So, my friend Iocaste (livejournal.com/users/iocaste) pointed me to the following article: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002455480_starbucks29m.html

Basically, it’s a story about how Starbucks has started putting thought-provoking apercus on all their coffee cups, quotes by famous and (now) not-so-famous Americans. Kind of like the shit we all submitted with our baby pics to the senior yearbook back in high school.

Anywho, Concerned Windbags for America is up in arms about this. Why? Because Starbucks chose a quote from an avowed homosexual (Armistead Maupin – I’m kind of surprised they know who he is, actually) and, secondarily, because the quotes betray some sort of liberal bias on the part of the corporation.

Now here’s the kicker: “The group believes corporations have a responsibility to reflect the diversity of their customers by taking a balanced approach — or staying out of divisive social issues altogether.”

So, aside from the fact that CWFA has taken a page of the leftist playbook and has begun holding corporations to task for their public political stances, note the subtle but important tactical stance they take. Corporations must be “fair” and “balanced” – or shut up.

This – this is a subtle and insidious idea. Let us put aside for the moment the fact that CWFA are being totally fraudulent in their claim they simply want “balance” (as Io points out, in fact what they want is the elimination of homosexuality from the public sphere tout court). This claim of theirs interested me because it strikes me as essentially the same as that made by a wingnut at my church, a man who demands that we talk about “both sides” of the issues in adult Sunday School (since we’re reading Niebuhr at the moment, I confess I am a total loss as to what the “other side” would consist of). The fact that some Baptist nutjob in Texas is mouthing the same bullshit platitudes as CWFA strikes me as rather Leninist, but be that as it may…

Let me instead talk about two more abstract problems with this whole idea.

Insidiousness #1: The whole reason why most press organs claim “fairness and balance” as an ideal is that the fourth estate is supposed to be “the public” in some sense. It is supposed to report the news, state facts as they occur, and comment on events – and on the basis of those reported facts, individual consumers of said news may then form their own opinions. Thus why newspapers and newscasts separate out their “opinion” page from the “hard news” pages.

Now, there is a voluminous literature on how the press doesn’t in fact live up to this ideal, and especially how the separation of “news” and “opinions” obscures the fact that newspapers carefully and deliberately choose which stories to print and therefore constrain the range of facts that are presented.

The ideal, however, remains. And it is a powerful idea. So powerful, in fact, that one of the most viciously biased administration whore mouthpieces – by which I mean Fox News – clings publicly to the fiction, debased every day by its own reporting, that it is “fair” and “balanced.”

But this ideal is for the press. Not for individuals, not for interest groups, not even really for elected officials (that is why, after all, they take positions and state their platform) and certainly not for corporations. The press is not supposed to “influence” people, or for that matter the government – but the rest of us are supposed to. That’s what living in a democracy means – you speak for your own interests, you argue with others, and whoever can collect the most allies on their side wins.

Starbucks is a corporation. Its responsibility, at the end of the day, is to produce a profit and distribute that profit to its shareholders. Period. If, out of the goodness of their hearts – or as some sly marketing mechanism – the management chooses to take a stance politically, that’s bonus for whoever they happen to swing their support to. But it is not their “responsibility.”

Even this idea that Starbucks is trying to re-create the coffee-house culture and café society of old – providing the institutional spaces within which community groups meet and create social capital – does not in fact carry with it the responsibility to provide “both sides” of some social issue. Does Lifeways, or Cokesbury, because they are bookstores –literally marketplaces of ideas – have a “responsibility” to stock Satanist literature?

I certainly intend to patronize corporations – such as Starbucks – that voluntarily act in a “responsible” manner towards their workers, the environment, and even the political process. And I intend to bring whatever forces of market persuasion (my puny purchasing power) and moral suasion (viz. letters to their “community relations” departments) I can to get them to act more “responsibly.” But at the end of the day, I understand that Starbucks is not, and never will be “USA Today.”

Note that even if you abandon the position that the press is neutral – if you hold that we should return to the 19th century situation, where newspapers were openly partisan – my argument still holds. In other words, my argument is that CWFA are making an intellectually dumb, though tempting, argument – over an above the fraudulence of their stated position.

