Of religion and sports bras

I suppose it's part of the nature of blogging that items sometimes catch my eye that might seem on the surface to have no logical relationship to one another. But sometimes they just call out to me, and at least my chosen title is more thoughtful than my second choice: Americans -- Smarter Than We Look.

• The more religious leaders try to narrow our minds to accept only their view of the universe, it seems, the more Americans cling to our tradition of stubborn individualism. MSNBC reports this afternoon that "a new survey finds most Americans don't feel their religion is the only way to eternal life — even if their faith tradition teaches otherwise." Maybe the most startling finding: "57 percent of evangelical church attendees said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life," in direct contradiction to the teaching of most of their church leaders. Thinking for yourself -- there's just no substitute.
  
  
• All this second one really needs is the headline: "Sports bra saves U.S. hiker trapped in Alps." But will she send a thank you note to Brandi Chastain?

Holy Huckabee, indeed

In a spare moment this weekend I spent some time with Newsweek's profile of Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, the new man to beat in the Republican half of the Iowa caucuses. Disagreements on policy issues aside, he seems like a decent enough guy until you get to the part where he doesn't believe in evolution. Yes, it seems Pastor Huckabee (he's a Baptist minister) is a Biblical literalist, including on the subject of creation.

Now, personally, I've always found it puzzling why people on both the right and the left have so much trouble reconciling faith with science. The tale of creation as told in the Torah (a.k.a. the Old Testament) and the scientific narrative of the Big Bang and evolution have always sounded to me like two different ways of telling the same story. The conflict feels somewhat manufactured by the hardcases on both sides who insist they must be a hundred percent correct, and therefore the other guys must be a hundred percent wrong.

Be that as it may, it still startles me when an otherwise responsible, intelligent human being states with rock solid certainty that evolution is fantasy and creation fact, because the Bible told them so. (I've often wondered exactly how many bullocks these folks slaughtered on their stone altars that week.) And yet, in some parts of the country, there are actually schools trying to get accredited to offer master's degrees in science education for teachers who want to teach creationism. Which is fine, if you want to teach at a privately funded religious institution. But you don't teach tenets of faith as scientific fact in a public school -- at least, not in America. For that, you have to go someplace like Iran.

War on Christmas update

So much for the war on Christmas; it seems Hannukah is in greater danger. Hopefully they'll throw the book at these clowns. At least the subhead to AOL's teaser -- "Muslim aids Jews attacked on train" -- offers some hope for humanity.

Kindle counting

Was Scott Turow clairvoyant when he chose to name the fictional setting of his multiple overlapping novels Kindle County?

That was my first facetious thought when reading about Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos' new toy the Kindle, or as Newsweek breathlessly christened it, "The Future of Reading."

That's the thing about the technology game. Every hotshot techno-guru out there is convinced he's just about to trip over the killer app that's going to change everything -- and not incidentally, make him rich (or in Bezos's case, rich AGAIN). The problem in this particular case is that the killer app in question was already invented... in the 15th century.

It's called a book.

Yes, the Kindle device is designed to approximate the size and weight of a book, as if that little detail is going to close the deal for all of us print-addicted Luddites. And yes, it's pretty nifty that they developed screen technology for the Kindle that comes closer to imitating the visual texture of the printed page than anything ever seen before. And sure, it's pretty mind-boggling to realize that this device, linked wirelessly to Amazon's entire database of Kindle-d editions of books, could someday put every book ever written at your fingertips in searchable electronic form, even allowing authors to amend and update their manuscripts, adding new facts to non-fiction books or changing the endings of novels.

The Kindle has one insurmountable flaw, though. It's not a book.

Books are physical objects. Each has a distinctive appearance, texture, smell and heft in your hand. Each is unique, and permanent, and if it's really good, maybe even a permanent part of your home and your life. Almost every day working in my study I look up at my bookshelf and let my eyes wander across the spines of books I've read. Would it be fun to be able to search instantly for every time Robert Crais references a specific real-life location in Los Angeles in his Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novels? Sure. But I wouldn't give up my hardcover copy of The Watchman to be able to do it. And if he went back and changed the ending of the book, I would be outraged. I would feel cheated, and that the bond of trust between author and audience had been broken. Stories are stories, and their human imperfections are part of their essence.

