In this week’s edition of the Sunday Seven, I asked you to name seven stories that resonated with you in 2007.

Here are the stories that struck me as notable:

7. John McCain Tours Iraq to prove how safe its streets are.

The presidential campaign had already been underway, but I think this was one of the moments that would launch the lunacy that was to come.

McCain made his own story one step sillier when he criticized the media for not giving the American people the “whole story” about how good things were getting in Iraq. Unfortunately for Mr. Tell-It-Like-It-Is, I (and others) pointed out what he was probably hoping his followers wouldn’t know:

While it’s true that McCain was able to walk the streets of Iraq as he never has before, the marketplace he visited was located within the city’s “green zone,” a heavily-secured area. When outside of that zone, he was accompanied by about 100 armed soldiers, about 20 of whom went with him inside the safe portion of the city. McCain was outfitted in what appeared to be a bulletproof vest, and was being protected from the sky by three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships.

With a bulletproof vest, 20 armed escorts, gunships and helicopters, I’d probably feel pretty safe walking the streets of an already heavily protected area, too.

6. Democrats Take Over Congress

The much-ballyhooed take over of Congress by Democrats for the first time in a dozen years promised to be the start of repairs to our country’s image in the rest of the world, the rightings of legions of wrongs committed by the “Bush Empire,” the hope of the working man, the cure for cancer, and just about every end to every other bit of badness you can think of.

With that kind of expectation (that they had the misfortune of helping build on their own), some level of disappointment was to be … uh … expected. But you can’t escape the feeling that they just didn’t do nearly enough of the things they were so sure they would.

We’re still pretty much where we were with the notable exception that now people are more quick to express their dissatisfaction with the president and Congress.

This “great hope of Democracy” would get another black eye late in the year when it was learned that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats were briefed back in 2002 on “waterboarding,” a torture method that was part of the plan in the War on Terror, and apparently not only failed to raise objections, but asked if it was strong enough as a way to get information out of potential bad guys.

A rights violation is a rights violation, regardless of what side of the political spectrum you’re on, and regardless of how many days after 9/11 you learn of it: if it was so wrong now, it was so wrong then.

5. Barker Retires from The Price is Right

Lest someone ask, yes, I do realize that in the grand scheme of things, the changing of the guard at a game show should rank right up there with the importance of the debate about how much settling is acceptable during shipment for a bag of Doritos.

On the other hand, it was my favorite show (and some other people’s, too), a show I (and some others) grew up with, and a day that I (and some others) hoped we’d never see: daytime dynamo Bob Barker, the silver-haired host dubbed the “World’s Greatest Master of Ceremonies” by the late Mark Goodson, hanging up that trademark skinny microphone for the last time.

The announcement of his retirement came around Halloween of 2006. His final show aired on June 15th, and his replacement, Drew Carey, didn’t make his debut until the middle of October, following a ridiculously-long search for a replacement.

Some argued that Barker was “forced” to retire because he was old. While it’s true that 83-year-olds aren’t exactly spring chickens, the idea that it would take so long to find a successor to the CBS Daytime throne suggests that CBS (and ‘TPIR’ owner Fremantle) had no real exit strategy.

Where have I heard that phrase before?

4. Students Killed in Beach House Fire

A monumental tragedy that elicited both genuine sadness at the loss of seven South Carolina college students (six from USC, one from Clemson) and feigned shock at rumors that some of the students who had spent the evening in the beach house — all of whom were under the legal drinking age — had been drinking.

College kids, lest anyone else out there missed a memo somewhere along the way, drink. Excessively. Unbelievably. Insatiably. And before one hangover is gone, they’re already working on the next one.

True, not all of them do. But it’s generally a safe bet that when you gather a group of college teens into a beach house with no adults over the age of 30 or so around, someone’s going to find a way to get alcohol.

Clemson University said it was going to review its “alcohol policy.” If its policy is anything other than “people under the legal age to drink shouldn’t,” then I’d say the review is worthwhile; it’s just a shame that it took this kind of tragedy to make that happen.

3. Williams-Brice Stadium Fills Up For Obama Rally

A little backstory here: my first “officially” published rant was in the form of a Letter to the Editor of The State newspaper back in 1986 or so. It was for a high school English class. We were instructed to pick a topic and argue a valid point. I chose the Confederate Flag that at the time was flying atop the Statehouse dome. I argued that while I had no objections to the flag being displayed within the context of a Confederate Memorial of some kind, I felt that it had no business flying on the dome because it no longer represented a shred of valid government in session below the dome itself. (Yes, a white guy in South Carolina actually wanted the flag to come down.)

Unfortunately, it would take about another 14 years of bickering, maneuvering and pointless posturing before it actually would be lowered for the last time, (and don’t get me started about that “compromise” business).

Fast-forward seven years, to 2007, when a planned event for a black presidential candidate to be introduced by a black entertainment icon had so many requests for tickets that it had to move to the 80,000+ capacity Williams-Brice Stadium.

Whether anyone in attendance actually votes for Barack Obama or not, for a brief moment they listened to what a black man had to say about how he’d actually run the nation. Just barely into the 21st century, South Carolina seemed to have finally inched its way towards new possibilities.

2. Massacre at Virginia Tech

Much like my pick for the number one story of the year, this one began quietly, with reports of a “possible casualty.” Over the next few hours, it would go from rumors that one person may have been wounded, to a painful reality that 33 were gunned down in the nation’s worst mass shooting in history.

