The eNd of the N-word.

A middle-aged, middle-class white guy may not have a lot to add to any discussion of the campaigns afoot in various municipalities to try to get folks to stop using the n-word. But I have been thinking about it:
* I grew up in home where the n-word was the word of choice to describe African Americans. It always seemed ugly to me and I never used it.
* Lenny Bruce used to open his shows sometimes with the line "How many n****** do we have here tonight?'' and would say the word (along with other slurs) over and over again until they became nonsense syllables, useless and pointless. Which was, of course, his point.
* But it's not the repetition to the point of absurdity that stings. The single use of the word can drop like a bomb. In one of his concert films, Richard Pryor explained why he stopped using the word. He said, in essence, that if he was in an argument with someone and the other person called him that, his first thought was "Great. Now I have to work up to being a human being again...''
* Language is all about history and context. "Huckleberry Finn'' does not cease to be a great work of art simply because one of the main characters is called "N***** Jim,'' particularly when you consider that Jim is the most loyal, compassionate and noble character in the book. By the same token, rap songs don't rise to the level of fine art simply because some form of the word is used liberally. But, and it's important to remember, meaning comes from context and if the word is used among some members of the African-American community in a way divorced from the historical context, who's to say that's not a way of shoveling dirt on its etymological grave?
* I always get nervous when the power of the state is used to take even baby steps to police language. Sometimes all you do is drive the hateful speech down in the throat and the mind with the result that it comes back stronger and uglier.
* It's the human heart that changes the way we say things, and moral suasion, if it is required at all, is best felt in the home and on the street.

Dem bones, dem bones...

Any reasonable person of faith has to admit that what he or she believes could conceivably be a crock. By definition, faith in the resurrection of Christ is not a fact. It can't be proved in the same way that the earth's rotation around the sun can proved.
"I know that my redeemer liveth'' is not something you know by looking through a microscope or a telescope.
God could conceivably hang the suspense and unambiguously let us all know just who we're dealing with. But that comes dangerously close to coercion and God seems real big on free will and human choice.
Around 1950, philosopher R.M. Hare coined the word "blik'' to describe those unverifiable and unfalsifiable axioms we hold onto. An unshakable blik is a dangerous thing, if we ignore evidence that is contrary to our beliefs. But it takes more than a small breeze to topple them.
All of which is to say that "Titanic" director James Cameron's dog-and-pony show yesterday, shilling for an upcoming Discovery Channel documentary on Jesus' bone box is not enough to shake my faith.
First of all this discovery of the ossuary is over 20 years old. Cameron didn't pick it up at a flea market last week. The thing's been studied.
The documentary also makes all kinds of leaps that require more faith than I've got. The idea that this bone box shows that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and they had a son? (How does Jesus Jr. ever try to stay home sick from school. His dad would just heal him) is ludicrous. I don't think so.
If you're going to give up your faith, I hope it's for some more unsinkable evidence than this.

Let he who be without sin cast the first blog

In the matter of local American Idol contestant Antonella Barba's somewhat provocative (and the disputed, if possibly pornographic) photos being plastered all over the Internet, I'd just like to paraphrase George W. Bush: "When you're young and stupid, you're young and stupid.''
I know I was. There just weren't cameras everywhere to document it and the tools to disseminate it all around the globe.
But you don't have to be young to be stupid. And stupid depends on context.
Listen. If the product of everybody's video cams were confiscated tomorrow due to some obscure clause of the Patriot Act, there are not many of us who could go to work the next day without eyes averted and mumbled greetings.
Because those portable video devices do not fly off the shelves just so mom and dad can record little Johnny's performance as a head of lettuce in the pre-school production of "The Fruits and Vegetables Follies.''
There's a lot of other product stuff stuck in sock drawers.
So, let's go a little easy on Ms. Barba. Let her go home because she can't sing, not because someone snapped her photo while she was on the john.

This might not be good news...

Researchers in Senegal have discovered that certain West African chimpanzees are making spears and using them to hunt mammals. No word on whether the researchers have a found a big black monolith near by. The UN, though, I hear may be sending in weapons inspectors...

