It's Sunday, so let's go to Church.

The event came and went to little fanfare, generating barely a ripple in the tide pool of what Rush Limbaugh derides as "our drive-by media." I'd like to take a stab at correcting that oversight here, because I consider it one of the more significant stories I've read in a while.

Last Friday a council of black church leaders called a press conference to address the inflammatory remarks by Rev. Wright, and Sen. Obama's response to same.* Far from condemning Wright or even amplifying on his remarks in a way that might have made them more palatable for America-at-large, the council threw its unequivocal support behind Wright's rancid sermons. Not only that—and here's the part that really makes one pause and reflect—the black clerics suggested that such rhetoric is commonplace in black churches; that there are Rev. Wrights spitting that kind of venom from pulpits all over America.

There was this typical comment from Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas, director of the black church studies program at Brite Divinity School, where the conference took place. Addressing the largely white media in attendance, she said the controversy over Dr. Wright's sermons shows just how out-of-touch whites are with black religious life:

"It's news to you.... Now, for the very first time in history, mainline America, white America is finding out something about its black church."

Let me make sure I've got this straight: The fact that we now know there's a "tradition" of virulent racism at black churches...is supposed to justify it? For two centuries in the South—I think Dr. Floyd-Thomas may have heard something about this—there was also a tradition called slavery. Did that make it OK? What especially kills me about the way Floyd-Thomas couches her remarks ("it's news to you"**) is that she puts the onus on "mainline America," making white society's ignorance of black ecclesiastical racism sound like further evidence of America's racist attitude towards blacks. It's as if she were saying, "If you really cared about us, you'd already know just how bigoted we are! God damn you!"

Bottom line, I had hoped that the council of churches might contextualize Wright's remarks for me, and they did. The context was this: "Rev. Wright speaks for all of us. If not in the specifics of the language he used, then certainly in his outlook and his rage." There was nothing about healing; it was about sharing a collective sense of Victimization.

We haven't talked about Victimization in a while. It's not the flavor-of-the-month (or decade, really) in the SHAMscape as a whole, which is heavily into Empowerment. But it remains alive and unwell in the demagoguery of those who maintain control of their constituencies by stoking an abiding sense of oppression. Even if all whites, tomorrow, were to begin embracing other races with a fellowship that white America (in fairness) has seldom shown, I'm not sure it would matter. As long as this element remains in power in the so-called black community, healing cannot and will not occur. Demagogues like Al Sharpton and even Jesse Jackson will work overtime to ensure that black America continues to feel cheated and disenfranchised.

And there's something else, too: the implication that the church enjoys some special dispensation from the canons of brotherhood and good taste that apply elsewhere in American society. That concerns me as very little else has in recent years, because people go to church in a relaxed, welcoming, uncritical state of mind. No pun intended, but worshipers put a lot of faith in what they hear in church, which they interpret as pristine: the word of God. The idea that black preachers are sowing the seeds of another generation of racism—and justifying that enterprise as some properly divine mission—is just too much. How can church leaders not see the damage they do in defending and perpetuating the Rev. Wright mindset?

For more than 40 years now, or ever since I first began reading about race relations, I've heard the phrase "institutionalized racism." I just didn't expect to find it in houses of worship, and hear it defended in front of major media, in 2008.

* I know, I promised I'd move on. What can I say? Try to bear with me. It just keeps getting "better."
** And I heard the press conference: She said it with exactly that intonation.

See, this is what drives me nuts.

Tonight on ABC News, weekend anchor David Muir introduces a segment of campaign coverage by talking in his own narrator's voice about newly elected Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter's "eyebrow-raising" decision to support Hillary Clinton instead of Barack Obama. Why does Muir regard this as "eyebrow-raising"? Because Nutter, shown, is Philadelphia's newly elected black mayor. Ergo, one assumes—apparently Muir does—that Nutter is "supposed to" support Obama.

Somebody please tell me why that's not at least a form of racism. And even if it's not outright racism, is that really the kind of identity-based thinking that we want to encourage? Above all, should our "objective" media be encouraging it?*

As it happens, Monday afternoon, candidate Obama is going to be in my neck of the woods; in fact, he's going to hold a town meeting at Muhlenberg College, where I was writer-in-residence for three semesters. Circumstances will prevent me from attending, but if I could be there, I'd ask the man a couple of questions based on my amended version of his speech on race:

"Senator Obama, we are told that in your most recent primary win, nine of 10 blacks supported you, whereas seven out of 10 whites supported Mrs. Clinton. Many observers interpret such skews as a sign that 'some Americans still aren't ready for a black president.' But could you tell me, please, why your overwhelming support from blacks is any less of a sign of racism than the opposition from whites? Also, are you prepared here and now to say to black voters: 'If you support me because I'm black, then I don't want your support. That's not the kind of support I seek.'?"

If anybody reading this is within driving distance of Muhlenberg, I invite you, no, I beg you to try to attend and ask those questions on my behalf. Or ask Sen. Obama when next he stops by your neighborhood.

