Two Funerals, One Kleenex

Opening the paper yesterday brought a real shock:  Bill Yates, former Morro Bay Mayor, had died after a long battle with lung cancer.  He was only 66 and I feel so sad for what his family must be going through now. It's an awful loss.

It seems only a brief while ago that Bill and Bill (Morem) and I were fellow scrivners at the now defunct Sun Bulletin, Morem the assistant editor and Yates and I scribbling away on our columns. And I remember well when he and his wife opened their beautiful jewelery store, Zephyrine, in the new Marina Square complex.  The store gleamed with diamonds, gold, silver. I always thought it odd that Morro Bay could support such a high-end store, but obviously enough tourists and locals headed in their door so it thrived.

When Bill got into politics, I'd see him often around town.  He was unmistakable, a large, smiling man, eyes twinkiling with amusement, as if everything he saw going on was great fun.  And he could be spotted a mile away.  Who else in town wore those signature colorful Hawaiian shirts?  The term "booming" comes to my mind when I think of Bill, though he was actually quite soft-spoken.

His four terms as Mayor covered a lot of Morro Bay's recent history -- remember the massively frustrating, delayed, wrangled-over, finally finished "Twin Bridges?"  It must have taken a LOT of humor to have gotten through that tangled mess.  Or to get through Morro Bay Politics in general. And anybody familiar with Morro Bay Politics knows what I'm talking about.  And I'm sure his humor must have failed at times when Morro Bay's own "Sewer Wars" erupted and the community headed for a Coastal Commission Train Wreck.  I would sidle up to him at those meetings and say, "Bill, I have two words for you:  "Los . . .  Osos."  And he'd laugh.

In the middle of all this politicking and mayoring, Bill went on hiatus; He got on his boat and sailed off to sea in his sloop, "Obsession," to try to sail solo across the Pacific.  And that's the way I will now hold him in my memory -- his earthly suffering over, his boat is running clear and free, the zephyrs are cool, the sea gleaming, and there's nothing ahead but crystalline weather and beauty all around him. And he's smiling.  And, yes, wearing one of the loudest, most colorful Hawaiian shirts in the universe. 

And Then There's Fred Phelps 

On the same day that Bill's death was in the paper, so was the announcement of the death of the appalling "preacher," Rev. Fred Phelps, head of his own ugly cult, The Westboro Baptist Church.  Phelps, you will remember, used to show up with his small gaggle of followers to picket funerals of soldiers who died in Iraq or Afghanistan.  They'd carry signs declaring that God hated the soldier who was being buried that day, or signs saying "God Loves IED's" or "God Hates Fags", and so forth.  From military funerals, the cult followers (i.e. his children) moved on to staging ugly, hate-filled protests everywhere for any reason whatsoever, carrying signs that God hated whatever and whoever.  Phelps was particularly loathsome when it came to gay people and finally ended up declaring that God hated America because America actually allowed gay citizens to live here. 

The first response I had to reading of Phelps' death was to gleefully wonder if thousands of people would show up at his funeral carrying signs saying, "Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish," but that would have been hateful and would have just perpetuated the Ugly Cycle of call and response, Tit for Tat.   

But Rachel Maddow, on her show last night, had a far more wonderful (and accurate) take on what Phelps' sick hatred actually accomplished.  Instead of hating Phelps back, people started mocking, then laughing.  Rachel showed photo after photo of very clever people who started showing up at Phelps' numerous picket lines with signs of their own, signs that said "God Hates Figs," with the Biblical reference given (Yes, apparently God does hate figs.  I have no idea why, but it's in the Bible, so you have been warned.)  Or they'd show up with a huge sign saying "God Hates Signs."  One after another, people started to top one other with witty riffs on the "God Hates" meme.  It soon became one big hilarious Photo Op. 

And instead of giving Phelps' ugly hatred some kind of hateful opposition, thereby casting him in the role of martyr, their clever mockery made Phelps a fool, a risible fool. And made his premise, "God Hates . . . . (fill in the blanks)" the one big absurd joke it actually was.  And while Phelps marched in one direction, the country was marching in the opposite direction.

As for Phelps himself, God will deal with him, I'm sure.  And when He does, I hope He'll pay particular attention to Phelps' most profound sin:  He poisoned his own children's minds with his own sick hatred. That's unforgivable.

There's an old  Native American saying, "When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced.  Live your life in such a manner that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice."

In this case, there will be two funerals, but we'll only need one Kleenex. 
     

