Dear Diary: Humvees for Jesus

EDITOR'S NOTE: Revolution 21's Blog for the People continues an occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago in the trenches of Catholic radio . . . Pope FM, if you will. The names aren't real, nor are the places, but the stories are -- and it's a snapshot picture of what happens when "Their zeal consumes them" meets "Sinners sacrifice for the institution, not vice versa."

In other words, there has to be a better way.

MONDAY, SEPT. 23, 2002

Dear Diary,


I write with some trepidation about what posterity will think of this missive. For what I will think of this missive in future years.

I fear people might read this and think me delusional -- that something as bat-s*** crazy as what I'm about to put to figurative "paper" couldn't have happened, that I made it all up. Sometimes, I fear that I'll think the same thing in five or 10 years.

Note to posterity (and to my future self): You can't make this s*** up. You just can't.

Well, it's been a while since I've written, and things have changed quite a bit around Pope FM. Mary, our general manager, is gone to tackle running a chain of Catholic radio stations. Ken is running the show now, and he's going great guns to "corporatize" the place.

His mantra seems to be "How can we do some business here?" Funny, I didn't know non-profit Catholic radio -- or Catholic evangelization -- was "bidness." Silly me.

Too, we have a new program director. Actually, this is a new position. Before, Mary did the program-director thing as part of her general-manager duties, and I reported to her. Now I have an extremely manic -- and extremely odd -- middle manager to brighten my work experience.

This is gonna be a rough ride.

HERE, DEAR DIARY, is a vignette that (I think) illustrates the big picture. And you'll see the genesis of my "rough ride" assessment.

First, the new guy, Don, is driving everybody nuts -- except for the fast clique formed by him, the general manager and the development director. They all have five kids (the new guy's fifth is on the way), they're all around my age, they're all "Catholic and Damned Proud of It" (for lack of a better term) types, etc.

All I can say briefly is the direction of the station has turned 180 degrees in the blink of an eye. There has been wrenching change in the whole culture of the station in a week . . . manic would be an apt description, I think. Manic, just like (as I noted earlier) Don.

I mean, I am the voice of restraint at the place now. Don has about five years of pent-up ideas he's unleashing all at once and expecting to implement by the end of the year. With very limited resources to accomplish any of it . . . even after the technical expansion is complete.

Honestly, I desperately want to give the station a contemporary, non-dyspeptic sound. I desperately want to reach out to young people. But in such a short time, you can only do what you can do with the resources you have. And you have to be deliberate in what you're doing.

BUYING A HUMVEE, I don't think, can be described as exercising due deliberation.

That's right, ladies and germs, Don wants to get someone to donate the scratch for a Humvee -- the Pope FM Humvee -- which we then would have painted like the Vatican flag to play off the theme "The Church Militant."

I am the only convert left on the staff, and I can't convince these zealots how badly that might piss off people who have no clue what the Church Militant is. So much so that we wouldn't have the opportunity to explain it (and so much so that it might not make a difference when you do).

And then we will face the reaction of the Protestants. ;-) As a friend comments about such things, "Their zeal consumes them."

APART FROM the PR-nightmare possibilities, I can think of a lot neater things $35,000 could buy instead of a used Hummer.

On the up side, Don values creativity, allegedly likes Holy Spirit Rock and seems to have the capability of being collaborative. On the down side, I picked the wrong week to stop doing crystal meth.

Friday, the intern who produces Keys to the Kingdom came into our temporary production room, looking concerned and asking how I was. I told her I picked the wrong week to stop smoking crack.

She then, unprompted, blurts out "How can you STAND it!"

Metaphysically, I have NO IDEA what is going on here. All I can figure out is that God has some sort of Rube Goldberg plan in all this, which He is laughing Himself silly watching.

I'll submit here a memo I sent to the entire Pope FM staff right after Don laid the whole Humvees for Jesus thing on us. I am sure I am now looked upon in that peculiar way the manic-depressive looks at the Normal Affect Population when he's bouncing off the walls in a fit of giddy delirium.

That's right, I'm a party-pooper who Just Can't See. In the peculiar world of Catholic radio, I'm sure that makes me a Bad Catholic as well.

Anyway, here's the memo:

Dear all,

Before we go too far down the promotional and imaging road, perhaps we need to stop and put on Protestant or average-Joe Catholic glasses.

As this whole clerical sexual-abuse mess drags on and (probably) gets worse, it will have a tremendous impact on how Catholics evangelize and, indeed, relate to the larger society.

For example, I would never, in this climate, use “The Church Militant” as a promotional scheme or even subtext. I think many not-so-well catechized Catholics immediately would be turned off by the phrase, having misunderstood the use of the word “militant.” And Protestants would feel threatened . . . and not without justification. Trust me, a convert, on this.

Lord knows the station needs to be pepped up. Lord knows we need to vastly expand our programming efforts toward teen-agers and young adults. And Lord knows Catholic media needs to learn to relate to average people in compelling and effective ways.

But we have to realize that we are trying to evangelize for a Church that has some grave problems right now – gravely sinful problems at the highest levels in some cases. We are sinners, our priests are sinners, and some of our bishops are major-league sinners. It’s an unpleasant fact, but it IS a fact. And it is not without precedent in Catholic history, although that DOES NOT make it any easier to live through or cope with right now.