We shall wait to hear back....

==================================

On a related note, my long feature about the sorry state of American broadcast journalism should be on the stands, in Skeptic, within days. Support the cause! Pick up a copy. No, not just because my article's in there—I get no royalties—but because Michael Shermer's Skeptic is simply one of our most high-resolution, wide-angle lenses on contemporary society and its foibles.

* And while you're thinking about it, ask yourself this: Would it ever even occur to Muir, or any other major network type, to suggest the opposite: that a white mayor would automatically be expected to support Hillary or McCain?

Makes sense to me.

On this Friday when I'm absolutely buried beneath paying work (and thus bereft of spare time to drum up anything original), I submit for your consideration, courtesy of regular Mike Cane, the winner of the "oddest book title" award, given annually in the U.K.:

If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs.

Priceless.

Apropos of same, I offer, also, a piece that runs in my local paper today, The Morning Call; it's your host's sardonic take on the latter-day phenomenon of "hooking up."

Have a good, safe, SHAM-free weekend, if we don't talk again before Monday....

The speech he should have made.

What follows is basically self-explanatory. As you read it, please bear in mind the angry and, yes, racist words that were the impetus for the actual speech. That's important context.

If you're a dedicated reader, you may hear echoes of things I've written previously for SHAMblog (or elsewhere). But bottom line, and limiting myself to normal "column size," this is what I feel he should have said. At this juncture in American life, I sincerely hope that no one needs to ask who "he" is.

Not to sound presumptuous, but please feel free to circulate this to people you think might benefit from it. (Or by all means, feel free to tell me why you think I'm wrong in saying what I say here.) And then we'll put this to rest for a while.

=============================

My fellow Americans: It's time to say enough.

White racism was an institutionalized, codified part of American life for the three centuries preceding such landmark Supreme Court decisions as 1954's Brown v. Board of Education and 1967's Loving v. Virginia. The latter case, though less celebrated than Brown, removed the final legal impediments to the so-called miscegenation of which I, for one, am a product. Still, none but the most naïve would dispute that white racism remains alive in less tangible form today.

Black racism is a more recent phenomenon, but in some ways—as Rev. Wright's intemperate rhetoric shows us—may be more virulent and intensely felt. Both white racism and black racism are potent, destructive forces in American life. As such, they are equally unacceptable. We should not bequeath the legacy of our nation's dismal racial failings to new generations that otherwise might have little direct contact with that sorry experience, were it not for our own passion in bequeathing it.

Such imperatives demand from us a wholesale change in thinking. In the black community, for example, we use the term "descendant of slaves" as if it were a genetically communicated disease, like sickle-cell; we speak as if that mere accident of birth conferred a form of that dehumanizing status to the children of today. Where does such thinking stop? Fifty, 100 years from now, will we still be describing newborn Americans—born into the rich promise of a nation whose glorious vistas are fully open to them—as "descendants of slaves"? Ancestry tells us only where we came from. It does not tell us where we are, or how far we can travel. Really, it does not even tell us who we are.

We determine who we are, and where we fit in life, through our actions as unique human beings. Whether you are black or white, it is inexcusable to justify a new round of racism on the basis of our nation’s history to this point.

To validate racial anger is, ultimately, to condone it. It's time, again, to say enough: This stops here.

When I listen to Rev. Wright's words, I am reminded that as black Americans, we must recognize our own role in perpetuating this nation's sad heritage of racial separateness. And we must repudiate that separateness. If you cheered when O.J. Simpson was acquitted, perceiving the verdict as a form of quid-pro-quo—a small repayment, perhaps, on America's debt to the countless blacks historically abused by our system of justice—then there is no place for you in the America I see ahead of me. Whatever its source, racism is racism. As Dr. King told us, we must begin defining ourselves, and relating to our neighbors, not by the color of skin, but by the content of character.

In that sense, the notion that 90 percent of black voters in Mississippi favored me is as troubling as the notion that 70 percent of whites opposed me. Make no mistake, I welcome the support of black voters—if they favor me because of my politics. But I reject the support of black voters who favor me because I'm "one of you." It's time we understood that racism practiced with a comradely smile and a nod of mutual fellowship is as divisive as racism practiced with police dogs and fire hoses. This form of brotherhood, where we like to say that we embrace all mankind—except that we embrace some a little bit closer than others—cannot be a part of the America I see ahead of me. The difference between clan, with a c, and Klan, with a k, is just a matter of degree.

For that matter, if you support Mrs. Clinton because "she's a woman and it’s about time we had a woman in the Oval Office," there is no place for you in the America I see ahead of me. And finally—of this, let there be no doubt—if you are even considering supporting Sen. McCain because he's "the last traditional candidate left," there is surely no place for you in the America I see ahead of me.