Life within a display screen is not life, it's an electronic illusion of it. The Kindle is no more "the future of reading" than androids are the future of the human race. It's a soulless little machine, not to mention, what happens if you drop it while you're reading in the bathtub?

The war on Christmas

After the customary New Year’s-to-Halloween cease-fire, it appears the so-called "war on Christmas" is on once again.

(Yeah, ‘cause everybody hates that Santa Claus dude… I mean, what is it with those creepy little elves, anyway?)

But seriously -- a state of being that can be difficult to achieve when discussing a subject which cries out for common sense as much as this one does -- let’s try to parse the issues here.

America has a long tradition of celebrating Christmas and incorporating Christmas trappings such as trees, stockings, gifts, etc. into our culture. So do the majority of so-called Western cultures. And frankly, I haven’t heard anyone anywhere make any sort of serious suggestion that we stop doing so.

What has been suggested is that we try to at least acknowledge that -- gasp -- not everyone in America celebrates Christmas, and certainly, not everyone who celebrates Christmas celebrates it in the same way. There are those who celebrate Christmas as a commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ. There are those who celebrate Christmas as a more secular mid-winter gift-giving and gathering-family-together holiday. And there are those who during the month of December celebrate some other holiday -- Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, insert yours here.

What is happening today is that people and companies and governments are being confronted by the diversity of the American populace and attempting to adapt. This diversity of thought and belief and tradition and culture is no longer a trend; it is a fact. You can like it or not like it, accept or not accept it, but it does not change the facts on the ground, facts to which companies and governments and individuals must adapt if they wish to continue to function effectively in modern society.

On the specific subject of the Christmas-centric marketing of goods, this old and fading habit seems doubly problematic. First of all, you have a substantial segment of the population that doesn’t celebrate Christmas, and second of all, you have the cheapening of the religious meaning of Christmas through its use as a marketing tactic. Many faithful Christians have become more and more disgusted by the commercialization of Christmas and the corruption of its spiritual meaning into a cultural imperative to “buy more stuff.” News flash: Jesus was not a capitalist tool. Quite the opposite.

When Pat Buchanan and company rail over the loss of American culture, what they seem incapable of comprehending is that culture is and always has been a moving target. The cultural norms and traditions of today were all new once, years or centuries ago. They came about through (now here’s a loaded phrase) a natural evolution of the culture, which will continue no matter how many people stand around on soapboxes of one kind or another shouting at the top of their lungs that they don’t want it to. You might as well try to tell the moon to stop going full every month.

It seems what’s needed here -- as in so many arguments we hear today -- is a little common sense. They’re Christmas trees; call them what they are. And put those Hannukah and Kwanzaa candles right there next to them on the catalog page. The inclusion of one tradition does not have to equal the exclusion of others, or the homogenization of all. And if in the checkout line this weekend you wish me a Merry Christmas and I wish you a Happy Hannukah, let’s neither one of us take offense, ‘kay?

Attack of the "idiot culture"

Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein says our celebrity-driven news media have fostered an “idiot culture” that devalues public affairs journalism.

This might sound like sour grapes from the old guard, but it’s hard to argue with Mr. Bernstein when this morning's lead headlines on AOL.com are “Which TV shows get hit by strike,” “Katie Holmes runs New York marathon,” and this stunning piece of investigative journalism: “Croc Shoe Fad May Fade.” No, really? Are you sure?

The circulation figures are telling:

People 3.75 million weekly
Newsweek 3.10 million weekly

In that sense, AOL.com’s headlines are right in tune with the pulse of America. The central government of nuclear-armed Pakistan is self-destructing before our eyes? Who cares? Katie finished a marathon!

And if you think “idiot culture” is too harsh a term, then take a look at the comments left by AOL readers after an AOL.com news article. Any article, it doesn’t matter. The level of dialogue, if you could call it that, is third-grade schoolyard, full of bullying taunts, racism and misogyny. The ignorance is blinding, the conversation so degraded as to make contributing to it feel pointless.

Who is responsible for this? We all are. And only we can change it, by demanding better from the media -- and each other.