The schoolyard bully and Nietzsche

My guess is that bullies aren't going to be reading state Supreme Court Chief Justice James Zazzali's opinion in the case of Louis White and the Toms River Regional School District.
Bullies are not into precise legal argument and nuance.

White was subjected to years of harassment from classmates, both verbal and physical. The school did some things to stem the tide of violence, but not enough for the state Supreme Court. Schools can be held liable for not protecting students from harassment.

On the other hand, the opinion also held that "a school cannot be expected to shelter students from all instances of peer harassment.'' That seems about right.

Lord knows gym class wasn't always a joy for me. But even when boobs and oafs would make fun of me or give me a shove, I adopted a Nietzschean position: Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger. Also, looking back on it, I think I had a remarkably prescient outlook. I recognized that for a lot of bullies, high school was going to be the high-water mark for them. The ability to give wedgies is not widely prized in the general workforce.

I can probably afford to be sanguine about it, because it wasn't a constant in my life. But bullies can do a lot of damage. I remember a kid in junior high who was treated without mercy every single day. His name was Timmy. He was obese, his parents were Jehovah's Witnesses, which meant he didn't salute the flag, or celebrate birthdays and Christmas, so there were two strikes against him before he even opened his mouth. And his voice was high-pitched.

Even some teachers joined in the ridicule, particularly gym teachers who set him up to fail and invited the class to heap insults on him. He was always pleasant, and spent a good part of his day trying not to cry. One day he just stopped coming to school. I never found out what happened to him. Not all of us who run into a lout or two need court protection or even the protection of the school. I didn't. But Timmy did.

Surge and withdrawal

The Brits are pulling out of Iraq in what is called a "phased pullout.'' Has anybody else noticed the similarity between geopolitical discourse and the language of pornography?
It gets stranger. This withdrawl of British forces is seen by President Bush as "a sign of success'' in Iraq, according to U.S. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
But let the Democrats suggest that our men and women do the same thing, and it's "cut and run,'' and "surrender" and nearly treasonous.
If the British withdrawal is a sign of success, is the troop surge then a sign of failure?
The difference between listening to the President and watching a porn flick is that with the latter, you can at least follow the plot.

The indiscreet charm of the Riley male

My son Chris called me from his base of operations in the frozen tundra of upstate New York, where he more or less attends Elmira College. He'd told me that he'd ditched a day or two of classes in order to take a bus to visit his girlfriend in Maine.
Upon his return, one of his professors applauded his hooky-playing.
That's what writers ought to do, the prof told him - get out of academia once in awhile, hit the road and actually experience life.
"In a bus?'' I said. "In Maine?''
It doesn't hurt, I suppose, that his GPA is so close to 4.0 that you'd need an electron microscope to tell the difference.
Still, over two generations now, beginning with me, the Riley men have been getting away with stuff that other people simply don't, and get rewarded for it to boot.
I worry about the balance of karmic justice in the universe going off-kilter and then where will we be. Charm and BS only get you so far in this world, but I guess we owe it ourselves to see just how far down the road it will take us.

Once again, science tells us men are jerks

Tanya Chartrand and Gavan Fitzsimons have issues. Hey, most married couples do. Most married couples, though, don't put on white lab coats and put a scientific imprimatur on their findings, publishing the results in something called the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and sending us men into the dog house.

What Tanya wanted to find out was why Gavan sometimes ignored her; why, indeed, he sometimes did the exact opposite of what she'd asked him to do. As if being married to her wasn't reason enough.

No, it turns out that men are full of unconscious reactance, which is pyschologist-speak for "Hey, lady - You're not the boss of me!'' That's right. We're more likely to resist the suggestions and rebel against the mandates of those we feel are controlling our lives than those suggestions and mandates of those with whom we have fun.