In this light, I think what we need to do is run the Humvee and “Church Militant” into a tree and walk forward into the greater community in humility, and in our humanity, proclaiming the Christ “who saved a wretch like me.”

If we can come up with the $35,000 or so that would buy a used Hummer, I would suggest buying a more cost-effective vehicle and using the excess to begin endowing efforts toward helping the underprivileged in town. At any rate, the whole issue is a serious discussion the PR committee and board needs to have. At least that’s my two cents’ worth.

A LOT OF GOOD that did.

I wandered out to the reception desk this afternoon, only to find a fishbowl on the counter with some change in it. In front of the fishbowl was Don's yellow-and-white model Hummer.

On the fishbowl is a sign: "Help the Humvee!"

I asked our secretary what the deal was. She got this bemused look, and said "Don told me to put this up here."

I hung my head.

Did I mention that he's "blown up" three computers -- crappy ones, yes, but three computers nonetheless -- trying to make them do God knows what? And I was at work until 12:30 a.m. Wednesday desperately trying to fix the WaveStation automation, which suffered a Challenger-scale "major malfunction." Well, at least short of literally exploding.

Don was nowhere to be found.

And now the station organizational chart officially has all roads leading to the program director. Except for the stuff he doesn't like to do. In the staff meeting where that loo-loo was unveiled, I reached new pinnacles of bluntness that I did not know I was capable of.

I picked the wrong week to quit chasing fistfuls of downers with bourbon.

Why are Catholics so bat-s*** crazy?

NOTE TO MY FUTURE SELF: No, you didn't make this up. It happened. It's completely whack, but it happened. I don't know how this Pope FM thing will shake out, but I hope you make it through all right.

Tell me, are you still Catholic?

Choo Choo cha-boogie

When I was but a lad in college -- long ago and far away, let me assure you -- really fun bands like Choo Choo seemingly grew on trees.

They were everywhere, and it was good.

NOW, APPARENTLY, you have to go to Bern, Switzerland, to have the kind of thing we took for granted in 1981. Either that says something bad about the United States today, or something good about Switzerland.

Probably both.

Shooting craps for life in the Culture of Death

In the bitter cold of December 2000, as the disputed Bush-Gore election turned red hot at the U.S. Supreme Court, I was working in the peculiar world of Catholic radio. Pope FM, if you will.

Our little FM station was an affiliate of EWTN radio, and I recall that as the legal battle raged between George Bush and Vice-President Al Gore -- as the presidency hung in the balance -- the network aired a special rosary for life. It never was billed as a prayer for Bush's victory (and legally it couldn't be) but we all knew the score: This was a rosary for the "pro-life" Bush to prevail over the "pro-abortion" Gore.

At least that's what the entire Pope FM staff was praying for. Me included.

I DON'T THINK I ever thought politics could change America's "Culture of Death" into a "Culture of Life." I did, however, think the election was all about federal policy and potential Supreme Court nominations. I thought government could be used to fight a "holding action."

I thought Roe v. Wade could be rolled back, and I thought maybe the Republicans, through political action, could somehow hinder the nation's cultural disintegration so that maybe -- maybe -- revival might come to our culturally and religiously devolving land before it was Too Late.

We were pro-life, true-believing, orthodox Roman Catholics. We stood for Jesus, saving babies, the Pope and EWTN. And it was a given that we'd vote G-O-P in the name of G-O-D.

So in that bleak midwinter, there we sat in our dilapidated little studios in a shabby little strip mall in a ramshackle part of town -- there we sat in the Pope FM conference room reciting the rosary with EWTN, praying for the triumph of a man who ultimately would do little to roll back the tide of fetal homicide in America.

Praying for the installation of a president who would, however, go on to do awesome things in the fields of pursuing an unwise and unjust war, rolling back civil liberties in the name of national security, and in turning CIA "spooks" and Army "grunts" alike into torturers whom -- in a more civilized age -- it would have been necessary to try at Nuremberg.

In a more civilized age, it would have been necessary to try Bush and much of his administration at Nuremberg.

If we really cut to the chase here, I guess what we were after -- at least what I was after -- was forestalling America's judgment by a just deity. Call it what it was: lawyering up and gunning for a cosmic stay of execution.

"Look, Jesus! We voted Republican . . . you know, GOP -- God's Own Party. Well, yeah, we're all driving 2.5 cars and living in too-big houses and bitching about taxes . . . but. . . ." BZZZZZZZZZT . . . as the lights dim all across the New Jerusalem.

MY GOD, look what we did. The economy's even in the tank. It was the original Rickroll.

Looking upon our civic wreckage from a biblical crime-and-punishment perspective is especially interesting -- not to mention ironic. In our political quest to avert -- or at least defer -- divine judgment, we instead may have brought it about.

Because if George W. Bush is not God's judgment upon a wicked people, I don't know what is.

And now -- in the name of salvation through better jurisprudence -- some would have us again do what we did in 1980 . . . and 1984 . . . and 1988 . . . and 2000 . . . and 2004, only expecting different results this time with the GOP's presumptive nominee, John McCain.