Insidiousness #2: Abandoning Plato for Aristotle
The second piece of the CWFA, Fox News, and Baptist nutjob argument that utterly baffles me is this: these are people who claim, day after day, that there exists truth, that they know the truth, that what is not truth is wrong, sinful, and treasonous, and that those of us who hold different views are against them and are going to hell (okay, so Fox calls us traitors, but the principle is the same). In other words, they are philosophical Platonists. For them to publicly abandon this position and instead say, essentially, “look, there are two sides to every issue, and in the middle, that Aristotelian Golden Mean, is where we shall find the truth,” is utterly baffling. It simply makes no sense. It’s like they woke up one day, said “ya know, the post-modernists are right there is no there there! The sacred canopy is rent from hem to hem, and furthermore, that’s a good thing!”

Silly me for expecting at least a modicum of philosophical consistency from my opponents. I forget that they are out for blood and will do anything to win. The point is not to convince us, or even to engage us in meaningful, balanced argument. The point is to kill the men, rape the women, and enslave the children.

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Ya know, too many times I get screechy and forget about the times when people do the right thing.

It occurs to me that we who feel under fire at the moment ought to do more thanking of our friends and allies, not least because doing the right thing deserves praise.

I was reminded of this today when I sat in a church, in Texas, and heard the assembled congregants unanimously – unanimously! – vote to publicly oppose this infernal amendment. With one voice, loud and clear, they said it.

It was, not to put too fine a point it, mighty christian of those Unitarians.

So, to them – and to anyone else willing to stand up and say “no, not while I am here” – I should tender my thanks. When the time comes, their names will be written in the Book of Life.

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Regularly scheduled programming rants to resume shortly. In the meantime here’s another installment in my total nerdfest “This Infernal Amendment:”

Afternoon was now upon us; our lunch had lasted long, and soon the tinted doors of office parks would release the living drones of Northeast Tarrant from their workday drear; and I prepared myself

To undergo the battle – and the pity – of fighting traffic on I-30. As a friend from Boston taught me once: “Oh St. Bauer, in thy power, save us from this dread rush hour…”

At the close of our meal, I said to Pastor M___: “Rev., you who are my guide, tell me if my arguments are strong enough, before I face the other pastors in this town.”

You say that Perry (Troy, not Rick), while he was still a Pentecost, dared to meet with Falwell in his own lair in Lynchburg.

Now, if the Enemy of all us homos was courteous to him – considering who he was and what he’d done,

Founding a whole new sect for homosexuals – headquartered even here in Dallas, if I’m not mistaken –

And if the truth be told – though I’ve never been to a service – it does seem from all reports that Cathedral of Hope is indeed a holy place, now seat of a new pastor, Dr. Hudson,

But through this journey you ascribe to him, he came to learn of messaging, of things that were to bring him victory in media-laurels.

Then later Robert Goss traveled e’en unto Rome, to bring back assurance of a po-mo faith, a broken vessel in which to pour out our gay salvation.

Are these my models? Should I go to brimstone churches? For I am no Perry, am not a Goss, nor I nor others think myself so high and mighty.

Therefore, if I consent to do this thing, and speak to churches, I fear my venture may be wild and empty. You are wise, you know far more than what I say.”

And just as he who second-guessed a venture, and shifts what he intended so as to seek new ends,

So was I in the midst of this scorched land, because with all my thinking I annulled the task I’d set before me.

“If I have understood what you’ve just said,” replied Pastor M, “you are a coward.

If not you, then who? We all are busy, to be sure, but like it says in our hymnal-book, if this be a cross to you, take it up and find a blessing.

That you might overcome this fear, I’ll tell you why I met with you, and why I felt compassion for your plan.

I am among those pastors who are suspended – too liberal for this conference, but called to preach the Word. My seminary prof had called me – an heroic man of courage, and one whom I should always serve.

His sermons surpass the splendor of the stars, and he spoke to me – gently softly, as you know he does – and with a voice of truth. He said:

“Oh pastor to the heathan Hurstites, whose fame is spread throughout the metro, and shall endure as long there are mad Methodists (he is a flatterer, that Pastor F!)

I have a friend, who has not been fortune’s friend, and is hindered on his path to speak the truth; he has been turned aside by terror.

From all that I have heard of him – mostly from my son his colleague – he is, I think, already so behind his schedule that I fear we are too late to make a difference in November.

But still, go now, and with your persuasion see that he hews to the task. See that he tries to wake our people up – for heaven knows they need it.

For I am G__ F__, who send you on; I labored long in this blasted vineyard – Love prompted me to do so, and Love prompts me now to speak to you.

So that when I stand before my Lord, then shall I give account of what we all have done.” Now Reverend F. was silent and I began:

Oh, professor mine, the only reasons why the human race treads above the lies and muck that sucks us down us are words like these

So welcome is your wish that even if t’were done already ‘twould seem tardy; all you need to do is let me know your will.