The release of a videotape and written tirade by the gunman would send the blogosphere into a frenzy of debate. And a poem read at a memorial service captured a campus’s spirit that you had to admire.

1. Nine Charleston Firefighters Killed in Furniture Store Fire

It was the biggest loss of firefighters since 9/11, and I found myself on the scene. I had done a bit of shopping at Charleston’s Citadel Mall, which is one major street over from the location of the Sofa Super Store. As I was walking to my car, I noticed a thick column of black smoke. It looked like the kind of smoke one sees when a junkyard burns tires. So for a few seconds, I dismissed it. But as I took a few more steps towards my car, I realized two important points: first, the column of smoke was far too big for something like that, and second, there was no junkyard and no other practical location where such a fire should be burning in that particular area.

I made my way to the scene, saw a massive fire shooting out of the back of the store’s warehouse, and called the newsroom over at Channel 37. They already had one crew on the scene, I was assured, and others were on the way.

Part of my responsibilities there include helping supervise the station’s website. Oddly enough, I officially took on those added responsibilities on that very day, June 18th. (How’s that for timing?)

So I made my way back to the station, logged in and started writing. At first, it seemed clear that there were going to be no injuries…just an incredible blaze, the kind of breaking story that produces footage that a television station will use in promos for years to come.

Television, after all, is a visual medium. Anything that shows a news story actually happening —versus seeing a reporter standing at the scene of a story that already happened but where nothing is happening at that moment — better suits the needs of the medium. Just as the sound of something happening is more compelling to a radio listener than a reporter’s description of what was heard previously. It’s just the way it works.

But as I was getting ready to turn updates over to the capable assignment desk, we heard something over the scanner that changed everything: there was a firefighter who was unaccounted for. As the evening wore on, the number increased until it reached 11, then dropped back to nine. And there, sadly, it stayed.

Thousands of people, including firefighters from across the country, showed up for the emotional nonuple funeral, during which Fire Chief Rusty Thomas told personal stories about each one. It was a day when the cliché, “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house” clearly applied.

These were my picks for the year. If you want to play along, there’s always time.

As Patrick’s Place begins its 5th year, I thought I would take a quick look back at 2007, and try to pick the best single entry for each of the twelve months of the previous year.

January: Comparing Storms: A publicized email from someone claiming to be an emergency official somewhere in Colorado was an attack on the victims of Hurricane Katrina and an unfair comparison of the impact and aftermath of a category five hurricane and a severe blizzard.

February: Taking Offense: A slip-up by Parade magazine gets someone riled because it mentions a famous horse after the horse’s death. Okay, okay…it was an embarrassing mistake…but was it serious enough to “offend” someone?

March: Much Ado About “Politics As Usual”: Commentator Ann Coulter made a mean comment about John Edwards. People went ballistic and the sweeping generalizations started flying. I decided to point about a few important points about mudslinging from both sides.

April: The College Massacre and Prayer in Schools: What would make a college student gun down 32 of his classmates? Well, I had an idea of one thing that didn’t cause that particular tragedy.

May: Politics and the Race Card: A local columnist says Charleston is “due” for a black mayor. I suggested that there might be one qualification more important than race.

June: The Nine: After a week of editing footage of the deadly Sofa Super Store fire, I found the time — and the need — to visit the site of the tragedy in person.

July: Sanctity: A senator’s name appears in the address book of the “D.C. Madam.” He supported efforts to protect the “sanctity of marriage.” So I had a few questions.

August: Off the Cuff: A remark made in jest at church started nagging at me, so I wanted to set the record straight about my views about God.

September: Everything That’s Wrong with Christianity: A comment about the Lord’s Prayer led me to some important points believers should consider.

October: Halloween Party or Fall Festival?: Another annual pointless debate about holiday nomenclature. But this year, I’d had enough, and pointed out an opportunity Christian parents keep missing year after year.

November: When is it Really Discrimination?: If you spend your time walking around expecting discrimination and looking for it at every turn, you can easily find it, even when it’s really not there.

December: It’s About Tolerance, Not Belief: In response to a fellow blogger’s post about the difference between theists and atheists, I suggested that tolerance isn’t dependent on how much or little one is willing to accept when it comes to religion.

Well, that’s my list of twelve entries. Now it’s your turn: can you come up with one post per month that you feel is the best of your blog? Consider yourself tagged…and leave a link so I can revisit some of your standout posts from 2007.

Over at his blog Aurora Walking Vacation, Paul writes about the difference between theists and atheists, pointing out this fact:

Atheists do not try to shelter their children from media that might suggest points of view that differ from the one they hold.

The unfairness of sweeping generalizations can easily help an otherwise reasonable argument miss the mark. I could easily take the argument in another direction and point out that I haven’t seen Christians marching in the streets protesting a particular film’s “attacks” and demanding the execution of the filmmakers for a perceived slight of their God. But that doesn’t really get to the meat of the problem, either.

The fact is that I’ve known many athiests and agnostics whose minds are as closed as Fort Knox. I try my best to be one of the more open-minded of “theists.”

One’s mind is not automatically open or closed based on whether or not you consider yourself accepting of a particular religion or of religion in general.