Speak Up!

The Supreme Court ruled 8-to-1 that the endlessly fascinating Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, a (very, very ) small family-invented “church,” has a Constitutional right to show up at military funerals carrying signs saying that God hated the dead soldier and wanted him/her dead. They’re free to do this providing they adhere to various local ordinances regarding permits and maintaining the legal distances from the funeral & etc., just like any other group that wishes to picket or protest on public streets.

Judge Alioto dissented on the point that “fighting words” are not protected. Then noted that “Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case.”

Clearly, he’s wrong about that. Americans LOVE vicious verbal assaults. Always have. And while such assaults used to be held on the looney fringe and ignored by polite society, our present Twittered/Facebooked society has brought vicious out into the open. For better or for worse.

But like all the often dark unconscious matter roiling around inside our poisonous souls, “vicious verbal assaults” can serve to illuminate a great deal. Which is why I find the Westboro crowd (Weirdly Gay-Obsessed Preacher Daddy and his adoring Daughter) absolutely refreshing. Their fascinating obsession with all things homosexual mirrors what many more “reputable” religious organizations also believe but are too polite to say outright . While many mainstream Christian churches are weaseling around with the old “God hates the sin not the sinner” rhetoric, the Westboro Duo get straight to the heart of the matter. God hates fags. Right there in the Bible. Period, end of discussion.

And if you believe in the absolute inerrancy of the Holy Book, (and/or if you’re weirdly gay-obsessed like Preacher Daddy) your lines are clearly drawn. At military funerals, you have a choice: Stand with the Westboro crowd or stand across the street holding a sign saying, “Uh, what’s up with the Gay Obsession thing anyway?”

Doesn’t get any clearer than that. And, thanks to the Supreme Court, the right to decide which side of the street to stand on remains clear as well.

On Wisconsin!

Interesting article in today’s New York Times, “Teachers Wonder, Why the Scorn?” The protests in Wisconsin and elsewhere have certainly highlighted the contempt for “government employees” by non-government folk, among which is a constant leitmotif of the lazy, overpaid, glorified babysitters formerly known as “teachers.”

Not a new article of faith, but a conservative mantra that’s being played again for all its worth: Public schools are a waste of money, teachers are crappy (except for MY kid’s teacher, who is terrific), privatize the schools, de-unionize the teachers and the country will soon be filled with brilliantly educated kids at half the price.

Nice fake dream and useful for whipping up the resentful masses du jour who wonder where their jobs went, where their paychecks went, where their futures went. (Don’t bother pointing them in the direction of Wall Street or advise them to take a peek at tax breaks for Corporate off-shoring.) Nope, kick the teachers because they think they’re better than us laid-off, low-information schnooks who are now sinking out of the middle class and into the hard soup of the working poor. And beyond into the ranks of the “permanently poor.”

While this meme is being dredged up for political purposes, it’s not a new theme. Americans have long had a love/hate relationship to “book larnin’” and “schoolmarms” and “pointy-headed intellectuals” of all stripes. In short, America holds them in low esteem – unless they’re also rich. Then they’re admired, not for their intellectual gifts but for their money, while their intellectual gifts breed nothing but resentment: He thinks he’s smarter ’n me.

All of which keeps America heading for the bottom, our kids poorly schooled and testing near the bottom of the heap on international math and science scores. None of which should come as a surprise: You don’t get good results from things you do not value and/or actively scorn. If being smart isn’t cool and being dumb is, then you’ll aspire to achieving Dumbness.

Thus does American class-resentment meets America’s political “paranoid style” meets Tom Sawyer’s anti-intellectualism. So, kick a teacher today, then wonder where your and your kids future went.

Speak Up

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for  October 15, 2010

Malice drinks one-half of its own poison.
                                                  Seneca

There is something so uniquely American about the little “Church of The Phelpses,” the splinter Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas whose very ugly public messages about God hating fags, and Jews and Catholics and dead soldiers has landed it before the Supreme Court. Like so many American religious sects, this one was self-created, and while it claims to be “Baptist,” the Southern Baptists Convention has denounced and disavowed any connection to the Phelps. Also like so many other self-created sects, it holds what some consider to be decidedly different beliefs, and is run by a powerful preacher-man and his small band of family-followers. (Eleven of his thirteen children are lawyers; a handy profession, considering.)