Some would say that what I advocate here is unrealistic, that such divisions are simply human nature. To which I say: nonsense. These divisions are facts of life only because we have elevated them to that status; they have become a grim, self-fulfilling prophecy. As children we threw tantrums until we learned that there are penalties for tantrums; we learned that beyond a certain stage of development, tantrums will not be tolerated. It is possible for people to control what, at first, seems "natural." We will learn to control racial tensions when we come to regard them as simply unacceptable. Our resentments over sins past does not need to be kept alive in the present or passed to another generation. Certainly when racism is being thundered from the pulpit, and heard by innocent children attending services with their parents, we have reached the irony of all possible ironies.

My fellow Americans, I urge you to shake off the limiting labels that have been cast upon you, and that you've embraced for yourselves. I urge you to acknowledge the extent to which racial pride can easily become racial prejudice, and to therefore disavow self-definitions that are rooted mostly in race. Let us work together to bring about real change. Because in this case, uniquely, the more we remember the past, the more we're condemned to repeat it.

Pop quiz: When is $20 really $200? Read on.

Several times during this morning's Opening Day MLB broadcast from Tokyo, which (God-help-me) I watched live beginning at 6 a.m., I was treated to a splashy ad for 24-Hour Fitness clubs. "Sign up now," said the ebullient spokeswoman, "and pay just a $24 initiation fee!" As she said this, a huge green $24 assaulted viewers from her right. But under the huge green $24 was smaller lettering—the literal fine print—that said this: "…plus a $79 processing fee and the first and last month's dues." I went to the company site, linked above, to investigate what those dues might amount to. Finding no 24-Hour Fitness clubs within 50 miles of me, I tried Manhattan, and promptly located one where the dues are $89 a month. So let's sum up: $24 plus $79 plus $89-times-2 = $281. But tell ya what. We know Manhattan's kinda pricey. Let's assume that the New York City membership is twice that of a club in, say, Sioux City, Iowa. You'd still have a situation where "just $24!" somehow becomes $191. Therefore, I ask you today, as I've asked previously: Is anything advertised in this country on the up-and-up? How can people watch an ad like that and not say to themselves, if not aloud, "I am just so sick and tired of the b.s.!" More to the point, where do advertisers get the nerve to use a hook like "just $24!" when they're admitting, right in that very ad, that $24 really equals something like $200? I guess they figure the typical consumer is so jaded by now that we don't even care.

Not all of the ads during the game touted 24-Hour Fitness clubs. A few were about a fat-burning revelation called Lipozene. The manufacturer of the product, the Obesity Research Institute, LLC, claims to have in its possession a "clinical study" affirming Lipozene's amazing ability to simply melt away fat with no other lifestyle changes on the user's part. You can continue eating as you always have...and you don't need to join a 24-Hour Fitness club, either! I went to the Lipozene site, certain that they'd give prominent play to their clinical research. (The Obesity Research Institute—and this may shock you—is not a part of the National Institutes of Health. But ORI isn't exactly unknown in Washington, either. It's actually quite well-known to the FTC.) And guess what, the nice lady in the white lab coat who anchors the online pitch for Lipozene said that there were not just one, but "12 clinical studies" that support the product; there were also testimonials from people using words like "miracle" and "fantastic." But strangely, I found no link to the actual studies, nor any descriptions of where they'd been done, how they'd been conducted, etc. In separate research, however, I did find a discussion board for Lipozene users. They do not seem as upbeat as the lady in the white coat. And their disenchantment was not limited to the product itself; several reported unauthorized charges that appeared on their charge cards for quantities of Lipozene far in excess of the amount ordered. And get this: One woman, "Dorothy," who says she merely ordered the "$29 trial" of Lipozene, ended up getting billed for a total of $205.

Now that is an authentic "miracle"! Once again, $20-something has turned into $200-something, right before our eyes.

This is a serious question.

Whenever I hear a news report about the plight of some woman that begins, "Debbie Jones, a single mother of seven...," I find myself unable to take whatever follows seriously. Or I guess a more candid and accurate way of putting it would be that the sympathy just drains out of me, all at once, bloosh, as if I were a car's oil pan and somebody popped the plug underneath. It almost doesn't matter what misfortune befell the woman, or what it is that the newscasters so obviously want me to feel; they just lose me. I tune out. And though I sense that I shouldn't react that way, that my conscience is pummeling me from somewhere within, I can't seem to help myself. I fight it, believe me. It just doesn't work. I have a similar reaction when I happen upon those excruciating ads from Catholic Charities trying to "guilt" viewers into donating to their missionary work in Africa. They'll show these beautiful young African girls, all of 15 or 16, surrounded by literal broods of starving doe-eyed children with flies on them. I want to scream at the set, "If you care so damn much about the poor, then stop fighting birth control! Teach these girls something about contraception!"

Anyway, getting back to Debbie Jones, here's my question: What do you think? It is unfair of me to be that way? Incidentally, no inferences whatsoever should be drawn about race in this little exercise. I've seen human-interest reporting of this type that touches on all demographic groups.

Thoughts?