Am I saying vote for Barack Obama, the Democrat -- the pro-abort?

NO. To tell you the truth, I suspect there is no morally justifiable choice between McCain and Obama. Maybe the sheer catastrophic potential of someone with McCain's penchant for both wrongheadedness and hotheadedness being in charge of American foreign policy is enough "proportionate reason" to vote for Obama.

Then again, maybe not.

All I know is this one thing: I won't get fooled again.

Do as we say, not as we do

The Worst President Ever is issuing ultimatums to Russia about how to handle affairs on its own border.

What makes George W. Bush's somber proclamation even worse is the mind-blowing hypocrisy of it all, as evidenced by this Associated Press dispatch:

The Russian foreign minister said Thursday that Georgia could "forget about" getting back the two separatist regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Medvedev also met with their leaders in Kremlin this past week, raising the prospect that Moscow could absorb the regions even though the territory is internationally recognized as being within Georgia's borders.

Bush disputed the claim that two areas may not be part of Georgia's future. They are of Georgia now, he said at the ranch, and reaffirmed that they are within recognized borders. There is "no room for debate on this," the president said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who briefed Bush after a quick trip to Georgia, said that "when it is resolved, I mean the underlying conflict, it must be resolved on the basis of the territorial integrity of Georgia."

I'M SURE about half of the Serbian population just stroked out. A mind can wrap itself around only just so much.

Seems to me Kosovo used to lay within the internationally recognized borders of Serbia. Until the West decided it didn't. Now it's the world's newest, internationally recognized, independent narco-terrorist state.

Meanwhile, Americans follow the party line, tsk-tsking about the thuggery of Russia and praising our leaders' efforts to stick the American people's noses in everybody else's business. Even in everybody else's own back yards.

And we used to say the Soviets were brainwashed.

One for my baby . . . .

Rhythm . . . and an extra helping of blues

Before Jerry Wexler, we just knew it as "race music."

IN 1949, the young staff writer at Billboard, the music-industry trade paper, took "race music" and gave it a new name -- "rhythm and blues." R&B. But writing about the music -- and naming the music -- wasn't enough.

Where Wexler, a Jewish atheist kid from New York, really made his mark on the music world wasn't in writing about music that was quintessentially American . . . or in giving it an identity, even. He made his mark, starting in 1953, in making rhythm and blues -- and later, rock and soul.

Jerry Wexler, a fixture at the top of Atlantic Records along with founder Ahmet Ertegun, simply was one of the greatest producers of the R&B (and rock and roll) era. Perhaps the greatest producer.

And now he's gone. Dead at 91, reports The New York Times:

Mr. Wexler was already in his 30s when he entered the music business, but his impact was immediate and enduring. In 1987, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame recognized his contributions to American music by inducting him in only its second year of conferring such honors.

Mr. Wexler actually didn’t care for rock ’n’ roll, at least as it evolved in the 1960s and ’70s. Though he signed a British band called Led Zeppelin and eventually produced records by the likes of Bob Dylan, Carlos Santana, Dire Straits and George Michael, his main influence came in the 1950s and ’60s as a vice president of Atlantic Records, working largely with black artists who were forging a new musical style, which came to be called soul music, from elements of gospel, swing and blues.

“He played a major role in bringing black music to the masses, and in the evolution of rhythm and blues to soul music,” Jim Henke, vice president and chief curator for the Hall of Fame, said in an interview. “Beyond that, he really developed the role of the record producer. Jerry did a lot more than just turn on a tape recorder. He left his stamp on a lot of great music. He had a commercial ear as well as a critical ear.”

Mr. Wexler was something of a paradox. A businessman with tireless energy, a ruthless streak and a volatile temper, he was also a hopeless music fan. A New York Jew and a vehement atheist, he found his musical home in the Deep South, in studios in Memphis and Muscle Shoals, Ala., among Baptists and Methodists, blacks and good old boys.

“He was a bundle of contradictions,” said Tom Thurman, who produced and directed a documentary about Mr. Wexler in 2000. “He was incredibly abrasive and incredibly generous, very abrupt and very, very patient, seemingly a pure, sharklike businessman and also a cerebral and creative genius.”

The title of Mr. Thurman’s documentary, “Immaculate Funk,” was Mr. Wexler’s phrase for the Atlantic sound, characterized by a heavy backbeat and a gospel influence. “It’s funky, it’s deep, it’s very emotional, but it’s clean,” Mr. Wexler once said.

Though not a musician himself, Mr. Wexler had a natural rapport with musicians, who seemed to recognize his instinct for how best to employ their gifts. In 1950, while he was still at Billboard, he encountered the young singer Patti Page and hummed for her a 1947 song he liked, “The Tennessee Waltz.” Her subsequent recording of it sold three million copies in eight months.

A few years later he was a partner at Atlantic, presiding over the 1954 recording session of Ray Charles’s breakout hit, “I Got a Woman.” He said later that the best thing he had done for Charles was to let him do as he pleased.

“He had an extraordinary insight into talent,” Charles, who died in 2004, said in “Immaculate Funk.”

