Kurt Vonnegut – RIP

From an interview with Joel Bleifuss in In These Times, January 27, 2003:

My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that we’ve lost reason to hope?

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

I had the unique privilege of having my copy of Slaughterhouse-Five taken away by a substitute English teacher, who felt it was not appropriate reading material for a 14-year-old girl.  She wouldn’t let me have it back at the end of the year (as was done with so many other confiscated items) and instead told me I should consider reading material that was more feminine and wasn’t so “inflammatory”.

In what can only be considered the height of irony, she later became my mother-in-law, and I liberated my book from her living room bookshelf the night of my wedding rehearsal “dinner”.  (Brownies and a corn-flake-encrusted cheese log do not constitute a dinner, ever. On any planet. Not even when the brownies are deliciously-chewy.)

Requiem in pace, Mr. Vonnegut.

Michael Medved – Idiot

I love Travis at Sadly, No! because he’s willing to brave the Townhall in order to spare the rest of us.

Normally, I feel no need to actually read a post by one of these Townhall “columnists”  – mainly because I feel the overwhelming need to shower after doing so, and two or three showers a day is just silly…not to mention expensive.

Today, however, I was intrigued by the Shorter Michael Medved and – yes, dear reader! – actually went to the site of much bile and spew, and forced myself to read it.

Actually it took three tries. My computer was apparently horrified at being told to go into this conservative lair and had to be rebooted twice before it would comply. (I also had to bribe it with a complete ScanDisk and a DeFrag.)

Anyway, here’s Medved’s premise: in preparing for the Passover Seder with his family, he “stumbled across one of the most important conservative verse in the Hebrew Scriptures.”

 “Leviticus 19:15 declares: ‘You shall not commit a perversion of justice: you shall not favor the poor and you shall not honor the great, with righteousness shall you judge your fellow.’”

Now, I could snark about how this is a “Christian” country and whatnot. But what would be the point? The mouth-breathers wouldn’t get it.

Instead, let’s check out some other verses from Leviticus 19, from the King James Version of the Christian Bible:

Lev. 19:19 - Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.

Hmmm…. I hope Medved remembers not to mix fabrics in his clothing.

Lev. 19:27 – Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.

This is the picture of Medved above his little “column” at Townhall, enlarged to show detail:

Ummmm…. Where’s Medved’s beard?!

Lev. 19:33-34 – And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him.

But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

Imagine that! A verse that tells us not to vex immigrants! Immigrant-bashers are thus ignoring God’s command!

Now, what Medved doesn’t say, but I will, is that if you consider yourself a Christian, then you must then believe that Christ came not only to save humanity from their sins, but to fulfill (and thus end) the old laws, one of which would be Medved’s beloved conservative verse. (See Matthew 5:17-18, Luke 6:17, and Romans 3:31.)

This verse really only works for those conservatives who do not believe in Christ.