(No) shame on them?

Caught an interesting segment on O'Reilly last night. Among his guests was University of Kansas professor Brian Russell, PhD. Russell was there to offer his views on Spring Break, marauding college students, and particularly the whole "Girls Gone Wild" subculture, which some critics continue to attribute to "a lack of self-esteem" on the part of contemporary young women.

Au contraire, says Russell, "The bigger problem I see is hyper-inflated self-esteem, when these kids do things and don't even realize they should feel shame. Everything they do is 'cool,' everything they do is 'cute.' " He then mentioned a previous O'Reilly appearance, which I hadn't seen, covering "the Happiness Factor." I gathered from last night's allusive remarks that in that prior segment, he'd made a point similar to what we've noted often on SHAMblog, particularly in last summer's horror stories: that happiness, as it's framed today, is an "all-about-YOU!" phenomenon wherein everyone else's needs, wants and feelings are just background music and don't really count.

Russell is careful to say that successful living is a balancing act: You don't want people wallowing in shame and self-doubt, either. "Shame is not an emotion that you want people to go through the day feeling," he told O'Reilly. "But it's an emotion that you do want people to have" as part of their emotional make-up, he argues, so that they're at least cognizant of when they've hurt other people and/or blithely cast aside "established cultural values." The way you learn shame, says Russell, is "by being corrected while you're growing up." Though it's not a new argument, he reminds us that the parents of this generation's young people, determined not to "make the same mistakes" as their parents, rejected the very idea of boundaries, and in the process, really, rejected the whole idea of parenting: "Today's parents mostly wanted to be their kids' friends."

According to Russell, the perfect word for the resulting young men and women is vainglorious: Their attitude towards life is, as he puts it, "If they did it, it's OK." Russell did not use the word sociopath, but it bears noting again here that some of the traits we've purposely cultivated in our Gen-X children run perilously close to the textbook definition of that malaise.

Young moms and dads: Please consider this when you're tempted to remind little Jacob or Emily, for the 10th time this morning, just how "special" they are....

=================================

For years, if someone were to ask about my politics, I'd reflexively answer, "conservative." Most of my edgier writing with sociopolitical overtones has been in that vein, and has run in publications that all but brandished a right-wing lens on life: The Wall Street Journal, American Enterprise, American Spectator, National Review Online. And if I'm going to be honest, I still believe—in principle; in theory; "in a perfect world"—that the policies espoused by conservatives offer the greatest rewards to the largest number of people. Thing is, I do find myself asking a certain question a lot of late, and it's a question that hit home for me again last night, as I listened to The Dumbest Man Ever To Get His Own Talk Show expound on the Gay Menace, why the Boy Scouts need to keep fighting the good fight to save America-as-we-know-it, and related matters:

Why is it that you always seem to find conservatives and outright bigots on the same side of so many issues? Is that really "just coincidence"?

Of the people, for the people...in the people?

I don't want to wade too deeply or directly into the sleaze-athon that has developed like a thick and foul-smelling bog around (a) New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's adulterous liaison with a young prostitute and/or (b) Dr. Laura Schlessinger's jarring (though not totally unexpected) remarks on same. Of course, readers should feel perfectly free to wade in as deeply as they care to.

Unless you live on Planet Woosabi-6 with the likes of Michael Beckwith, you've certainly heard about Spitzer. And you've almost surely heard about Schlessinger as well. Just in case, I'll recap briefly. Dr. Laura had a number of interesting things to say about the Gov's indiscretions...and what is it with these East Coast governors, lately, anyway? Now the new New York Governor, too, has come out and admitted that both he and the wife were messing around during a difficult period in their marriage. And you've probably heard the recent allegations of a three-way involving Dina McGreevy, ex-husband James (formerly known as the governor of New Jersey), and a gay aide-de-camp. But back to Schlessinger. On the Today Show, under questioning by cohost Meredith Vieira, Dr. Laura had this to say about Mrs. Spitzer, whose name is Silda:

"When a wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like our hero, he's very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs. These days, women don't spend a lot of time thinking about how they can give their men what they need."

Even when challenged by the normally mild-mannered Vieira—Could Dr. Laura actually be saying that women like Silda Spitzer drive their husbands to cheat?—Schlessinger didn't blink. After a token disclaimer, she replied, in part, "But yes, I hold women accountable for tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the love and kindness and respect and attention they need."