Mr. Wexler wasn’t always a mere listener. In the mid-1960s, at a recording session with Wilson Pickett, Mr. Wexler wanted more of a backbeat in the song “In the Midnight Hour” but couldn’t explain in words what he wanted, so he illustrated it by doing a new dance, the jerk.

In the late 1960s and ’70s, he made 14 Atlantic albums with Ms. Franklin, whose musical instincts had been less than fully exploited at her previous label, Columbia. Mr. Wexler gave her more control over her songs and her sound, a blend of churchlike spirituality and raw sexuality, which can be heard in hits like “Respect,” “Dr. Feelgood” and “Chain of Fools.”

“How could he understand what was inside of black people like that?” Pickett asked in the documentary. “But Jerry Wexler did.”

(snip)

Given the chance, Mr. Wexler would have produced to the end and beyond.

“I asked him once,” said Mr. Thurman, the filmmaker, “‘What do you want written on your tombstone, Jerry?’ He said, ‘Two words: More bass.’”

3 Chords & the Truth: Diversity and all that jazz

When I was in college, LSU's campus radio station, then called WPRG, had what I considered a great format -- pretty much the full spectrum of album rock and college-y alternative fare, plus a minimum of one jazz cut an hour.

SOME DJs BALKED at the jazz thing, but I thought it was brilliant, and it made WPRG sound a sophisticated cut above your average college-radio fare. And isn't it funny that -- almost three decades later, during this age of "diversity" -- most areas of our lives aren't very "diverse" at all?

What we have is an age of Balkanization, not "diversity." Focus groups of the pathologically self-segregated.

Minds closing shut all across the land.

ME, I'VE ALWAYS been a freak. I even grew to like a lot of my parents' music, back during a time when there was a wide gulf between "our" music and "theirs."

I like rock. I like alt. I like country.

And I like jazz.

So, today's show is a little like that old WPRG college-radio format. Only more so.

If you like real diversity, you'll find it here. And here. And even at the top of this page, in the player window.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth. Be there. Aloha.

Picture of the year

From The Guardian in London.

Something's just wrong with folks down there

I was born and raised in Baton Rouge. I have lived in Omaha for 20 years now.

With that kind of background, you start to draw some conclusions about where you are -- and about where you're from. You look at the lingering racism back home. You look at lousy public schools, crooked politicians always on the make -- and on the take -- and every bit of the public infrastructure falling apart.

You look, and you think "This is not good."

AND IF THAT WEREN'T ENOUGH, you read stories like this -- and, really, you wish you hadn't just read a story like that -- and then, a week later, you read this from WAFB television in Baton Rouge:

A worker at a Baton Rouge photo lab is used to developing photographs of birthday parties, beautiful sunsets, and vacations. A picture of a girl cutting up a dead puppy, however, was a first.

The worker, from a Baton Rouge Walgreen's drug store, immediately called sheriff's deputies, who launched an investigation. Deputies were led to a student from Woodlawn High School who told them her mother had gotten the dead puppy for her from the East Baton Rouge Parish Animal Control, according to a police report.

The puppy that was given to the student's mother for the school assignment had previously been euthanized, investigators were told. Upon further investigation, deputies learned that the dissection of the dead puppy was part of an assignment from the girl's biology teacher, Dennis Dyer. The assignment read, in part, "Skeletal preparation can be an interesting and rewarding project for those who recognize that beauty and have the stomach for the grosser side of Biology." A report from the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office says the teacher told his students if they could not find a dead wild animal, they could get one from animal control.

(snip)

The teacher says the student approached him and stated that she went to animal control and workers there "offered to provide her with a euthanized animal if it was for a school project," Trahan said. "Once they've been euthanized, they are disposed of," said Hilton Cole, director of the EBR Animal Control Center. "And that's the end of their little lives and it's rather unpleasant. So, if somehow, some way, one of these animals can somehow help a student or help an educational program or enhance a life maybe in the future and stimulate some young mind to become a scientist or an investigator of some sort, I feel like that's a worthy cause," Cole said.

THE TANGIPAHOA PARISH animal-control center putting down 170 animals in a day. The East Baton Rouge Parish animal-control center giving away euthanized puppies to be dissected by a kid at home.

Now, the expatriate wonders something else. No, "wonders" is not the correct word. The expatriate knows something else. He knows the Thing Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken.

He knows that "It" is true -- that which has, in the past, been thrown in his face by people who looked at him like he was from a particularly rough patch of Albania.

Yes, Louisiana is a pretty backward place.

Yes, something's just wrong with people down there.

Sorry.

When radio was . . . different

Well, this isn't a bad way to waste 24 minutes -- this late-1940s NBC-produced documentary about . . . the National Broadcasting Company.

Behind Your Radio Dial highlights how NBC programs came to listeners' RCA Victors, Zeniths, Philcos, Crosleys and Admirals. And it briefly covers this new-fangled thing, too.

"Television," I think they call it.

America speaks to the people of Georgia

As Russian bombs leveled their homes and Russian tanks scattered their army, residents of the would-be newest NATO member state wanted to know where their Western friends were.

GEORGIANS, as recounted by Newsweek below, wanted to know where was President George W. Boosh . . . er, Bush.