Each year, as we debate the appropriateness of the word Christmas in the holiday season and its marketing by retailers, it could well be a Jehovah’s Witness or a Jewish person who feels compelled to argue for a more generic “Happy Holidays” before an atheist would. And those people are as much “theists” as the Christians they would likely incite by such a notion.

When it comes to how you deal with others, I think it’s important to be respectful of other people’s beliefs (or lack thereof) even if they disagree with your own. To respect someone else’s point of view isn’t to accept it as fact; it is simply to recognize that not everyone else happens to share your own.

Perhaps the argument shouldn’t be about theists and atheists, but rather religious and anti-religious: you can be non-religious and not particularly anti-religious, and you can be the most religious person in the room and still do more damage to the concept of religion in other people’s minds than the least religious person in the room does.

It’s funny how discrimination is perceived. Sometimes, we’re sure we’re the targets of it, even when those slights we are so convinced are directed at us aren’t really slights at all.

Earlier this month, a federal judge expressed concern over the suggestion that our current system of currency discriminates against the blind. Blind people have difficulty distinguishing between the dollar bill and, say, a $50 dollar bill. That presents an obvious problem, and forces them, pretty much, to rely either on caregivers, the kindness of strangers, or debit/credit cards.

Some courts have determined, therefore, that our system of currency discriminates against the blind.

The aforementioned judge wasn’t so sure:

“‘Where does this stop?’ asked Judge A. Raymond Randolph. Are postage stamps illegal? Government Web sites? When mail carriers leave handwritten notes on front doors, are they discriminating against blind people?

“‘The National Gallery is having a Hopper exhibit,’ Randolph said. ‘Those paintings, do they violate the Rehabilitation Act?’”

What lengths have to be taken to create completely equal access without “discriminating” against the sighted?

Should art galleries close their doors or be penalized because the blind cannot use their services? Sure, it seems like a silly question. But here’s one that maybe isn’t as silly: should such institutions lose governmental funding because a certain percentage of the population is unable to use them?

The sad reality is that not everyone is equal: there are handicaps. (I’m sorry if that word is offensive, but I’m not sure what the current “politically-correct” substitute for handicap, when used in general terms, is at this particular moment.) Maybe, if I were blind, I might feel differently. I suspect, however, that I would accept the fact that there are limitations that I just have to deal with. Just as I must deal with certain limitations based on my size and fitness level. I don’t demand, for instance, that local municipalities stop funding events like marathons because I haven’t always been in good enough shape to participate.

Our constitution says that all men were created equal. But everyone does have his own unique set of gifts and deficiencies, and no matter how hard society works to equalize those disparities, there’s only so much that can be done.

Am I comparing apples to oranges? Maybe…I’m not sure.

Meanwhile, NBC’s Brian Williams recently came under fire after a comment he made on the air and on his Daily Nightly blog over at MSNBC.com. Continue reading “When Is It (Really) Discrimination?”

With Halloween just days away, many churchgoers are engrossed in the annual debate: should they allow their kids to go trick-or-treating or should they forego the celebration of a “pagan holiday” and go instead to the more “innocent” fall festivals many churches have planned as a safe alternative?

Over at ChristianBlog.com, one writer raises the following points about a planned Fall Festival:

1) This festival has been held the last 3 years and always around Halloween.
2) Children are invited to attend in costume.
3) Children receive candy for playing games.

These three reasons in my mind say that this is nothing but a Halloween party in disguise. Why are we as Christians not only participating in a pagan holiday but holding a party for it in our church. I know for many Christians the pagan routs of this holiday are long forgotten. But that is not the point.

Actually, that is the point. It’s the whole point. And it’s a point that a lot of Christians seem far too capable of missing.

When a child dresses up as a favorite super hero, goes door to door in his neighborhood, and accepts candy from kindly neighbors, is he sinning because he is commemorating the practices of pagans who were only out to sin?

I don’t think so. What he is doing has nothing…absolutely nothing…to do with a pagan ritual. The child isn’t trying to embrace paganism. The child is merely play-acting.

The same kind of fight comes up now in the spring, when it’s time to celebrate Easter. There are many Christian parents who don’t want their children getting anywhere near Easter eggs. Why? Continue reading “Halloween Party or Fall Festival?”

I spent part of the weekend in Columbia helping my mom on a project. While I was home, I made every effort to do a post, and to approve a few comments. Unfortunately, my parents’ computer, a low-end eMachines model, and a ridiculously slow dial-up connection with AOL made connecting with the internet a twenty-minute ordeal. And once I finally made it to the blog, it took forever for the login to work and the comments window to appear so that I could approve them.

I think I got most of them up, but by that time, I was pretty much done.

So I plundered around in my immediate surroundings, the room that used to be my room and has now become a sort of a “junk room.” It is full of material and fabrics my mom is planning to use one day (when she gets around to it) on some sewing or quilting project. There are also lots of old clothes that mom is in the process of sorting to give to relatives or local thrift stores and homeless shelters. And there are some of my old things in there as well, taking up space. We’re packrats, you see, and we always will be, despite our best efforts to not be.

One of the things I found fascinated me. It was an old checkbook. It contained a register and a few blank checks from a long-closed account at a bank that hasn’t existed (thanks to merger after merger) for ten years or more. But what fascinated me so much about this particular checkbook was that it belonged to my grandmother, the one who would have been 100 this past June, and who died 25 years ago this past March.