The reason such comments are not totally unexpected is that Schlessinger has long been a foe of the more militant foundation of "women's lib," with its "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" message. In her book, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, she details the many ways in which—to her mind—today's women hurt, diminish and emasculate their men. That said, her thoughts on the Spitzer affair have not gone over well with women's groups, women generally, or most media observers (female or male). I think "outrage" is the word that best sums things up. However, leaving aside the specifics of what Schlessinger said, and even the overall psychodynamics of adultery, I think this teapot tempest demonstrates once again the dangers of the instant diagnosis to which self-help has conditioned us. I won't repeat here what I've said/written at length elsewhere—notably on pp. 48-50 and 177-178 of SHAM—but it's important to realize that therapy, true therapy, presupposes a thorough knowledge of the patient and his/her circumstances. Even in a controlled setting, where therapist and subject are working together under clinically intimate conditions for months if not years, therapists will hesitate to render unequivocal pronouncements on what a person's core-level problem may be, what motivates him or her to act the way he/she does, or even what he/she should do about it. Yet here we have a Laura Schlessinger, bereft of relevant credentials in the first place, dispensing advice and counsel as if she (a) knows the subject and the situation, and (b) knows all the answers and how they apply across-the-board to humankind as a whole.

Further, it is in very poor taste, as well as highly unprofessional, for mental-health experts to make a public spectacle of people in desperate straits by offering armchair opinions about their (supposed) foibles and states of mind. We saw this also in Dr. Phil's first and much-maligned prime-time special, wherein he implied that a 9-year-old boy was destined to become a serial killer, as well as in his offhand, ill-advised statements about Britney Spears.

Above, by the way, is a discreetly cropped photo of a younger and, shall we say, more free-spirited Laura. Back in the days when she was quite the little heart-breaker herself.

NOTE: Once again, none of this is to be interpreted as holier-than-thou on my part. When I talk about a "foul-smelling bog," I'm referring to the media coverage more than the central action itself.

Running a losing race.

Just a few thoughts, at the end of a vexing day, about Barack Obama's much-ballyhooed speech, this morning, on race. Actually, it is in part because of Sen. Obama's speech that I feel as vexed as I do. Unlike other members of media and most casual observers, who spent the afternoon figuring out how to out-fawn each other in lauding Obama's rhetoric, I was gravely disappointed in what the man had to say. (And remember, I say that as someone who has admitted, in recent posts and comments, that I'm learning towards voting for him.) If ever there were a golden opportunity—the perfect time and place—for someone to lift us above the whole racial melee that has stymied American culture for centuries, this was that time and place. Further, Obama was that perfect someone. He's the product of the union between a black father and a white mother.* Later, he had a Hawaiian stepfather. So he's not only "panracial," if you will, but he's also as close to being a voice for true unity as we've had in American politics in a long, long time.

Though I'll concede that I didn't really expect it, I had hoped that candidate Obama would use this opportunity, in the wake of the firestorm over the provocative statements made by his pastor, to simply disavow race. To say no mas. I had hoped that he would say something along the lines of: "OK. This stops here and now. Henceforth, I am not black. I am not white. I am not multiracial. I am nothing except Barack. Henceforth, I will not trade in race. Nor will I respond to issues framed in racial terms. Similarly, I exhort all of you who are listening to me, henceforth, to regard yourself as individuals and individuals only. You are not black people, you are not white people; you are people, period. And, you know, it doesn't matter if your stupid and/or bigoted neighbors continue to treat you like you're black or white or whatever. Don't respond to it. Don't rise to the challenge. Now, if that is the world you envision, and that is what you want for your children and grandchildren, then I invite you to follow me on this groundbreaking journey. Starting tomorrow. Let us work together to bring about real change.** Because in this case, the more we remember the past, the more we're condemned to repeat it."

Would that have been political suicide for Obama? Would it have cost him the support of, say, the 90 percent of black Democrats who support him in Southern states like Mississippi? I don't know. Maybe it would. But maybe it would've been worth the risk. Maybe there are millions upon millions of everyday Americans of all "races," who are as fed up as I am, and just waiting for someone to give them a voice.

And, folks, you know what? Sometimes you just do something because it's the right thing to do.

Mark my words: In the ensuing weeks and months, all we're going to hear from media is an ever-more-intense, endlessly minute dissection of the things that divide us. That, in the end, is what Sen. Obama will have wrought.

* Again, using the standard definitions of "black" and "white" that I resist, and have repeatedly attacked on this blog for both philosophical and biological reasons.
** i.e., as opposed to the phony, superficial kind bandied about in this campaign season.

'That is not a mole in my yard. That is not a mole in my yard. That...'

Or maybe I should call this one, "Joel vs. Mole."

Spent some moments this morning listening to Joel Osteen, celebrant of the Gospel According to Ralph Lauren, as he delivered his weekly dose of inspiration to his ever-hopeful, No. 1 Nielsen-rated flock.

Here's what I took away:

1. You can overcome a negative belief, and even a negative reality, by flipping it over to a positive one. God wants you to do that.
So: "I am a loser" becomes "I am a winner." "I am failing at school" becomes "I am an A student." We'll see this outlook again, in spades, when we get to Byron Katie—which, believe it or not, we actually will do. Please bear with me. Katie is a topic where I want my post to be a genuine work of journalism: serious journalism, not just a cursory, snarky rant.