As civilians and Georgian military personnel fled Russia's expanding offensive, many were asking why the country's allies, including the United States, haven't come to their aid. The head of Georgia's National Security Council, Alexander Lomaia, told NEWSWEEK on Monday, "If all countries together said [to Russia], 'We are not buying your gas and we'll exclude you from all international organizations, you will be an international pariah,' [then] they would stop."

After surviving a bombing, David Tshimashvili, the commander of a military tank base in the capital Tbilisi, said, "We thought Bush was our friend. We supported them in Iraq. Where is Bush? Will he come here now?" Tshimashvili remembered when thousands gathered in Tbilisi's Freedom Square in 2005 to hear the American president, who declared that the "sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia must be respected."

Tshimashvili had his tanks evacuate the base two days ago, but he was still on site when Russian bombs hit, injuring him in his arm, shoulder and chest. From Tbilisi Central University Hospital, where he is recovering, the commander said, "I still believe in Democratic values, but never again in America. We feel very disappointed that there is no real help from the U.S. and Europe."

THESE GEORGIAN PATRIOTS, whose country picked an unwinnable fight with Russia, deserve an answer. Unfortunately, President Boosh . . . er, Bush could not be with us tonight to answer our allies' heartfelt questions. He did, however, leave us the following video -- his personal message of consolation and advice to the Georgian people.

Could somebody get the lights, please?

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and Sen. John Blutarsky:


Note: Contains some profanity.

'We are all Georgians now'

McCain urges UN: Act on Russia @ Yahoo! Video

John McCain "knows" wrong. He doesn't "speak for every American," like he told Georgia's nutwagon president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

John McCain doesn't speak for me. Not even close -- at least not how he thinks he speaks for me, as reported by Agence France Presse:

Republican White House hopeful John McCain Tuesday stepped up a fusillade against Russian "aggression" and declared that today, "we are all Georgians."

Addressing voters in Pennsylvania, McCain said he had spoken by telephone earlier with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who he said wanted to thank the American people for their support.

"I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, today, we are all Georgians," said the Republican, a hardliner against Russia who wants the mighty nation expelled from the Group of Eight club.

Both McCain and his Democratic rival Barack Obama have condemned Russia's incursion into Georgia following the Saakashvili government's abortive attempt to rein in the breakaway, pro-Moscow region of South Ossetia.

I'LL GIVE SEN. HOTHEAD this: We are all Georgians now. And how that is isn't anything like McCain thinks it is.

Today, in the United States and across the West -- but especially in America -- we are all Georgians in that we are stupid fools who were insane enough to elect even bigger and stupider fools to lead us. The stupid fools in power have gone on to do staggeringly stupid and foolish things -- like start a foolish war in Iraq when there was no just cause for doing so.

Our stupid and foolish leaders also have spent the 17-plus years since the fall of the Soviet Union poking the Russian bear with a stick and humiliating a proud nation that, increasingly, doesn't need to take that kind of s*** anymore.

Meanwhile, Georgia's stupid and foolish president, Saakashvili, launched a stupid and foolish all-out assualt on South Ossetia, killing Russian soldiers in the process.

Some say he stepped into the bear's trap. Be that as it may, Saakashvili still poked Un-Gentle Ivan in the eye and dared the bear to do something about it.

This did not go well for Georgia. In fact, "Geor" is lying, bloodied, over here. "Gia" is somewhere over yonder. But you really don't want to look.

Yes, "we're all Georgians" now. Rub-a-dub-dub, all dopes in a tub. And how do you think we got there?

This past week, Georgians got theirs. We'll get ours soon enough. From somebody.

Focus on the Family: Water on the brain

A commentator working for the political arm of Focus on the Family thinks it would be cool for prayer-believin', right-thinkin', right-wingin' Christians to pray for some torrential, "network cameras can't see the podium rain" during Barack Obama's open-air acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention.

Yea, verily the Almighty will unto us giveth a sign, and it shall be wet.

ACTUALLY, with Stuart Shepard's video, the Almighty already hath given unto us a mighty sign: Focus on the Family has gone nuts. Loony. Goofy. 'Round the bend. Here are some details from the Colorado Springs Gazette:

Focus on the Family Action pulled a video from its Web site Monday that asked people to pray for "rain of biblical proportions" during Barack Obama's Aug. 28 appearance at Invesco Field in Denver to accept the Democratic nomination for president.

Stuart Shepard, director of digital media at Focus Action, the political arm of Focus on the Family, said the video he wrote and starred in was meant to be "mildly humorous."

But complaints from about a dozen Focus members convinced the organization to pull the video, said Tom Minnery, Focus Action vice president of public policy.

"If people took it seriously, we regret it," Minnery said Monday.

"Pray for Rain" was posted July 30 and blazed its way through the Internet, scoring 20,000 page views, Shepard said.

It was one of Shepard's weekly video commentaries that appear on www.citizenlink.org, Focus Action's Web site. The general timbre of Shepard's videos is tongue-in-cheek as he examines political issues from the conservative Christian viewpoint of Focus Action.

Most of "Pray for Rain," which lasted less than three minutes, showed a lighthearted Shepard at Invesco Field asking viewers to pray for "torrential" rain during Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

"I'm talking ‘umbrella-ain't-going-to-help-you rain,'" he said on the video.