It had been a joint account shared by my mom (her daughter). My mom did most of the check-writing for this particular account, which wasn’t surprising because mom helped her mom with her money. But this clearly was a side account, because there weren’t that many checks written; the register started in 1975 and had entries through May of 1982, two months after my grandmother passed away. Some of the entries were written by my grandmother, and it was fascinating to see her handwriting, which wasn’t as neat as my mom’s and had that “older person’s” penmanship. Those of you who have seen your own grandparents’ handwriting and have noted oddities in the way certain letters are written, or who have seen historical documents from the turn of the century surely know what I mean.

What was particularly interesting to me was the timeline toward the end of the register.

My grandmother died of cervical cancer that had spread. By the fall of 1981, she had been feeling more and more run down, but wouldn’t go to a doctor. There were other symptoms that indicated something serious was going on, but she didn’t tell anyone about them for a few months. By the time she finally said something and was taken to a doctor by her concerned children, some time in late November or early December, the diagnosis was that she had stage five cancer, the worst stage in terms of chances of survival.

There was a check written to her doctor, whose name I hadn’t heard for many years, in early December. Then a check written to a nurse, and to a hospital. She started radiation treatments which were designed to shrink the tumor to allow for the possibility of surgery, even though the doctors probably knew it was far too late, around Christmas of 1981. She did about twenty treatments, and I think she did two or three per week as I recall — I was just 12 at the time — for several weeks.

The last entry she wrote was in early February, and it was written to the cable television company. Unlike other entries, which listed “CCTV,” for Columbia Cable Television as the payee, this one read simply, “TV” and was written in a more shaky, fragile writing than earlier entries.

Sometime in late December, a few nurses were hired to stay with her during the day. Entries indicating checks written to pay them continue through February. Then those stop.

There was an evening in mid February, 1982, when my grandmother was taking a nap in her room. My mom and my mom’s sister were in her kitchen, cooking a pot of butter peas and rice. (For those of you “Yankees,” butter peas are a lot like lima beans, but tend to be slightly more plump, slightly less “pasty” and have a little sweeter taste.) Butter peas and rice was one of my grandmother’s favorite dishes, which is a testament to her early years spent in a lower-income family that certainly wasn’t helped by the Great Depression.

While I was in the living room watching television, my uncle arrived and walked back to the bedroom to check on her. She came to the living room, seemed tired, and as she talked to him, she seemed to have trouble thinking of the right words to say. She wasn’t really slurring her words, but she seemed to stammer a bit at times. She said, at one point, that she couldn’t think of the right words. “You’re just tired,” I told her, and my uncle repeated the assurance. But that was the moment that I knew — for the first time — that she wasn’t going to survive; I had watched enough television shows to figure out that I was witnessing a stroke.

She was rushed to the hospital when that confusion didn’t get any better after a few minutes, and she had a second, more massive stroke that left her in a vegetative state. She died on March 1st.

It wasn’t the first time I had lost a family member to death, but her passing was the first of someone particularly close to me, and I felt that death a lot harder than I ever imagined possible. Twelve-year-olds rarely think about death, after all.

One of the final entries in the checkbook was written to the pastor that led her funeral. I still remember “The Old Rugged Cross” as one of the hymns played.

It’s funny how something as meaningless as an old checkbook register for an account that’s not worth the paper the checks are printed on can produce so many vivid memories. When I mentioned having found the checkbook, my mom said that she should probably throw some of that stuff away, but that she just hadn’t thrown away anything of hers.

I can understand that. I’m glad she’d kept that little checkbook all those years.

I’m sure some of you might be somewhat put off by the title of this post. But there is a story behind it.

Two years ago, I posted a new take on an old prayer in what was then my religion-themed blog, The Cross Examination.

What made it a “new take” was that it was the familiar Lord’s Prayer translated into the language that might be expected (or may actually be used) by Native Americans. I thought it was an interesting way to look at something we’d all learned at some point in our lives – usually in childhood — but may not have thought about in quite the same way.

Earlier this year, Paul of Aurora Walking Vacation, left a comment which began this way:

“I love The Lord’s Prayer. It is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the Christian religion.”

I’ve been meaning to respond to this post for some time, but not for the reason you might think. Continue reading “Everything That’s Wrong With Christianity”

I had a brief conversation at church recently with another member. During our chat, he asked me, innocently enough, about the turquoise wristband I wear.

The bracelet has to do with battling anxiety, I explained. It’s a subject that is near and dear to my heart. The actual organization that sends the bracelets out is Anxiety Disorders Association of America, but “ADAA” is a little difficult to work into conversation off the top of my head.

He mentioned the various wristbands out there, and we laughed about the fact that nearly every cause imaginable has its own band out there somewhere.

He mentioned that there used to be multicolored Christian bands. They match in design some bracelets composed of beads in a particular color pattern. I don’t recall the full layout off the top of my head, but if I saw one, I could give the full lineup. I know it begins with black, then red, then white, then about another four or five colors; the saying to explain it begins, “we are black with sin until Christ’s blood washes us white as snow.” I had never seen the wristband version of this, but he said that they’re not common anymore because the “gays” liked the rainbow colors and started using it for their own purpose.

I wanted to ask why Christians would stop wearing wristbands because someone else used a different multicolored wristband with a different color pattern. “What are Christians so afraid of?” I might have asked, but I decided to let that one go. Continue reading “Off the Cuff”

I haven’t commented, yet, on Sen. David Vitter’s name appearing in the records of a woman nicknamed a D.C. “madam.”

