil thoughts and planned evil plans. And he smiled as he looked out the trailer window. There, in his dusty front yard, were 20 pick up trucks that he’d got the boys in his town to steal from other villages. Next to the pick up trucks were piles of large rocks. Soon the buys would be loading the rocks into the backs of the trucks – ready for the next trip to Amerusa. He would make them sorry they’d ever picked fights with Rackville and that other town where Alf’s Grandpa Stan lives. He would make them sorry if it was the last thing he ever did.

TO BE CONTINUED

The joy of living in paradise (okay, maybe not paradise, but a pretty damn good place)

The more I observe the world, the less hope I have for it. Virtually every region of the world has issues that seem increasingly insurmountable.

I’ve written enough about America for most of you to get a pretty clear picture of my views – the increasing polarity between two political parties, deeply entrenched racism, the Christian Taliban, the gun culture, the love affair with capital punishment, a denial of climate change, decreasing levels of scientific knowledge, unsuccessful interference in the Middle East and a media (on both sides) more grounded in propaganda than objectivity. It’s a once magnificent nation in terminal decline and, I fear, it’s dragging my beloved Canada down with it.

Europe has become a basket case – political warfare over the common currency, economic failure in several countries, the intrusion of Brussels on national identity and resentment over the increasing influence of nations like Germany has threatened a once promising union – one that was the old world answer to the US. Another continent wide conflict is increasingly conceivable in my lifetime.

Not much needs to be said about Africa – warfare (much it is civil warfare), poverty, disease, rampant corruption, religious fundamentalism, absence of basic infrastructure and a lack of interest from most of the West. This vast continent is condemned to a future no better than its present or past.

The Middle East? It’s the most badly managed, interfered with, dangerous, insanely fundamentalist powder keg of them all. And the price of oil ain’t what it used to be. The various branches if Islam hate each other and everyone hates Israel. Every world leader who thinks they can fix it is a fool.

How about Asia? China has much promise but it’s still held back by corruption and a repressive government. The most advanced and prosperous nations – Korea and Japan – are also the most likely to start the next conflict. The rest are a collection of potential Islamic states or glorified drug factories and the deeper into Southeast Asia you get, the more backward it becomes in areas like science and human rights.

That leaves us with Australasia. I feel increasingly lucky and privileged to live in a place like New Zealand. It sure isn’t perfect – we have some racism and poverty, more than a few stupid politicians and a pretty big hole in the ozone layer –  but, on the whole, I’m happy to raise my children here, I feel safe, most people care about the planet, we have a good lifestyle without being consumed with the pursuit of wealth, we still have a free press, no one wants to start a war with anyone and there don’t appear to be any countries that want to start a war with us and I still get a sense that the majority of people care about and respect each other. It’s a wonderful place to live.

I hope I’m wrong about my view of the rest of the world but I’m so happy that I made the choice to come here. For my money, it’s the best place on earth.

Winning ugly

One of my favourite sporting expressions is ‘winning ugly’. It’s how sports journalists describe less than aesthetically pleasing performances that still result in wins. Yesterday, by all accounts, Chelsea and United ‘won ugly’. The University of Kentucky Wildcats have had a few ugly wins – especially in the SEC conference – during their unbeaten season. The All Blacks won ugly in the final of the 2011 Rugby World Cup. But do you know what? Winning ugly is still a win. You still get the same number of points for an ugly win as you do for a beautiful win. Years from now, when some kid is looking through the archives, he’ll only see the score and the result – not an essay on how lovely the game was to watch.

Winning ugly doesn’t just happen in sport. It happens in business as well. Sometimes, we have lots of budget and we run elegant marketing campaigns and the sales team converts at a high percentage and the product works exactly as advertised and the world is a truly beautiful place. Other times, we have to make do with not nearly enough, our marketing never quite catches the imagination, the sales team has to perform miracles on too few leads, the product malfunctions as often as it works, the customers are grumpy and, eventually, the team becomes grumpy as well. Doesn’t matter – we still have to win, even in the second scenario.

When things aren’t going exactly the way we want, when we’re not in ‘the zone’, when everything seems to be going wrong, when the gods are against us, that’s when we really find out how tough we are. We learn how much we truly want it.   It’s those times that separate the men and women from the boys and girls.

I like things to be easy as much as the next guy but, for some reason, I’ve found myself working in a number of organisations that haven’t had the best IT or the best marketers or the most money or the most problem-free products. I’ve discovered that, in spite of those shortcomings, it’s still very possible to get a great result.