The video's point, Shepard said, is that in his view Obama has not clearly stated his stances on abortion and gay marriage, important themes within the Christian right.

"I'm still pro life, and I'm still in favor of marriage as being between one man and one woman," Shepard said in the video. "And I would like the next president who will select justices for the next Supreme Court to agree."

As for his praying for a deluge: "It's called hyperbole," Shepard said Monday. "It is meant to be humorous."

Minnery said the video was taken down because several Focus members complained that prayer shouldn't be used to bring harm on someone else.

"We are not about confusing people about prayer," Minnery said.

WELL, I GUESS confusing people about prayer would be worse than the usual menu of confusing people about the Republicans' actual commitment to fostering "Culture of Life" social aims.

Still, it's troubling that anyone at the organization -- or its political action group -- would approve such an audaciously stupid video. It also points out just how tone-deaf the evangelical politico-cultural machine has become . . . and how mindless.

Really, if the ancient Israelites had been this gobstopperingly stupid back in Old Testament times, Yahweh might have been forced to move up the Babylonian captivity by decades. Which brings up a funny thing about the Almighty and His often self-righteous posse -- a lot of the time, the Wrath o' God comes down a lot closer to home than "His people" were expecting.

Before I go, here's something I found on YouTube that struck me as just totally capturing that hysterical, "James Dobson jumps the shark" vibe Focus on the Family has been giving off for a few years now.

Enjoy.

What Mrs. San Guinary didn't know. . . .

What do kids today do without a local horror-movie host?

When I was growing up in Baton Rouge, we had Dr. Shock and Shock Theater on Channel 33, starting in 1971 or so. In Omaha, about the same time, there was Dr. San Guinary and Creature Feature on KMTV, Channel 3.

In both places, the sidekick's name was Igor.

Unfortunately for Baton Rouge, we did not have then-KMTV weathercaster Carol Scott as a special guest modeling a T-shirt. If Scott has a daughter, Omaha's now-Channel Third needs to hire her immediately.

I'm just sayin'.

Seen in the comboxes

What do we do now, Lt. Dan? Lt. Dan? Lt. Dan?

The United States has spent the last 17 years poking a stick into the Russian bear's eye, and now Georgie, and Dickie and Condi are shocked, shocked that it's done gone and ate somebody.

THIS, from an Associated Press think piece by Anne Gearan:

The Russian Bear is back, and the United States doesn't seem to be able to do much about it.

The United States saw trouble coming between Russia and Georgia, a former Soviet republic turned nemesis, but didn't have enough leverage, focus or resolve to intervene. Even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a specialist on the old Soviet Union, may have misjudged the combustible combination of Russian grievance and ambition.

The Bush administration's assurances of solidarity with a young democracy also may have given Georgia's silver-tongued, U.S.-educated leader a little too much swagger as he picked a playground fight he never could win on his own.

(snip)

In talking points on the conflict obtained by The Associated Press, the Bush administration claims it had no specific advance warning that Georgia would try to retake control of a breakaway border region largely loyal to Russia.

That doesn't mean diplomats, intelligence analysts and others weren't worried about worsening Russian relations with Georgia over the past two years and in particular about the shoving match over ethnic conflicts left over from the Cold War.

Rice went to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi to try to calm things down in July, but infuriated Russia with a public endorsement of Georgia's "territorial integrity." Saakashvili used the visit to display his close relationship with Washington, the organizing principle for an imperfectly democratic government that has collected millions of dollars in U.S. aid.

U.S. officials say they gave Saakashvili a strong warning not to put a match to the ethnic tinderboxes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, even as Rice and others took Georgia's side in public. Bush backed the Georgian claim when he visited Tbilisi in 2005.

"The path of freedom you have chosen is not easy, but you will not travel it alone," Bush said then.

I THINK THE PART about a secretary of state who goes to the tinder box to "calm things down" but instead starts throwing around lit matches is rich, indeed.

The problem with the neocon cabal in Washington, as it wreaks havoc at home and abroad, is it's the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Without Lieutenant Dan.

If loving Georgia is wrong, Bushies don't want to be right

Dick Cheney's mouth is writing checks that America's ass can't cash.

The Associated Press has the details of exactly how moronically belligerent the Bush Administration is when it comes to sticking the United States' nose into affairs that are none of its business:

The violence appeared to show Russia's determination to subdue diminutive, U.S.-backed Georgia, even at the risk of international reproach. Russia fended off a wave of international calls to observe Georgia's cease-fire, saying it must first be assured that Georgian troops have indeed pulled back from South Ossetia.

Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was said to have told Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili that Russia's military actions in Georgia "must not go unanswered."

Cheney's press secretary, Lee Ann McBride, said the vice president spoke Sunday afternoon with Saakashvili. "The vice president expressed the United States' solidarity with the Georgian people and their democratically elected government in the face of this threat to Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity," she said.

Cheney told Saakashvili "Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community," McBride said.

IT TOOK ONE SEMESTER of getting a handle on "realpolitik" in Ramon Arango's world politics class at Louisiana State for me to know -- in about one second flat -- that foolishness like this from the American government will not turn out well for the United States.