Unlike many Democrats — and Republicans who are fed up with certain aspects of their party — I am not particularly happy that Vitter was caught up in such a scandal. It does, after all, provide a painful bit of embarrassment for his family, especially his wife, who Vitter says forgave him years ago for whatever he might have done.

On the other hand, I do point to a page on Vitter’s own website, in which he comments about protecting the “sanctity of marriage:” Continue reading “Sanctity”

“Monday, June 18th is a day that our city will never forget. Never. We lost nine of the bravest men doing what they love to do best: fight fire. These guys were the best.”

–Chief Rusty Thomas
City of Charleston Fire Department

After a long week of coverage, a long week of sitting in an edit bay watching those images over and over again, reminding me of what it was like the week after 9/11, I went to the scene of the deadly fire in West Ashley.

It was the first time I had been by what used to be the Sofa Superstore since the night of the fire itself, when a thick black column of smoke made me curious and let me to drive by the fire just twenty minutes or so after firefighters first arrived on the scene.

Since that terrible night, when nine firefighters were lost, the public has erected a makeshift memorial to the fallen heroes. Nine white crosses made of PVC piping line the sidewalk in front of the burned-out structure. American flags, flowers, photographs, cards, stuffed animals and toy fire engines are among the items that have been added throughout the week.

Traffic along Highway 17 slows to a crawl in this area, as motorists slow to view the display.

In a word, it is heartbreaking. I knew it would be. But after a week of seeing it on videotape, I needed to see it in person.

Mourners walk along the sidewalk, reading posters written by young and old. Among them are firefighters from around the country. They came here Friday for the public memorial service. That morning, a procession of more than 300 fire trucks and first response vehicles made their way from downtown Charleston, past this scene, to the North Charleston Coliseum, where more than 20,000 people attended.

Some of those firefighters are still in town, not ready to leave just yet. Perhaps this was their final goodbye; maybe they needed to come here one more time.

I tried a couple of times to say something to them, but as I tried to come up with something — anything — that seemed like it might be remotely comforting, emotion got the better of me, and I knew I’d never be able to get a word out.

It seemed that a lot of people faced the same struggle. I saw many sets of eyes that focused on the firefighters wearing t-shirts from their own hometown department, even saw a few who took a few steps towards them. But there was that hesitation.

What do you say to them? “I’m so sorry for your loss” seems trite. “Thank you” doesn’t seem to come anywhere nearly close enough to the gratitude they are owed for being willing to put their lives on the line to save a stranger every single day.

The firefighter community is so strong. It is called a “brotherhood.” And I can’t think of a more appropriate term, because that is exactly what it is to them. These aren’t colleagues they lost: they were family members.

And as has been reported, this event was the single biggest loss of firefighters since September 11th.

As the out-of-town and out-of-state firefighters leave for home, they are placing t-shirts from their own departments on the shrubbery along the sidewalk. States from here all the way to California are represented in a final show of support: “We are here with you.”

More than once, I choked back some tears of my own. There is no way to prepare yourself for a scene like this. No matter how much you look at the photos or the videotape, it does not prepare you at all for the enormity of what you see when you get there.

I was actually beginning to congratulate myself for not losing my composure. Then I passed a scene that had been blocked from my view by a group of people. I don’t really know why this is what got me, of all that is there to take in; I can’t explain how this hit a nerve harder than anything else. But for some reason, this was too much:

In memory:

Engineer Brad BaityCapt. Mike Benke

Firefighter Melvin Champaign

Firefighter James “Earl” Allen Drayton

Assistant Engineer Michael French

Capt. William “Billy” Hutchinson III

Engineer Mark Kelsey

Capt. Louis Mulkey

Firefighter Brandon Thompson

If I hear one more Christian take on that ugly “self-righteous” tone and suggest that the massacre at Virginia Tech is a direct result of our society’s removal of prayer in schools, I may just go ballistic.

It’s bad enough that someone would say such an insensitive thing at all. It ranks right up there with those church members who picket the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq and say that the reason the soldiers died had nothing to do with Iraqi snipers and everything to do with our society’s “acceptance” of homosexuality. Does our society really “accept” homosexuality? I must have missed that memo.

It’s even worse that they make the insinuation with a subtle undertone that indicates that they think those deaths are actually justified.

It turns my stomach. And looking at it from a “What would Jesus do?” perspective, I bet it turns His stomach, too.

I’m sorry, folks, but I refuse to believe that the God I worship would possess someone, force him to buy guns, then make him slaughter 32 innocent people just because there are others who don’t like prayer in public places. We all, any of us who want to, can pray at any time. We need not bring an event or a class or a meeting to a standstill for some public demonstration of prayer to be believers. We can pray silently any time we want.

I’m sure there were prayers happening in those classrooms as the gunman approached. And remember the shootings in Paducah, Kentucky in December of 1997? The targets were students who had just participated in a prayer circle. The shooter, reportedly, was a Christian who had just been confirmed at his church the spring before the shooting. Are these the kinds of people God would want targeted in making such a point?

Bad things happen to good people. Exceptionally bad things happen to extraordinarily good people. But I don’t choose to blame an evil, heartless, discompassionate God for them.

What if it’s those who insist that God caused this who are the ones who need to be praying more? Maybe they should be the ones asking for understanding rather than trying to speak for the God they seem to think they know so well. It’s just a guess, but I doubt that God needs them to speak for Him as much as they think He does.

