Further Ruminations on the Evil that Triumphs in Backrooms of the Amerikan State
Upon reading my blog entitled "Kick Down the Idol that's in the Corner and a Little Dusty" a friend observed "you know that really surprised me because you wrote it like you're a flaming liberal. And I know you're not." He's right - I'm not. I'm really a rather conservative liberal, and that is not an oxymoron. I am a ex-flaming liberal who passed through the flame of liberalism only to get burned, so that left me a little cold, smoldering and crispy. So a lot of my liberalism has been replaced by cynicism.
Someone like Ann Coulter, though, is so irritating to every fibre of my being that a little of the old flame laps up again; ergo that rant. However, since I wrote that, something has happened that, probably for the wrong reasons, gives me pause - and a glimmer of hope about the Ann Coulters of the world. Wally George passed away a couple of weeks ago.
Wally who? you may ask. Back when Morton Downey Jr. was the king of conservative talk trash TV, Wally George was its little wanna-be Hitler. Whereas Downey's show was fimed before a live audience and carried on an over-the-air network in syndication, George was barely on TV. His chat sessions were usually carried on cable or tiny local stations at odd times like early Sunday or Saturday morning. His set was nothing more than a desk, two chairs and old glory on a stick; his guests didn't even stay as long as they did for Downey, usually storming off the set in five minutes or less. Compared to Wally George, Morton Downey Jr. was a "liberal"; boy did Wally George use to make my blood boil.
But now he's gone, felled by a heart attack at age 74. And no one -no one- cared. He was father to actress Rebecca DeMornay, a fact which caused her much embarassment back in the Reagan era when his show was hot. The one tiny obit that I read about George, barely a full paragraph long, devoted more of its words to the fact that he was DeMornay's father than to his work as a host of a conservative TV talk show.
Come to think of it, when Morton Downey, Jr. died at age 65 of lung cancer, not too many people seemed to care much then either. If his death had happened when his show was at its peak, it would've been a national tragedy. But he had long been off the air, had discredited himself through a number of foolish stunts, and was a very public advocate of cigarette smoking that came down with cancer - no one felt much sorry for him.
Arthur Koestler once quipped "Old communists never die; they just find something else to believe in." Indeed, most diehard lefties either stay left or drift off into another field of activism. But hardcore conservatives who are very public and out front, shall we say, seem to go through this cycle of burning hot, cooling off, getting discredited and drifting into obscurity. I'm not saying this is true of all, but it certainly seems to apply to the many or most.
We may remember or have heard something of Adlai Stevenson, but few of us would remember anything about Barry Goldwater or Phyllis Schlafly. We easily remember guys like Senator Sam Ervin and Hubert Humphrey, but I really have to strain my brain to think of fellows like MacGeorge Bundy, Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen or good ol' Earl Butz of the Ways and Means Committee. Why is that?
I think it may come down to the character of people - liberals tend to be more colorful and interesting people than conservatives. Or perhaps it's my own perception of history. I've heard someone say that republicans accuse democrats of wasting too much money and democrats accuse republicans of sexual impropriety, wheras in most cases the opposite is really true. I propose that if you that flip over the coin the observe is true also, or in theoretical terms x+y = (yx or xy).
Conservatives are less concerned than liberals about showing a sense of kindness to others and demonstrating publicly a lack of self-interest. Conservatives prefer an image related to toughness and and an air responsibility, even if their words are patently irresponsible. For that reason it is easier for us to put "old conservatives" out of our minds once they're gone. But remember the theorem - even among liberals there
is self-interest; otherwise they wouldn't be in politics. Something to remember for the upcoming round of elections. Okay, that's enough.
Uncle Dave Presents Your Heresy for Today
Our heretical teaching for this evening comes from the lost Gospel of the Egyptians. It is believed to have been composed in Egypt in the first half of the Second Century C.E. While the book itself does not survive, some of the chroniclers of the early church thought enough of it quote certain passages. This reputed saying of Christ, taken from the Gospel of the Egyptians, is known in at least two forms:
Clement of Alexandria (Athens, 150 C.E. - Jerusalem c. 215 C.E)
from "Stromata" (Miscellanies, III 91ff)
When Salome inquired when the things concerning which she asked should be known, the Lord said: When ye have trampled on the garment of shame, and when the two become one and the male with the female is neither male nor female.
Anonymous
from "The Second Epistle of St. Clement" (not by him, but likewise dating from the first half of the Second Century, C.E.), c. xii. 2:
For the Lord himself being asked by some one when his kingdom should come, said: When the two shall be one, and the outside (that which is without) as the inside (that which is within), and the male with the female neither male nor female.
However, this may be a garbled form of a couple of quotations from Jesus that are likely genuine, though not in the Synoptic Gospels, to wit:
The Gospel of Thomas (ca. 95 CE)
Logia 37
His disciples said, "When will you appear to us, and when will we see you?"
Jesus said, "When you strip without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample then, then [you] will see the son of the living one and you will not be afraid."
and note Logia 114, same text:
Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life." Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven."
Feminists should like that pronouncement.
Uncle Dave Lewis
uncledavelewis@hotmail.com