It seems to me there are three things you'd better have a handle on before you screw with Russia:

* Are you right?

* Is it in America's vital interest?

* Is it worth the price you will pay for messing with the Russian bear in an area of its vital interest?

Looking at all three areas, you're left wondering whether President Bush and Cheney are stark, raving mad. Well, actually, I don't much wonder about that anymore. I'm sadly sure of the unfortunate answer.

First, the United States' position on this is dead wrong. I don't care how much of an "ally" Georgia is to the West, Georgians crossed a line and "have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up."

The Georgian government violated its own cease fire to launch an all-out attack on the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Its forces killed hundreds, and probably more than 1,000, civilians . . . plus at least 10 Russian peacekeeping troops.

What the hell was Russia supposed to do? Georgian forces broke a cease fire, killing Russian troops in the process.

Then there is the Kosovo question. In 1999, NATO (meaning primarily the United States) went to war against Serbia -- thousands of miles removed from American shores -- to safeguard Kosovar autonomy and its residents' human rights, which Western nations saw as being encroached upon by Serb authorities.

Yet NATO and the United States now condemn Russia for going to war against Georgia -- on the Russian Federation's southern border -- to safeguard South Ossetian autonomy and its residents' human rights, which Russians saw being molested in a bloody military assault.

The scenarios are identical, yet the American government says it "must not go unanswered" when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev does in 2008 exactly what U.S. President Bill Clinton did March 24, 1999.

Second, does America's outrage at Russia's actions mean, in the name of principled consistency, we now have to give nearly a third of the United States back to Mexico?

Inquiring minds really would like to know.

THE PROPER RESPONSE by Russia to the neoconservative busybodies in charge of U.S. foreign policy ought to go something like this: "Shut the #$&* up, and mind your own business. If you don't, we'll screw up your oil supply, re-create the Warsaw Pact and grant Mexico membership."

Some things are America's business. Other things aren't. The Bush Administration, of course, doesn't know which is which.

Unfortunately for all of us, the country that put these idiots in charge of its affairs certainly will deserve whatever "just deserts" the Bear serves up.

Cool! Jazz. Cool jazz. Cool, man.

I'm a sucker for spare, artistic TV production from the 1950s and early '60s.

Black-and-white. No whiz-bang graphics. Shots framed and staged cinematically.

I'm a sucker for great jazz, too. Like Miles Davis, John Coltrane (and the rest of the Miles Davis Quintet) performing "So What?" on this 1959 television program. In this case, it's a blend of the two -- masterful music . . . and masterful TV production that complements great music instead of getting in the way of it.

You think some Miles Davis might show up on 3 Chords & the Truth this week? Better listen to find out.

3 Chords & the Truth: Favog's Zen garden

I didn't expect organic gardening to be this Zen thing for me.

ALL I WANTED TO DO was to grow some vegetables in the name of greater self-sufficiency (Take that prepackaged consumerist culture!) and saving a few bucks -- or more -- at the grocery store. And I wanted to accomplish that without putting 47 pounds of MiracleGro and 87 cubic yards of Sevin dust on everything.

I also determined to reuse what dishwater I reasonably could to hydrate said garden. After all, that would certainly make getting rid of coffee grounds and grease easier -- dump it all in the pot the dishwater goes into, then dump it all in the garden.

Putting organic material back into the earth . . . good. I've even got a little countertop compost box that really, really needs to be transferred into a legit outdoors compost pile. I'll get to it.

Anyway, Mrs. Favog calls my horticultural methodology "Nazi death-camp gardening." She'd rather I just unreel a hose pipe to where the tomatoes and pepper plants are, turn on the water, turn on 3 Chords & the Truth and have a cold beer.

Let me amend that. She could care less whether I have a cold beer. The missus just doesn't particularly care for carrying a stock pot (or three) full of water across the back yard to the garden, then unloading the H2O into the rows.

Heinrich Himmler am I. Or is it Heimlich? I have trouble keeping my genocidal Germans straight.

WHATEVER. I GUESS I CAN'T blame her for not having a Catholic Buddhist vibe going when it comes to tomatoes and peppers. Beans, too. If I get them planted in the next week, I think I can get in a crop of pole beans before first frost.

For me, carrying pots of recycled water out to the garden -- and hoeing out the weeds and touching up the rows every couple of weeks -- is the Southern Boy Catholic version of raking a big rock bed or tapping sand out of a straw to make a beautiful mandala. The advantage of my Catholic Zen thang over the eastern Zen thang hinges on one thing:

You can't eat sand. Or rocks.

Tomatoes and peppers are tasty, however. And good for you.

What does this have to do with this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth? I frankly have no idea.

Maybe it has something to do with crafting sets of songs into something with some meaning -- whatever the meaning happens to be with any grouping of music. Maybe it has something to do with music soothing the savage breast.

Maybe it has something to do with being gaga for Joan Jett since I was 16. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Listen to 3 Chords & the Truth, the worldwide music service of Revolution 21 -- it's Zen radio. On the Internets.

Just go here -- or to the player at the top of this page -- and achieve a higher consciousness. Be there. Aloha.

Mystical secrets of the Radio Troglodyte

If you don't know where you've been, can you really tell where you're going?