It seems to me that anyone who could create everything that exists could handle speaking for Himself whenever He feels the time is right. And I suspect that when He does, the manner in which he delivers the message will be loving and just. That is what I would expect from the God I worship.

There was a time when I had every intention of voting for John McCain in 2008. It might have begun as early as 2000, in fact. The recent news item about the presidential candidate’s recent trip to Iraq, to make a point about the effectiveness of the War in Iraq, has shot that to hell.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not sad about ruling him out. I’m actually pleased that my decision has been made slightly easier so early in the race. But I am getting ahead of myself.

In case you aren’t familiar with the story, McCain, accompanied by Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, visited one of Baghdad’s oldest marketplaces last weekend, and told reporters that he felt much better about the effectiveness of the Bush administration’s troop surge because he felt so safe on the street.

He went on to describe the scene as being “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summer time.”

McCain then criticized the media for not giving Americans the “full picture” of the Iraqi situation:

“Things are better and there are encouraging signs. I’ve been here … many times over the years. Never have I been able to drive from the airport, never have I been able go out into the city as I was today.”

Ironically, McCain probably would rather the media not have provided a “full picture” of the visit itself! Then again, what’s good for the goose….

While it’s true that McCain was able to walk the streets of Iraq as he never has before, the marketplace he visited was located within the city’s “green zone,” a heavily-secured area. When outside of that zone, he was accompanied by about 100 armed soldiers, about 20 of whom went with him inside the safe portion of the city. McCain was outfitted in what appeared to be a bulletproof vest, and was being protected from the sky by three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships.

I think even I would feel safe walking the streets with that much protection around me. Maybe not.

It is unimaginable to me that people could look at the level of protection McCain’s visit required and believe that the media is intentionally downplaying the success in Iraq. When a presidential candidate tours the streets in an entourage of that much military might, then claims that the visit is proof of the safety and success of the security implementation, it should be an insult to our intelligence.

That certainly seems how it was perceived by some of the Iraqis who were in attendance. A 37-year-old textile merchant in that market had this to say of McCain’s appearance:

“They were laughing and talking to people as if there was nothing going on in this country or at least they were pretending that they were tourists and were visiting the city’s old market and buying [souvenirs]. To achieve this, they sealed off the area, put themselves in flak jackets and walked in the middle of tens of armed American soldiers.”

Another merchant was much more angry about what he saw:

“They were just making fun of us and paid this visit just for their own interests. Do they think that when they come and speak few Arabic words in a very bad manner it will make us love them? This country and its society have been destroyed because of them and I hope that they realized that during this visit.”

Somehow, I wouldn’t bet money on that from what McCain and Graham have said since they’ve returned.

The story isn’t that the American people aren’t getting the truth about how secure the streets of Baghdad are; the story is that the streets still aren’t secure enough that people can’t walk the streets without obvious fear of deadly violence.

I don’t for a moment downplay what our soldiers are risking their lives to accomplish there, nor do I think they aren’t committed to making Iraq safe. To be fair, there was a time, quite recently, when many markets like Shorja couldn’t even open for business because of the level of violence.

The fact that this one is open at all, even for what some are calling a clear publicity stunt, is certainly proof that the security situation has improved. But if we’re going to look at the “whole picture,” it seems reasonable to me that we should look at both sides: and when one side talks about being able to “walk freely” through the streets of Baghdad but seems only able to do so while under heavy military protection, you have to put those claims into perspective.

I’ve been shopping around for a church recently. Thanks to the internet, one can learn a lot about a church without setting foot inside. A church’s website is a powerful marketing tool for would-be parishoners. Of course, depending on your church’s stance on certain issues, it can also keep people away.

I was born and raised Southern Baptist. The older I’ve gotten, the less tolerate I have become of some Southern Baptist intolerance.

All churches have problems. All churches have some members that want to control things and who feel, because they may donate more money than others, that they should be able to call the shots. Sometimes the shots they call don’t really answer that famous question, “What would Jesus do?”

There are also some points of the Baptist faith that I strongly disagree with. One of them, for example, is the position of some Baptist churches that women do not belong in ministry. While browsing a few local Baptist church websites, I found statements that surprised me.

For example, on music:

We believe that worldly, pop, rock and some other forms of popular music are inappropriate to communicate the truth and character of God. We, therefore, reject Contemporary Christian Music and Christian Rock and use only those songs and melodies that are unmistakably godly.

The primary church I attended from my teenage years into my thirties did mostly traditional hymns, but there were also a mixture of more contemporary pieces with contemporary arrangements. Occasionally, there were prerecorded music tracks that were played during the performance. Other times, that church’s expanding musical ministry brought in additional instruments that gave a more contemporary feel to the music.

I don’t see anything wrong with that.

That’s not to say I want to hear rap music or hard rock in the sanctuary. But I don’t think that it offends God to have “modern” music played in celebration of His love any more than it would please Him to have pipe organs play music dating back to the 1800s.

Then there was a church whose site mentioned the philosophy that when it came to ministry, women should be neither seen nor heard, but rather sitting in the pews learning whatever the men had to say. I find this outdated view of the role of women in churches particularly offensive.

A few years ago, I attended a Baptist wedding. For years, couples have fought over whether the marriage vows should contain the word obey. The vows at this particular wedding took that several steps farther: the bride promised in her wedding vows that she would “lift up her husband as the spiritual leader of their family.”