Well, the obvious prescription here is that men should avoid marrying Kim Jon Il at all costs. It's worked for me. Surely most men have fun with their significant others and actually enjoy making their lives easier. And not only out of a sense of duty, or obligation.
It's a two-way street. You do for your beloved and he or she will do for you.
For a look at the research, go to http://p265.news.mud.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070214/sc_livescience/whymenignoretheirwives

A sticky post-Valentine situation for Sam

It's a leap into moonless night, this letting someone know you might possibly, sort of, like them. Heart thumping, wind whistling in your ears and who knows whether the landing is going to be feather-soft or terminal velocity hard?
When last we left my 10-year-old son Sam, he'd dropped off a Valentine's Day card at the home of a girl he liked on the evening before Valentine's Day.
The ice storm closed school the next day and so he had to wait until yesterday to find out whether his SpongeBob Squarepants offering (complete with a sheet of stickers) passed muster.
"How'd it go?'' I asked him last night after supper.
If it had gone badly, I was prepared to deliver a rousing "other fish in the sea, at least you handled yourself with dignity'' speech.
It wasn't necessary.
"Well, she had the stickers all over her folder and she said 'Thank you' for the card,'' Sam said.
And that was that.
The card was an end in itself, it seems to me, not a prelude to anything. That's as it should be. The kid's only 10.
But a lesson in hope and bravery and leaping is never too early to learn.

Cyrano deDad

On the night before Valentine's Day, I took my 10-year-old out shopping for Valentine's Day cards so he could bring them to his class party on Wednesday. A party that was, of course, postponed by snow and ice and the dead of winter.
Normally, of course, this is a job that would normally fall to my wife. Sue has a better esthetic when it comes to things like this. You know, which superhero du jour set of cards best represents the emotional tone of fourth graders with a sugar rush? Except that Sue was sick in bed, riddled with various and sundry conditions that end in -itis. (Valentine's Day was a real bust around our house)
But as it turned out, it was just as well that I went with Sam.
On our way to the local drug store to pick up the cards, he reminded me that he wanted to get a "special card'' for one member of his class. Once we got to the store, however, he had decided against it.
"I'm not getting a special card,'' he told me. "It occurs to me that this girl shuss-ed me in school today.''
"That's fine, Sam,'' I said, "but if I didn't get a card for Mom every time she shuss-ed me, she'd never get a card.''
After we got a set of cards for the hoi polloi, Sam decided we should take a look at the special cards, just in case.
Here's where my special expertise came in. I know my way around pre-packaged sentiment, and guided Sam through the pitfalls of cards that profess way too much, cards that make their point with double-entendre ("Is this supposed to be funny?'' Sam asked me, handing me a card with a cartoon drawing of a naked lady covered in chocolate) and other generally inappropriate sentiment. Dads are best for this kind of thing. We found a card, paid for it and went back to the car.
Next up was the delicate question of how and when to deliver the missive. This required strategic planning not seen since the days of Omaha Beach. Handing it to her at school was out of the question, not only on egalitarian terms, but if word on the street got out that you were sweet on a girl, your street cred would be shot. No, what we had to do was drop the card off at the girl's house, hoping of course that she didn't actually answer the door.
Mission accomplished. But he doesn't yet know how the card was received. I hope it goes well for the boy.

Ignoring the Word of God?

I'm sometimes accused, by, I assume, conservative evangelicals, of ignoring verses of Scripture that I don't like.
Well, it's a pretty big club, including just about everybody who calls him or herself a Christian.
We all pick and choose which passages apply to us. I bet some who fire off angry salvos about my support for gay rights are eating a ham sandwich while doing so. I guess the prohibition against eating pork has fallen by the wayside.
How many of you have put to death a disobedient son, as the Bible demands?
Ever work on Sunday?
Been divorced?
Interpreting Scripture is not for the faint-hearted. Jesus says if you call somebody a fool, you're headed for hell. Which must come as surprise to Paul, who referred to all those "foolish Galatians'' in his epistle to that church. Paul also says that women should not speak in church and later says that when they do, they should wear hats.
One Gospel condemns all divorce, another puts an adultery loophole in there.
This may come as a shock to some, but not every passage of Scripture is as important as every other part. I can't remember the last time I built an ark of the covenant (or the other kind of ark, for that matter.)
We all make peace somehow with difficult passages of Scriptures, and we live with the consequences. In humility. There's nothing more arrogant than Christians who swagger around with all the answers.
I believe that the Bible teaches, and Jesus embodies, the idea that people are more important than rules.
If I err, then, let it be on the side of mercy.