2. We are all thoroughbreds who can easily be standing in life's winner's circle. There are no losers.
Now let me get this straight, Joel: If two employees who formerly thought they had no shot at a certain promotion suddenly start believing in themselves—that they're destined to get that job—what happens then? Do several identical jobs suddenly become available? How's that work, exactly? And how does God decide whom he roots for, in this era of corporate downsizing?

3. None of us is just average. (I am paraphrasing, but that's what the good Reverend said.) In fact, we are all "clay on the outside, but made of gold on the inside." Every one of us.
Look, I'm not out to be a hard-ass here; I get what he means, metaphorically. But let's take him literally, because—well, as I've asked before, of what use is a positive-thinking program if you can't apply it? And how can you apply something if you can't take it literally? Ergo, Osteen is saying that even in a system where everyone is exactly the same, no one is average. That is, by definition, absurd. In the system he proposes, for example, being "made of gold" becomes average. (And if I really wanted to be annoying, I'd also point out that if we were all made of gold, then gold would have very little value. But I don't want to be annoying, so I won't point that out.)

.........

Then, during and after breakfast, I had to have an hour-long argument with the wife over all this. The wife, you see, is the one who found Joel Osteen's show and delightedly let the remote linger upon it. She is very drawn to Osteen and his message, and grows angry at the mere notion that someone, especially her breakfast companion, could nitpick such a "refreshing" and "uplifting" outlook. I tried to explain myself, framing my counterarguments simply as a defense of reason and a healthy commitment to skepticism. No dice.

"People need to think that way, Stephen," she tells me. "Nobody could face life if they looked at it the way you seem to want them to. Why is it so important to you to take away hope?"

So I sigh and give up. No wonder SHAM never quite rose to the heights I'd hoped. How could I have expected to successfully make my case to the culture-at-large when I can't even be taken seriously at my own breakfast table?

(P.S. The mole is still in my yard. I just checked.)

100 percent of TV's top-rated black talk-show hosts like him, too.

First off, I know that some of you have grown a bit weary of "the race thing." And it's not even the first time I've made that apology in advance. Well, again, I'm sorry, people. I couldn't let this one slide.

I invite you to read this front-page story from my local paper, The Morning Call. In fact, I urge you to read it (and regular SHAMbloggers know that I almost never presume to use such importunate language). The story, titled "Dems' Race Could Come Down to Skin Color,"* is about Barack Obama and the "racial divide" that still plagues America, yes, even in 2008 AD. I read it with my mouth agape, astonished that this unabashedly one-sided agenda-mongering had survived the editing process in the name of honest "political analysis."

Looking at data from Obama's primary win in Mississippi, the Call reporters tell us that nine out of 10 black voters supported Obama, whereas seven out of 10 white voters opposed him. So far so good. But then, zeroing in exclusively on the "race-based resistance" of the latter group, the reporters conclude that we still have a ways to go before we reach true colorblindness.

Question: Why is the fact that 90 percent of black voters favor Sen. Obama not at least as suspicious and potentially indicative of racism as the fact that 70 percent of white voters oppose him?

I say again: In matters of racism (and the pursuit of colorblindness that Dr. King espoused), "race-based support" is the same as "race-based resistance." Both constitute racism. Supporting or rejecting a candidate based on such surface characteristics as race and gender is always some kind of "ism." The women who, whether they admit it or not, favor Hillary "because it's time to give a woman a chance" are just as culpable as the angry white men who reject both Hillary and Obama.

More to the point: Why does none of this occur, seemingly, to the reporters themselves?

See, I'm fairly sure that what happened in this story was unintentional; the reporters don't see this as "agenda-mongering," as I allege above. I bet that if you asked them, they'd tell you they're just being reasonable, responsible, civic-minded Americans. They see their story as an instance of the so-called "social journalism" I mention in my recent piece for eSkeptic. If you do read the Call story, notice, too, how the reporters repeatedly use the word Confederate, with all the loaded overtones thereof, in describing the challenge Obama faces in the Deep South. (Of course, the blacks who grew up in the "Confederate" South, and perhaps harbor some lingering animosity towards the white regimes that once suppressed them or their forebears, are just making a "logical" choice when they vote for a Barack Obama.)

The argument I make here is the very same one that Bernie Goldberg makes about mainstream media in his tell-all books: It's not that the media are purposely twisting the facts; it's that their world-view presupposes that this is just how sophisticated, enlightened people think. Goldberg himself puts it this way: "....[I]n their opinion, liberalism on a whole range of issues, from abortion and affirmative action to the death penalty and gay rights, is not really liberal at all, but merely reasonable and civilized."**

Interestingly, the continuation page for the Call story also features this item under the headline, "Philly Black Clergy Group Endorses Obama." No doubt the black clergy based their endorsement strictly on merit. After all, men of God couldn't possibly allow matters of race to influence their political decision-making. Right?

* The Morning Call doesn't actually capitalize its titles, but lower-case titling has always looked odd to me, especially when dropped into the middle of a graph, as here.
** And it behooves me to point out here that my personal sympathies are aligned with many of the causes noted in that quoted sentence. But that doesn't mean I want to see my personal biases reflected in the media's default view of life!