Excuse me?!?

Granted, if they agreed to that, then it’s not my business. But at the same time, I’m amazed that such an idea would even come up: why must the husband be the “spiritual leader” of the family? Who’s to say that the wife couldn’t read a passage of the bible and have a clearer understanding of that passage’s application to their lives than her husband? Who’s to say that a woman preacher couldn’t do just as admirable a job as her male counterpart?

While I was in Richmond, I attended an Independent Baptist church that had a female preacher. I thought she was terrific. She gave meaningful sermons that resonated with me. Her effectiveness as a preacher wasn’t because she was a woman, of course, but had she been prevented from preaching because she wasn’t a man, her congregation would have missed out on what she had to say.

This belief that women should not be allowed to teach dates all the way back to the Garden of Eden:

1 TIMOTHY 2:
11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

I find such outmoded belief shocking. This is the 21st century. I think women have more than proven themselves since Eve’s transgression. But one of the churches I was planning to visit said on its webpage that its congregation believed that women had no place in ministry!

Even the Southern Baptist Convention lists this in its statement of faith:

He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.

Wives as servants? Sounds mighty 17th century to me. The bible has a lot of laws we don’t follow today because they seem so obviously outdated. I wonder why this is one we can’t seem to shake.

Then, there’s the ultimate pet peeve of mine found on a church site that actually uploads audio of sermons onto its website. With apologies to anyone who happens to attend this church, (which I will not name) here’s a brief look at what one local preacher had to say about one of the likely Democratic presidential candidates:

“There’s a certain lady that’s running for nomination of the Democratic party.”

Had I been in the church, I would have already started getting angry. He stated that he was neither Democrat or Republican — or even Independent. He said that whomever God wants in a leadership position should be the person God puts there. Then he said:

“But you can’t convince me on her being in there. Listen, guys: I’m not against women, not at all. I love my wife more than myself. … This woman is changing history. … If she gets nominated for the Democratic Party, there’s a very good chance that she could win. Now what’s going to happen when God sees all those changes, I’m not sure.”

I was in shock. Is this guy trying to suggest that God will come after us if Hillary is elected? On what grounds? Is God a Republican? I don’t think so.

I don’t mind religious people running for office. I don’t mind religious people working together to get people to go vote. I do mind, strongly, when politics are preached inside a church. Any time the government has anything to say about religion, church members can’t scream “Separation of Church and State” loudly enough. I expect churches to stay out of politics in terms of any “official position.” I think God gives us all the ability to make our own decision. The last thing I want, and the last thing I would tolerate, is some preacher telling me who I should vote for…especially when that endorsement comes during a church service.

If I were visiting when he went into that, I’d have slipped out the back way: that’s not why I would be there.

I was able to eliminate a lot of churches from my list just by visiting their websites. It saved me quite a bit of time, actually. Who would have thought that technology would lead people to God…or away from certain churches?

Ann Coulter recently raised a firestorm of protests when she used the six-letter f-word, a gay slur, while talking about Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

Some of Coulter’s defenders — why they exist, I don’t know — point out that she didn’t come right out and call Edwards gay. Here’s what she actually said:

“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go to rehab if you use the word, ‘f—–.’”

I think there can be no doubt about the implication.

But I don’t get the furor over Coulter. As I commented over at Carly’s “Ellipsis…Suddenly Carly:”

“She’s sort of the Anna Nichole Smith of political commentators, a person who’ll say anything, the more outlandish the better, so that she can then enjoy all the attention.”Do I cringe when I hear what she has said next? Not so much. Whenever the name is mentioned, I know something outrageous is coming next.

“I don’t know why people listen to her, or what they get out of it. Then again, I haven’t figured out the appeal of Jerry Springer, either.”

But as I look elsewhere in the blogosphere, and read what so many people are saying, a few more points come to mind.

If you’re a fan of Coulter, you lie in wait for jewels like this, because it will only get you that much more fired up against your political opponents. (Not that you really need any help.)

If you don’t like Coulter, or don’t agree with her politics — too often these days, not agreeing with one’s politics almost is the same thing as not liking them — then you should already know that anything she says is going to be unfair, unkind and inappropriate enough piss you off. Why listen?

People like Coulter, Limbaugh, Franken, Moore and their colleagues don’t mind one bit in distorting or manipulating things to make their side seem like the only reasonable, rational choice. And of course, if that were so true, they wouldn’t have to spend so much time convincing everyone that they’re right: if it were that clear, we’d all already know and that “other” side would have gone out of existence centuries ago!

I also don’t get the furor over “outrageous statements” made by politicos, particularly the widespread belief that it happens only on one side. It happens on both sides. (You all do realize that, right?)

For every Republican like Coulter, there’s a Democrat like Rep. Pete Stark, who said to a Republican colleague, “You thin you are big enough to make me, you little wimp? Come on. Come over here and make me, I dare you. You little fruitcake.”

For every Republican senator like George Allen, who uses a word like “macaca” to describe someone who looks different than his lily-white audience, there’s a Democratic senator like Robert Byrd, who pointed out, “There are white n—–s. I’ve seen a lot of white n—–s in my time. I’m going to use that word.” And if you want to compare Allen the presidential candidate rather than Allen the senator, then there are Democratic presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson who referred to Jews in New York as “hymies.”