But tell me why he should be impudent – remaining in this sulfurous place instead of moving on to spacious places much more seemly? (and here I detected notes direct to me the author)

“Because you want to fathom things so deeply, here’s your answer,” he replied, “why we should not be ‘fraid to stay here.

One ought to dread of nothing other than things possessed of power to harm – while things innocuous need not be feared (and here the author remain a skeptic – can hateful preaching e’er be harmless?)

God – in Her graciousness – has made us so that this, our miserable state, cannot touch the things eternal; we can withstand the fire and brimstone spewing from the very ground.

I hear in California and New York there are gentle folk who weep for the distress toward which he’s sent, a sentiment sure to shatter hardened judgments.

It was Pastor F.R. who called upon me, saying “now there is a faithful one who has need of you.”

And that good Presby, enemy of all that’s cruel, came to where I was, sitting beside G.R., soldier of the people,

Who said, “you, G, bright promised one, please help him who loves your church so much, that, despite the vulgarness he yet weeps at Watts and Wesley.

Do you not hear his anguished cries? Do you not see the death he wars against upon that river tepid and brown as tea?

Few within the Grove has been quick to see his good analysis, and I fear he’s soon to flee this state – so _speak_ to him, and soon!

This is why we both have crossed the denominated boundary and come to speak to you; we trust your honest utterance, and more’s the point, there’s many folks that honor you.”

When Pastor F. had finsh’ed his call, I could hear the hitch in his voice, and knew he spoke the truth.

And just as he had wished, I met with you; I snatched you from the path of that fierce beast that barred the shortest path into my lot.

So what is it then? Why, why do you resist? Why does your heart host so much cowardice? Where is your daring and your open word?

As long as there are three such blessed pastors concerned for you within the churches, and I’ve already promised you much access?

As a little truth, which the chill of hate has bent and blasted, but when the sun of righteousness beams down, grows straight and open fully on its stem,

So we all, with our exhausted force, are risen with healing on His wings – leap with joy and pursue your way!

Such comfort did I take from this – hearing the word of my favorite hymn – that I thanked him promptly:

“You’ve disposed my heart to take up the task, and return to what I was called to do. Let’s go. You are my guide and you’ve given me will.” These were my words to him; and so we paid the bill.

And I entered back into that heat and savage day.

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I apologize in advance if what I write this week is (a) obscure to non-academics, and (b) cranky bordering on crazy.

I just returned from my profession’s annual conference. For the sake of scantily-clad anonymity, I will only say that it occurred in a large Northeastern city that has been declining in population for, oh, 50 years now, home to several nationally-known colleges and universities, best known for its place in our nation’s history, and recently featured in a pretty-decent Bruce Willis sci-fi flick we’ll call “A Dozen Simians.”

God I miss urban spaces. Taking the train in from the airport and dragging my luggage through the streets in the sticky heat, I wanted to get down on my knees and kiss that filthy pavement in thanks that there exist in this country cities, real cities, not these disgusting Potemkin suburban mock-ups of which David Brooks is so enamored. I walked everywhere. Where I didn’t walk, I took cabs. I ate in dive bars that served gourmet food. I drank good gin done right, with three onions and a whisper of vermouth. I was accosted by homeless men and Seventh Day Adventists. It was glorious.

It was, for an academic conference, what I have come to expect: lots of nerds running around with name tags (my personal favorite was when someone turned theirs around and wrote on it: “Not Famous, Not Hiring.”). Too many people saying shit that sounded pretentious and meant less than they hoped I thought it did. A few people, a precious remnant, presenting work that was new, and interesting, and clear. In sum, the usual.

I attend a plenary session (I always wondered what that word “plenary” meant: turns out it means “perfect” or “fully constituted”; this session was neither). This was on “the rightward turn in US politics” and featured (a) the president of our association, a rather nice fellow, (b) a historian by the name of Dan Carter, of the University of South Carolina (as in, “Go Cocks!”), (c) Lani Guinier (of Harvard Law) and Gerald Torres (of UT-Austin), and (d) Thomas Frank (of “What’s the Matter with…,” etc., fame).