Meditations on a very bad career move. Part 2 of a not-necessarily-sequential series.

My first item on Rodale elicited a somewhat aggrieved email from a former high-level colleague who seemed to feel I'd been a tad unfair. As I reflect on the points he made, I suppose I do need to own up to a few things. Nobody held a gun to my head and forced me to walk out on the last year of my commitment to Indiana University. Nobody forced me to take a job in the very belly of the self-help beast. In my defense, I had no idea how bad it was going to be at Rodale, and it's also true that various aspects of my job, as originally framed, turned out to be illusory/nonexistent. But I'm a big boy, and I'd been around the block a time or two. I should've realized that I'd been offered the job only because every managerial-type editor in New York with a track record and an IQ higher than Sean Hannity's had probably turned it down. They grasped what never occurred to me until way too late: that Rodale of that period was very much a company in transition, undergoing a profound culture shock that was converting what had once been a generational labor of love (and one of America's "100 Best Places to Work") into a soulless bureaucratic monolith that—if it loved anything at all—loved the bottom line.

Millennial Rodale was, in short, one of those hornet's nests that you don't walk into. I did and I got stung. It's that simple.

Having said that, if there was a project that both epitomized my Rodale Period and brought SHAMland into tighter focus, it would have to be the sports-motivation book* I'd planned to call Get in the Game (later, Stay in the Game), which would've been written by...see, that's the tricky part. Because the concept came first, I was never quite sure who the author would be. (Or I should say, I was never quite sure whose name would appear on the cover. The plan was that the heavy-duty authoring would be done by [1] a ghostwriter who'd be willing to work for minimal royalties or, it eventually became clear, [2] yours truly, who'd work for no royalties at all.**) The name attached to the project was ever in flux, at approximate three- or four-month intervals. I began with Tommy Lasorda, moved on to Sparky Anderson, then finally settled on Cal Ripken (if settled is a word that can ever be used in discussing someone like Ripken). Then I was instructed to forget the idea altogether. That was about a month before I was instructed to forget that I worked there. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

No matter what I'd been told early on, I soon learned that I wouldn't be doing books like Armies of the Night or A Civil Action. It wasn't for lack of trying. Within weeks of my arrival we had the first look at a project that Greg Critser, a very talented editor and Harper's contributor, wanted to write about the food industry. I also began developing a book about the acne drug, Accutane, then being linked to an alarming number of teen suicides. I saw Greg's book as a sure winner—along the lines of Fast Food Nation but deeper and richer—and I thought the Accutane book could be a sleeper, if we got it done for a modest investment. More importantly, they were the kinds of books I could publish and still respect myself in the morning, putting Men's Health on people's radar for something besides six-pack abs and male versions of the "hot new sex moves!" that women had come to expect from Cosmo.

Alas, I also learned that, while technically I was an acquiring editor, I could not do any actual acquiring. Not without getting my ideas vetted by lots of other people. Those people included an editorial board, a marketing committee, and Rodale's beancounters. Securing such approvals was no mean feat, since these weren't the kinds of smiley-faced books that Rodale was accustomed to publishing. In Accutane's case, my peers and superiors had no idea how to "conceptualize" or "position" such a project within Rodale's standard marketing machinery. The idea was dismissed out of hand. (During one meeting, I thought I even saw in the eyes of some of the marketing people bemused looks that might've translated to: "silly boy.") In Critser's case, I discovered that no one wanted to do an out-and-out exposé on the food industry. The book the marketing committee envisioned would also include a redeeming "service component": like what you'd get if you combined Fast Food Nation with The Beverly Hills Diet. They also wanted Greg to jump through a number of additional editorial hoops before they'd even formally consider his proposal.

As it happens, I already knew Greg Critser quite well. Earlier in our respective careers, he'd been my editor for many years at a succession of glossy magazines, and he was not—hmmm, how shall we put this? Let's just say Greg's the kind of guy where, when you say "jump," the two words you get in response will not be "how high." I raised the marketing committee's objections with him as gently as I could, knowing anyway that he'd tell me just where Rodale could stick its silly, mixed-metaphor vision of his book. Greg did not disappoint. He picked up his marbles and rolled them over to Houghton Mifflin, where, by early 2003 (by which time I was long gone from Rodale), he had the cover of the New York Times Book Review for his bestselling, critically acclaimed exploration of America's eating foibles, Fat Land. If Stay in the Game taught me the most about the company for which I now worked, Fat Land will always be remembered, at least by me, as The One That Got Away. Today Critser's book is considered such a landmark work that it's even used as a required text in college courses.