For every entertainment personality like Rush Limbaugh, about whom liberal bloggers can’t seem to write new Oxycontin jokes quickly enough, there are folks like Bill Maher, who express regret that a recent assassination attempt against Vice President Dick Cheney failed.

And lest we forget those religious leaders, who certainly should understand the concept of “loving thy neighbor!” While there are the Pat Robertsons out there who call for the assassination of political leaders, there’s Fred Phelps, the preacher who often uses the same slur Coulter used (and more often, it’s three-letter alternate) and has taken to protesting the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq, claiming that their deaths were their just desserts because America is supporting (or failing to destroy) the “homosexual agenda.” Phelps is a former Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Kansas.

Politics should be about avoiding and ending hate, not propagating it at every turn. There are many reasons why, for all our talk, we seem to get so little accomplished. Examples like this are no doubt some of them.

So where do we go from here?

February is Black History Month. I mention this fact as a reminder for those of us who have fallen victim to the excitement of our celebrity-obsessed society and have spent the past few weeks watching the Anna Nichole Smith, James Brown or Brittney Spears controversies play out. I’m not going to discuss whether there should be a Black History Month; I’ll save that for later in the week. Instead, I’d like to talk about a recent news item.

Civil Rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton just learned that his family traces back to slaves owned by relatives of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.

He called the revelation one of the most shocking things of his life. He then said that the news brought a mixture of outrage and pride.

Huh?

In speaking about the conflicting emotions he has experienced since it was revealed that Sharpton’s great-grandfather was a slave owned by one of Thurmond’s cousins, he said this:

“It’s important for America, because in the story of the Thurmonds and the Sharptons, there’s the story of the shame and the glory of America. The shame is that people were owned as property, and the shame is that every time I write my name now, I will think about how I got that name. The shame is that I am the heir of those who were property to the Thurmond family.”But the glory is that Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948 on a segregationist ticket. I ran in `04 on a ticket of racial justice. I got 10 percent of the vote in South Carolina. I beat (former Vermont Gov.) Howard Dean and (retired Army Gen.) Wesley Clark in South Carolina.

“I wonder what my great-grandfather would have thought about that.”

I wonder that, too. But since I have no way of knowing, I’ll ask some of my own questions about this “furor.”

First, there’s that basic question: was Sharpton surprised to learn that his descendants were once slaves owned by white people in the South? Can any black person whose family was from the south possibly be surprised by such a finding? And in particular, can a Civil Rights leader from the south really be surprised by it? It is a sad, unfortunate fact of history that whites owned blacks before the Civil War. Blacks weren’t guests, weren’t tenants. They were property. I learned this back in middle school history. I thought that anyone who made it as far as ninth grade was fairly clear on this simple fact. Anyone who hasn’t gotten that by now has apparently spent decades not paying attention to history class and the country’s near-constant discussions of racism.

Sharpton said that he hopes he can take the name that was given to him because his great-grandfather was property and make that name stand for freedom-fighting. Does he, as a Civil Rights leader, not think that this is what he’s already been standing for? What else but freedom — from prejudice, from racism, from inequality — does a Civil Rights leader set as the ultimate goal of their quest?

Second, there’s the question of the slave owner. Would it have been less of a shock to him if the person who owned his great-grandfather hadn’t been related to Strom Thurmond, whom Sharpton believes was a racist? If so, how could that possibly be? The ownership of slaves was a common practice across the south at the time. It was accepted as normal. To that extent, and by today’s standards, all slave owners were racist, right? Why else would they willingly treat people as property? So what difference should it make whether Strom Thurmond’s family owned his ancestor or not? The “who” doesn’t change the “what.”

Third, there’s that follow-up question about that specific relative of the actual slaveowner. To wit, was Strom Thurmond a racist? It sounds like a silly question, since Thurmond ran on the “Dixiecrat” ticket, advocating segregation. But that was 1948. When Sharpton met Thurmond face to face in 1991, Sharpton admits that he wasn’t happy about Thurmond’s past. The thing is, there are a lot of white people who aren’t any more happy than Sharpton was about that past. Does Sharpton think Thurmond changed over the years? It certainly seems that as far as he’s concerned, it wasn’t a possibility.

But some of Thurmond’s colleagues aren’t as sure of that. Take Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn, who is black and represents South Carolina’s 6th Congressional District in Washington. Clyburn has my respect and my vote. He was head of the Congressional Black Caucus when he said this of Strom:

“Senator Thurmond was symbolic of the Old South, but his willingness to change over time set an example for many South Carolinians.”

Then there’s state senator Kay Patterson, an outspoken character at the statehouse who pulls no punches when it comes to the subject of racism. He said of Thurmond:

“Paul had an experience on the road to Damascus, and Strom Thurmond also had an experience on the road to Damascus. And after that experience, I always supported Strom Thurmond for political office because he would do constituent service for all South Carolinians, including me.”

Naturally, there’s a lot of debate over whether Thurmond died a racist. Regardless of whether or not Clyburn or Patterson are right, that Thurmond actually did change, the assumption that because Thurmond was once a racist means he must always remain one is quite disturbing.

Particularly when you consider that this is Black History Month.

After all, isn’t the purpose of celebrating Black History, and specifically, the Civil Rights movement, to remind all of us that we not only can change, but that we must change, to make sure that the color of our skin doesn’t define who we are on the inside?

There’s something to think about before the end of the month. And after.