Prof. Carter went first, sounding like C. Vann Woodward, come back from the dead to lay out for us once again the burden of history. There is nothing quite as bracing as the clear-eyed truth spoken by an aristocratic Southern liberal – perhaps it has something to do with the self-knowledge that they are traitors to their caste and class. He talked of the use of race by conservative Republicans, starting with George Wallace and continuing up to Newt Gingrich and the present. He spoke plainly of the viciousness of the right, of the ugly legacy of Southern Populism, of the nasty meanness bred and nurtured by years of hateful sermons spewed forth from the foam-flecked lips of fundamentalist preachers. He was decidedly not optimistic; his was a realist view, and he clearly wanted advice from his colleagues on the panel about how to avoid the apocalypse.

His colleagues did not, sadly, provide such advice.

First, Lani Guinier got up and gave a talk she has clearly been giving for at least 10 years, saying “it’s about race, everybody! Politics in America is about race! Oh, yeah, and it’s about class! It’s about race AND class, everybody! Not race INSTEAD OF class! Not race OR class!.” Etc. Ad naseum. Speaking to a roomful of perhaps 1000 sociologists as if we had never read Weber. This is intellectual insight? For this the woman got tenure at Harvard Law School? A good deal of her talk was taken up by a “debate” with her colleague, Prof. Torres, about whether history is a “spiral” or a “moebius strip” – all of which made me want to stand up and scream “just call it Dame Fortuna and stop pretending this is new!”

Then Mr. Frank got up and gave an unreconstructed Marxist rant about how Southerners and rural Midwesterners have been hoodwinked into abandoning their class interests, how they cultivate a culture of victimhood and anti-intellectualism directed against the “liberal elites”, all while their Republican task-masters gleefully pull the strings of the new economy, cashing in on the tax cuts and the business deregulation happily provided them by their working-class supporters, etc. Saying this in tones of the most dripping, sneering, sarcasm; positively mocking the cadences of a Baptist preacher, calling up out of his audience not “amens” but hoots of laughter. And all of those pointy-headed intellectuals lapped that shit up, chuckling at the thought of those poor ignorant rubes, with their stupid accents, and their pathetically misguided politics, rotting in their potato-sack exurbs.

And following this? The president of the association proceeded to “tie things together” by saying, essentially, “now wasn’t that interesting, folks? I detected a debate between our speakers: is politics in America about race? Or is it about class? Let’s discuss!”

I left, nauseous with disgust and rage. It was all I could do not to stand up and start yelling: are you people blind? Did you not hear what Prof. Carter said? The knives are out – they had their second Justice Sunday broadcast and they openly declared that we are the enemy. They are arming their militias even now, and there is gunfire in the night in Crawford. You may think that because you live in Berlin that the cabarets will always be filled with dancing girls and liquor. But I live in Munich and I know that this is not a matter for laughing – they are calling us traitors, and the only justice for traitors is to be put up against a wall and shot. It may be faggots like me that they round up first, to sacrifice on the altar of their God of Death and Money, but make no mistake, motherfuckers, the bell is tolling now and it is tolling for each and every one of you.

I have got to get out of Texas before it drives me completely, irreversibly, batshit-insane.

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As you may or may not have heard, Texas will, come November, decide upon several referenda on state constitutional amendments. Aside from some petty procedural shit, there are two “real” issues at stake: parental consent to abortion, and an amendment that would lift out of statute and place into the constitution language that would (a) bar same-sex marriages, and (b) prohibit the recognition of any legal status identical to or similar to marriage.

Now, there is a whole set of things I could say about this latter amendment: why it is bad law, why it is on the ballot, why it is on the ballot this November and not next year, why it is driving me positively batty talking to people who have read Lakoff (boy do I have a bone to pick with that book), why straight people should care, etc…

(think about that second clause for a bit and it will come to you why you can kiss goodbye things like common-law marriage, domestic-violence statutes as applied to live-in boyfriends/girlfriends, palimony, etc.)…

But I’d rather do something else at the moment. By way of butchering a classic of the Western canon, I would rather regale you with the tale of my journey speaking with people of faith in this here city of the North Texas plain. So, without further ado, but with all due apologies to Dante Alighieri, Robert and Jean Hollander, and most of all to you, gentle reader, here is:

Canto I

Midway through to election-time
I found myself near the NorthEast Mall
For I was hella lost.

Ah, how hard it is to describe
The nature of the Mid-Cities: Worst, Useless, and Bedridden
The very thought of them makes me shudder.

They are so vicious, Modesto is hardly more so
But to set forth what good I found there
I shall recount the other things I saw

How I came there I would rather not tell
The Airport Freeway?
Doubtless I forsook the scenic route, if it exists.

But when I reached the foot of a hill
There where Hurstview ended,
A street that had surely filled my heart with bile,

Looking up, I saw church ramparts
And a sign with lights, saying
“Good Luck or Providence?”