But Fred Phelps is nothing new. While his theology might be a bit twisted, Fred and all the other little Phelpses are still the descendents of the fierce, sin-obsessed American preachers thundering eternal damnation for the wicked, a line that runs through Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” to Bible thumping fundamentalist tent revivers promising damnation and hell to card players and hooch-sippers, right down to the fictional but quintessential Jesus-hustling huckster of all time—Elmer Gantry.

“You cannot preach the Bible if you don’t preach God’s hate!” Phelps says in a recent Time magazine article on the family. Indeed. No namby-pamby God of Love nonsense espoused by latte-sipping limousine liberals for these rock-hard American theologians.

And that, to me, is what makes this case so interesting. Just what is it about the beliefs that Fred and his daughter Margie are expressing that has people so upset? That “God Hates Fags?” That can’t possibly be a problem in a country publicly obsessed with homosexuals, including the delightful spectacle of certain politicians who first denounce gays then get caught later footed-tapping in airport bathrooms or flying off on vacations with their boy-toy “assistants.”

Or a Congress dragging its feet on repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Or with hysterical citizens hastily passing state laws denying equal marriage rights to gay people, like the California Prop 8 initiative that was funded by huge infusions of money from Catholic and Mormon churches. Or with gay hate-crimes that regularly show up on the police blotter. Fear and loathing of gay people is a dark thread that runs deep in our homophobic culture and is powerfully driven and justified by “Christian” religious belief. So, while many might consider Mr. Phelps’ protest signs to be impolite or crude – the word “hate” makes nice people, respectable people, uncomfortable -- the basic belief about God’s hatred on those signs, while extreme, cannot be said to be utterly alien to what a great many Americans already secretly believe.

And a good many people believe that war is an abomination and that soldiers are murderous “baby-killers” engaged in a sinful enterprise that violates one of God’s own Ten Commandments. And there is nothing alien about the beliefs that Jews killed Jesus and Catholics are in a league with the Pope-Devil himself, and Mormons are un-Christian heathens and President Obama is the anti-Christ and our white country is being taken away by scary colored people, and the End Times are Near, and O God! O God the gay people are coming, and can’t you hear the black helicopters yet? All of these are fear-driven beliefs that are brought out from under our dark rocks during fearful, tough times and used to manipulate the frightened into furthering the ends of the unprincipled.

And when Mr. Phelps or any of the other little Phelpses show up with signs declaring that Americans are going to hell, I dare say they’re only saying out loud what many of their fellow citizens may be secretly feeling. Says Mr. Phelps, in that same Time article, “When asked if hearing about a soldier’s death really makes his heart swell with joy, Phelps nods as if he’s just been offered a sandwich. ‘Because we’ve been telling people that God is going to do this to them. Because that’s the way God rolls.’”

So what is it about what the Phelps are doing – standing on public property telling people how God rolls – that has people so riled up? Is it their discourtesy? Lack of manners? I mean, most people have the common decency not to show up at funerals to yell at a parent that God hates their dead kid. That’s tacky. But then, most people also don’t show up at Planned Parenthood clinics to yell at young women entering for medical care that they’re baby-murderers and are going to hell.

But the Constitution, thank God, protects the tacky, the rude, the indecent, the deluded, the cruel and the mean. It also protects the Phelps and their hate-filled messages of human-loathing, divine wrath and sin, weird sexual obsessions, cruel family dysfunctions and gleeful rage.

What remains unclear is whether or not the radical, judicial activist Supreme Court will rule narrowly on this case, or use the case as it has in the past to open up the broader questions the Phelps case raises in order to legislate from the bench.

In the meantime, the case certainly has generated a lot of discussion and I can only hope that it gives rise to just as many questions. Here’s two: If what the Phelpses believe is factually correct, that God actually does hate fags and Jews and Catholics and soldiers, and anyone else not in the Phelpes-approved pantheon, why would anyone get upset at them for stating the obvious? And if their declarations are false, why would anyone waste a moment of their time getting upset over what a bunch of delusional liars have to say about anything?

And here are two questions that will likely never be answered: Just what is it about the American character that creates the kind of toxic culture that nurtures poisonous people like the Phelps? And supports and rewards with high ratings and abundant advertising dollars, a 24/7 media that excitedly serves up their outrageous malice du jour to a celebrity and scandal addicted public?

If historian Richard Hofstadter is correct, that the “paranoid style” is the way Americans roll, then Fred Phelps is simply the ugly part of our American DNA, not only our legacy, but our future as well.

It is not a comforting thought. But knowing that our Constitution will continue to protect the double-edged right to speak out, is.