And this is the thanks I get?...

I try to live my life in a way that spreads a little a sunshine in this world. Always ready with a kind word and a smile, I like to make the gray, lonely lives of editors and reporters a touch brighter by sharing a story or two.

And because there is no such thing as a pure motive in this world, I'll freely admit that when people pay you to write funny stuff, sometimes you want to find out if it's funny someplace besides inside your own head.

So you try out lines now and then.You'd think the sweet, good-hearted souls in the newsroom would appreciate both the giving and the taking. You'd be dead wrong. The above coupon has been surreptiously making the rounds of the newsroom. I just hope this thing doesn't fall into the wrong hands. If my wife and kids get hold of this, I'm sunk.

Wasted civility

A study conducted by researchers from the University of Virginia and several other universities has come to the conclusion that moms and dads can squabble constantly, and it won't make their kids ornery.

Man, I could have used that information. Sue and I could have been going at it like George and Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?'' for decades and our kids would have still turned out fine. But no, my wife and I have prized civility, respect and dignity, even (and maybe especially) when we have disagreed with one another. What a couple of saps we are!

Here I thought that children learned how to live and move in the world by watching their parents. Turns out that there is apparently a gene for "general pissiness'' that gets passed from cantankerous parents to bratty kids. I haven't been tested or anything, but I have been reliably informed that I have that gene in spades. Yet biology isn't destiny, and I firmly believe that nurture gets the nod in this discussion.

Kids imitate what they see in their own home, and if mom and dad can't get through a week without some steel-cage death match oratory, they're going to figure this is what love looks like, this is the way grown-ups solve problems, genes or no genes.

For a look at the story, go to: http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200770208032

Three weeks to straight sex

The Rev. Ted Haggard, we have been informed, is "completely heterosexual'' after only three weeks of counseling. That must surely come as something of a relief to Mrs. Haggard. But I imagine that gay men everywhere must be wailing and gnashing their teeth that such a fine piece of beefcake is off the market.

Here's what Haggard said, somewhat cryptically, back when his tryst with a male prostitute first came out: "The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar. There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life.'' And now, after three weeks, he's "cured?'' I've had pimples that took longer than three weeks to get rid of.

The problem here, in part, it seems to me, is that a man can consider his sexual attraction to other men as something "repulsive.'' And let's face it: if you've been fighting a lonely battle your whole life, three weeks doesn't seem like enough time to arrange and sign a peace treaty.
What needs healing these days, and not just in Haggard's heart, is this idea that homosexuality is a dark and repulsive thing, a tool of the devil to lead the Children of Light into perdition. It just ain't necessarily so.

Heterosexual lust is as sinful as homoseuxual lust - and an encounter with a prostitute - male, female or both at once - is certainly a lusty event. But same-sex love can be as numinous and grace-filled as heterosexual union. Maybe when Haggard goes back to school to get his master's in psychology, he will tumble on to that. I'm not holding my breath. But I am praying.

Lust in space

"I can hear her heart beat for a thousand miles/
And the heavens open every time she smiles
And when I come to her that's where I belong?
Yet I'm running to her like a rivers song./
She give me love, love, love, love, crazy love."
-- Van Morrison
Van Morrison sings those words like crazy love is a good thing.
And I gotta say, recent events indicate that that's not necessarily true.
Just ask astronaut William Oefelein how he feels about it, now that a little crazy love has come into his life, and into the life of a girlfriend of his.
Lisa Nowak really showed a lot of the can-do spirit that we have come to expect from our astronauts. Adult diapers really help on these long car trips when you're on your way to do Lord knows what to a possible romantic rival.
Talking head-shrinkers on the TV are saying that, given the right circumstances, any of us could go 'round the bend.
I don't know about that. I've never obsessed over a woman. And when it comes to how women have looked upon me, well, what's the opposite of "stalking?''
But, once you've thrown a good part of your life away, what's next?
I think of a line in one of my favorite movies, "Magnolia,'' the line where the hard-luck, sad-sack cop Jim Kurring says, "Sometimes people need a little help. Sometimes people need to be forgiven. And sometimes they need to go to jail."
Sometimes, maybe they need all three.