Then the fear that had built up
In the pit of my stomach, all the drive
I spent in such stress, was, well, not calmed exactly, but at least I knew where the hell I was finally.

As one who, with panting breath
Has escaped from deepest Wautauga to the shore
Of East FoWo, turns and looks back.

So my mind, still in panic from the drive
Turned ‘round to look down Pipeline at the posse of Pentecostal chuches
From which no mortal faggot ever left alive.

After I had composed myself
I took my turn into the parking lot, a vast expanse of concrete waste
Sloping into a ditched creek

But now, near the top of the lot
An Impala, light and swift
And covered in Bush stickers

Refused to yield
But so impeded, barred the way
That I wondered whether to turn around

It was the hour of afternoon
When the sun mounts, along with the ozone count
Burning the skin and throat with God’s own fury

Having managed to enter the lot
Despite the beastly driver with the gaudy dress
I still could hope for good, even considering

The hour of the day, and the foul air.
But I was yet again struck by fear
When I beheld a Hummer in my way.

He seemed about to run me down –
His grille up high and furious with gas-guzzling hunger
So that the air appeared to ripple around him (perhaps it was the heat).

And then a Camaro that, all Bondo and Leatherette
Seemed charged with all the appetites (meth?)
That have made many live in wretchedness.

So weighed down my spirits were with terror
That wells up at the sight of such a driver
That I nearly lost all of hope of making it to the church door.

And being one who rejoices when Democrats win
But when the time comes and he knows he’ll lose this election,
Turns all his thoughts to sadness and lament,

Such did the restless crank-lady make me –
Coming toward me, step by step
That I gunned down to where the parking was shady.

While I was fleeing to this lower lot,
Before my eyes a figured showed,
Faint, in that suburban silence.

When I saw him in that vast desert,
“Have mercy on me, whatever you are,”
I cried, “whether Republican or Democrat!”

He answered: “Not a Republican, though once I was.”
My parents were from the Red River Country –
Sherman was their homeland.”

I was born under Kennedy’s admin, though late in his time
And lived here in Fort Worth, under good Prez Johnson
In an age of false and lying Dixiecrats.

I am a reverend, and I preach
The good word of Jesus, crucified and risen
Our judge and our hope.

But you, why are so shaky with panic?
You are on time for our appointment – why not come in
And enjoy the air conditioning – the origin and cause of every joy?

Are you then M—- M—-, the fountainhead
Of progressive theology
In this godforsaken town?

O envy and light of all the other preachers
Recommended by the retired liberal lion
Of Fort Worth, G— F—-

Be my teacher and my sponsor
You are the one from whom I can
Learn to speak in gospel-tones.

Did you see that speed addict that forced me to turn back?
Save me from her – was she here
To ask for benevolence?

Oh her? Yes, she was looking for Pathways addiction center
He answered, when he saw me pointing.
She would flee that wild and savage drug.

For the beast that moves her to such a jankety place
Lets no man out of its clutches
But so besets them that she – Tina, I mean – must slay them.

Her nature is so vicious and malignant
Her greedy appetite is never sated
After you feed her she is hungrier than ever.

Sadly, there are many in this town that are be-methed
And there will probably continue to be more, until
We elect a Leader that will drive out this scourge.

He shall not feed on corporate corruption or demagoguery
But on the environment, just taxation, and sound foreign policy.
Surely in a blue state shall be his birth.

He shall be the salvation of this benighted South
For which the Philadelphia Four, and Emmitt Till,
And Bobby and Martin and so many more bled and died.

He shall hunt that beast, and others, through every town
Till he has sent them back to political hell
Whence hate-mongery and envy set them loose.

But be that as it may, I think it wise
That we follow me in your car to lunch: I shall be your guide
Leading you, from here, across town

Where you shall hear despairing cries from Eulessites
And see those ancient souls in pain
As they bewail the second death of living in NRH.

Then you will see the ones are fat and sassy
To burn because the hope to come
Someday, to be among the blessed in Blue.

Should you desire to ascend to these
You’ll have to find someone else to lead you there
– I’ll introduce you to them.

For until we have a true President in DC
My denomination wills not that I rebel against its law –
And therefore I can neither marry gays nor dabble in politics.

And I answered: Reverend, I ask you
By the God you seem to know
That I may escape this harm and worse.

Lead me to the realms you’ve just described
That I may see the Golden Gate
As well as those you tell me are sorrowful.

Then he got in his car and I came on behind him.

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