Obviously, that's a question some fans of the NPR-canceled Bryant Park Project never have thought to ask as they continue to pile on the network's new editorial director of digital media, Dick Meyer.

To synopsize the objection to Meyer among the "new media" fans, it seems to be centered on his appreciation of some of the charms of traditional community. And, it would seem, his love of a properly made sandwich.

I won't belabor what I've already covered . . . but it is kind of funny, once you think about it.

ANYWAY, a few of the folks at The BPP Diner seem to be all about "community," so long as it's a "restricted" community. The past is unwelcome. No "backward thinkers" or "old media farts" allowed.

That means you, Dick Meyer.

Vee haff veys of makink you tink forvart!

Also, it's all about the interaction, baby. (Just so long as it's not in any kind of a traditional, physical community with people you've known forever.) And it's all about the glorious mosaic that is diversity. (Just so long as there is enough uniformity of opinion.)

One anti-Meyer commenter -- and all but one (me) were anti-Meyer commenters -- went on about how unique the Bryant Park Project community is:

Yes, I can appreciate some traditions because they can give one comfort. (RC hangover)

Sure Mr. Meyer is a bright man but I will not buy his book to fund his narrow mindedness. Additionally my life is too busy to read a book that seems to based on what Mr. Meyer hates about the world as it is NOW, because I am living my life NOW.

(snip)

BPP brought together a non physical community that enjoyed something that they can never have again. (Like Mr. Meyer's lunch place that is now boarded up.) Consider carefully if it was announced that Day to Day was being cancelled would there be the same outpouring? BPP was unique not just because of the talented people we heard over the media of our choice, but the interaction it encouraged and made available to any one that wanted to participate. Yes at NPR you can, "click on contact us at the top of the page...and be sure to tell us how to pronounce your name." But you might as well be sending a letter using a stamp, envelope and drop box. Which sounds an awful like what possibly could be described as Mr. Meyer's prefered way of communication.

BPP created a community by using many forms communication. BPP encouraged and seemed to delight in people communicating with each other. (Even when we sometimes agreed to disagree.)

[Unless you're Dick Meyer, who must be demonized and belittled -- R21]

What seems to be disquieting about Mr. Meyer is that if he yearning for how it USED to be how can he use his digital/media to ever reach what the BPP created in its short life? Does he want to? Will NPR ever move forward? Will it just dwindle away because eventually no one who has ever experienced a "BPP" will settle for something as mundane.

I THINK everyone on The BPP Diner would agree The Bryant Park Project's style and its melding of "old" and "new" media represented a leap forward for public broadcasting. (Until NPR canceled it and leaped backward.)

Has any of those "forward thinkers" considered that the BPP just might have been a rediscovery of broadcasting's past? Probably not -- realizing that would involve "backward thinking" if not outright worship of the past.

To my ears, as good as the BPP was, it was just a younger-skewing, less ambitious version of NBC Radio's old Monitor program.

The Bryant Park Project revolved around a witty, genial studio host. Monitor revolved around a witty, genial studio host.

The Bryant Park Project featured the hourly network news, branded to that particular program. Monitor featured the hourly NBC Radio news, branded to that particular program.

The Bryant Park Project had regular features, as well as segments for feature stories, sports discussion, music and interviews. Monitor had regular features, as well as segments for feature stories, sports discussion, music and interviews.

The two programs had their differences as well.

The Bryant Park Project featured an extensive Internet presence, via its web site and social networking. In Monitor's day -- it ran from 1955 to 1975 -- there was no such thing as an Internet. Then, social networking was accomplished at the Elks Club, over coffee and doughnuts after church and across the backyard fence.

OVERALL, especially considering the technology of the day, Monitor was by far the more ambitious program. For one thing, it ran all weekend, not a couple of hours Monday through Friday mornings.

In its early years, Monitor -- which also was part disc-jockey show and featured live band remotes -- ran 40 straight hours each weekend, from 8 a.m. Saturday to midnight Sunday. For most of 1959, Monitor also aired for two hours Monday through Friday nights.

Then there were the comedy bits. From the history section of the Monitor tribute website:

Classic comedians showed up every weekend, including Bob and Ray, Nichols and May, Jonathan Winters, Phyllis Diller, Ernie Kovacs, Bob Hope, Bob Newhart, Stiller and Meara, Selma Diamond, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen and, later, Pomerantz and Finkelman. In the early years, Bob and Ray stayed at Radio Central for many hours each weekend, ready to ad-lib skits if remotes weren't ready or technical problems blew up a scheduled segment. In 1957, they won a Peabody Award for their outrageously creative routines on "Monitor."

WHO'D HAVE THUNK IT. Monitor even had its own "Emergency Krulwich." Monitor truly was -- in the words of its creator, legendary NBC president and programmer Sylvester "Pat" Weaver -- a "kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria."

But you couldn't expect those who live in the Eternal Now to have known that. When you live in the Eternal Now, everything is new . . . and it's ever cleverer than anything a troglodyte like poor Dick Meyer might conceive.

But we troglodytes are in on a secret. Come close . . . listen carefully, and I will share the secret of the universe. It is this:

Everything old is new again.