When you find yourself in a less than ideal situation you have to dig very deep. You have to do the most with what you’re given. The sales team has to treasure and nurture every lead as though their lives depend on it. The customer service team has to be incredibly resilient  in the face of unhappy customers and turn bad experiences into good ones. The whole team has to become world class at prioritising resources and ensuring that every dollar spent delivers maximum ROI. Everyone needs to be in half full mode – there’s no room for half empty. Execution must be superb – there’s no wiggle room for inefficiency or failure. And most of all, there has to be an inextinguishable belief that winning is not only possible but inevitable. And that’s how you win ugly:)

Winning ugly, at the end of the day, is just as much a win as winning beautifully. And, I think, you get an even bigger buzz from having overcome all the ‘ugly’ situations. So, next time you’re up against it, remember that Louis Van Gaal and Manchester United might be criticised by the press game after game but, somehow, they’re still in the top four and I don’t see then falling out any time soon.

You can’t just pick the bits of Leviticus that suit your particular agendum

Today’s post comes thanks to my friend Brian Bowen (composer of the piece that’s arguably my favourite brass composition of all time – My Comfort and Strength) who posted this brilliant piece of writing on my Facebook page. I think it’s pretty self explanatory. Enjoy:)

On her radio show, Dr. Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. The following response is an open letter to Dr. Schlesinger, written by a US man, and posted on the Internet. It’s funny, as well as quite informative:

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God’s Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness – Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord – Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination, Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this? Are there ‘degrees’ of abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I’m confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.

Your adoring fan,

James M. Kauffman,

Ed.D. Professor Emeritus,

Dept. Of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education University of Virginia

P.S. (It would be a damn shame if we couldn’t own a Canadian.)

LOL – still waiting for Dr. Laura’s wise counsel.

Those who support ‘religious liberties’ bills, in the US, don’t really support liberty at all

There are a spate of ‘religious liberties’ bills – under various names – under consideration in the US. They are supported by the far right, the tea party and a motley collection of evangelicals and the intent of the  bills is not to create or preserve liberty – it’s to make discrimination legal.

Fundamentalists – the American Taliban, if you will – have long resented laws that give equality of any kind – rights to education, rights to marriage, rights to employment, rights to health care – to groups that they take issue with. Back in the day, it was African-Americans (some would say that’s still the case in some of the scarier Southern states) and communists, then it was women who wanted abortions, now it’s the LGBT community and Muslims. Recently, they’ve used the legislative process to do what the KKK, lobbyists, Westboro Baptist Church and abortion doctor killers have historically done for them.

A religious freedom bill signed into law in Mississippi, similar to laws proposed in Kansas and Arizona, gives businesses the right to discriminate against gays – or any other group that offends their religious sensibilities – with the full protection of the law. Mississippi doesn’t have much of a record of supporting equality of any kind so you can imagine how enthusiastic their gay bashing will be now that it’s state sanctioned.

In Arkansas, the Conscience Protection Act, gives it fine citizens the right  to sue the government if their religious beliefs are stretched in any way. If I believe that gays should be stoned to death and I see one of them receiving government benefits, I can sue the state because my conscience has been offended. If I believe all that KKK drivel about what the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel represents, and I see an African American starting ahead of a good old white boy for the Razerbacks, I can sue. This one is great news for Arkansas lawyers – not such good news for minorities of any kind.

Indiana’s proposed legislation is a thinly veiled protection for evangelicals and rednecks who want to continue to discriminate against LGBT equality and pro-choice legislation. I can’t wait for the day when a leading Hoosier basketball player – preferably a 6’10” white, farm boy with double-double averages – comes out. That’ll be fun to watch:)

Georgia has its own legislation in process. Opponents of the bill are concerned that it will virtually legitimise KKK activity. While that’s probably a stretch, it certainly will make it easier for the good Christian folk of Georgia (who in the 80s, while I lived there, were still fire bombing African Americans out of all white towns) to ‘exercise their consciences’, if you get my drift.

Finally, Michigan’s version of religious liberty arguably gives doctors and EMTs the right to refuse treatment to gays. I say arguably because it’s open to some legal interpretation but, already, Michigan doctors – of the evangelical persuasion – have pushed the discrimination envelope to see what happens.

Conservative America is looking more and more like a cross between Iran (with better cars and shopping malls) and The Handmaid’s Tale. Those of you – who aren’t American – who only see LA, New York or the movies – have no idea what’s happening in the Red States. And there are more Red States every time I look at a political map. And I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or be scared shitless for my mixed race, American, teenaged granddaughter who still has her whole life ahead of her and, somehow, will have to negotiate her way through an increasingly dystopian landscape of bigotry, fundamentalism, guns and Bible-fuelled hate.

May the Magic Invisible Guy save us from ourselves – and religious liberty bills:)