When a novel changes you....

I just finished Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road'' and I don't know if I'm the same person I was before I read it. It's a slim novel and sparse in its language.
A man and his son are walking down a road, heading south. We're not told how old the boy is, but I'm guessing somewhere between 8 and 10. That's about it for plot.

But the world in which they trod their lonely road is a wasted, ruined post-apocalyptic world. The sun is obscured by ash and haze. Winter always seems to be coming. What people are left are not to be trusted. Desperation makes people do dark and obscene things. And they walk, the man and his boy, scrounging for food, pushing everything they have in a shopping cart.
We're with them every heartbreaking, pain-making step. The father and son talk, trying to hang onto decency in a world in which that quality, like every city they walk through, has been blasted away.

I read the book and I wonder if I have the skills and the courage needed to protect my own son in those circumstances. We're the good guys, the father says. We keep going. This book is haunting, and I'll never forget its power and I don't know if I'll ever forgive the author for what his words have cost me.

The nature of Christian responsibility

This Sunday, I'll be giving a lecture at the Trinity Presbyterian Church on Cranbury Avenue in East Brunswick at the bright and early hour of 9 a.m. The title of the lecture is "The Nature of Christian Responsibility,'' which sounds real high-falutin'. A better title would be: "The Sermon On The Mount: What's Up With That?''

I'll be talking about the way theologians have over the centuries tried to figure out how to apply the sometimes draconian edicts of Jesus' homily to day-to-day living. You have to ask yourself: "Are these commands realizable and practical? Are they realizable but impractical? Or are they pipe dreams?''

In addition, I'll be looking at a dozen more specific hermeneutic principles that may be brought to bear on the whole "turn the other cheek'' business. We should have you out there in no time: an hour tops.

Say "Ahh - oh, yeah, baby!''

A scholarly paper in today's issue of the British Journal "Lancet'' encourages physicians to inquire into their patients' sex lives, because it turns out that sexual dysfunction is an indicator of other possible health problems. I have a couple of observations about this:

1. It's about time! You'd be surprised at how few of my friends and co-workers are interested in how often and in what manner my world is rocked. It will be nice to tell someone. Plus which, I'm already thinking of all the money I'll save in postage when I don't have to write it all up for the Penthouse Forum.

2. If poor performance in the bedroom doesn't send people to the doctor, I don't know what will.

3. Let's not forget the old adage, "Even bad sex is pretty darn good.''

My wife is clean and articulate, too

Maybe Joe Biden should stick to plagiarizing the speeches of British Labor Party leaders. Because when it comes to making off-the-cuff remarks on national television, it's like watching a drunken high-wire walker.

Nobody in his or her right mind believes that Joe Biden, when he called Obama "a mainstream African-American who is articulate, bright, and clean,'' was, in effect, calling other African-Americans inarticulate, dumb and unhygienic. I believe Biden when he says he was using the word clean to mean "fresh and new.'' Except that we're still left with the problem of how it is that Biden thinks of Obama as a furniture polish. Maybe the senator from Illinois is "mint scented'' as well.

At the very least, Biden needs a thesaurus. It's probably too much to hope that he'll shut up once in a while. And while we're on the subject of Democrats with their feet in their mouths, can somebody tell them to lay off the jokes until they (a) figure out what's funny: see John Kerry's "stuck in Iraq'' crack, or (b) don't disown a funny joke: when Hillary denied that her "bad, evil men'' crack was obviously about Bill, denying it just looked like a failure of nerve.