I should mention at this point that the Rodale family had recruited Steve Murphy to its presidency in 2000 to pilot the company's assault on what everyone was calling "Horizon 3." Not a day went by that I didn't hear the phrase from someone, despite the fact that nobody knew just what Horizon 3 was, or how we'd even know when we got there; all we knew was that we somehow depended on H-3 to facilitate our transformation into The New Rodale. Really, to those of us in the trenches, the sole identifying characteristic of The New Rodale was visual, not philosophical: the way it dressed. Understand, Rodale had once been a very Earth Motherly affair, where employees at all levels favored jeans and corduroys. By the time of my arrival that was changing fast, and was especially noticeable in Murphy and the assorted, highly compensated FOS ("friends of Steve") he brought in.

Murphy himself favored trés-continental double-breasted jackets. He owned about 600 of them, and wore each as if intent on wrapping the garment several times around his delicate frame—that is, more like a bathrobe than a suit jacket. (At my first sit-down meeting with him, he wore an ensemble whose stripes were so widely spaced that it almost seemed his entire torso fit between just two of them.) Then there was Michael "don't-call-me-Mike" Carroll, the patrician human-resources chief who worked for us for a few months until Ardie Rodale reportedly took umbrage at the fact that he didn't stop trimming his nails one day when she walked into his office to speak with him. Michael was a tall, debonair fellow who must have thought he looked especially tall and debonair in an overcoat, because he wore the damn thing (complete with scarf) at all times, even indoors on the warmest days of spring. (He was gone by summer, but I have no reason to assume he wouldn't have worn the get-up then, too.) Michael was also one of those guys who has a cell-phone sprouting perpetually from his ear: At lunchtime, you'd see him standing motionless in the middle of the cafeteria, in overcoat and scarf, having a 15-minute conversation on his cell while around him, dozens of employees sat and ate their meals. It was bizarre. You wanted to tug at his coat and say, "Hey Mike…Mike...You're inside, fella. At least take off the freakin' scarf...and stop kicking me for calling you Mike!" Finally (for now), there was Ben Roter, who I think was brought in to teach us fiscal responsibility. No doubt he fine-tuned his plans for fiscal responsibility while driving to work in his Ferrari, drumming his driving-gloved fingers on the wheel. I don't think I ever saw Ben in a jacket, but I assume that anyone whose car costs more than my house must also own some very nice suits....

Next time: The New Rodale tries to get me to see why Get/Stay in the Game is simply not a Horizon 3 project.

* Yes, I admit it: I was going to dabble in Sportsthink. In my defense, I was going to do it on a higher plane than the standard fare. And let's face it, folks: I'd taken the job. I'd moved my family, including my son and his infant daughter, east from Indianapolis. Every two weeks I was cashing the sizable paychecks that went with my title. What were my options? Was I going to stage a sit-in at my desk until the rest of Rodale came around to my way of thinking? With the childlike naivete that has brought me such success on every inside job I've ever taken (you will recognize that as sarcasm and self-derision), I figured I could work from the inside to effect change.
** When you write something as part of a corporate writing/editing staff, as would've been the case here, you do it as a "work for hire." That means you do not share in the copyright and, generally, get no remuneration over and above your regular salary. Once the words are written, it's as if you never existed; your words belong to someone else, in this case, Rodale.

There's money to be made recycling the organs of your neighbor's dead toddler! Learn how today!

Last Thursday, while I was en route to Las Vegas, news outlets that track the housing market reported a sad milestone: Home foreclosures soared to a record high late last year, with over 1 million private homes in various stages of foreclosure.

A day or two later, as I was driving down Sahara Boulevard on my way to the library mentioned in yesterday's post, I saw a billboard that read as follows:

FORECLOSURES AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH!
LEARN HOW THIS CAN BE YOUR TICKET TO FINANCIAL SECURITY!*

The billboard advertised a financial seminar to be held this coming weekend.

Financial seminars keyed in whole or in part to the turning/churning of so-called "distressed properties" are nothing new. (Here, e.g., is The Donald's foray into that market.) I guess if this was going to bother me, it should've bothered me a long time before I saw that billboard on Sahara Boulevard. But given what's been going on for the past year, with that whole subprime-lending mess, it becomes increasingly hard to overlook the fact that distressed properties weren't just put here for the rest of us to make a quick killing in real estate.

These "financial opportunities" exist because people are losing their homes.**

It bears repeating: These opportunities exist because people are losing their homes.

And naturally, the self-help movement—wealth-building division—sees this as a potential gold mine. Understand, though, that when I say "gold mine," I mean for the gurus. There is scant documented proof that such programs are effective at generating meaningful added income for everyday consumers, anyway.

To me, this development underscores with a rare level of clarity how certain regions of SHAMland so efficiently detach conscience from happiness and success. We saw slightly different spins on the same phenomenon in the handful of horror stories I ran last year: All that matters is how things work out for you. Any damage you leave in your wake is immaterial; somebody else's problem. (And if you beg to differ on such points, the gurus of self-actualization dismiss you as "codependent" or "hampered by negative blocking thoughts.")

I know that we live in a free-market environment, and also that most transactions that take place in any such milieu are zero-sum: For every seller there must be a buyer. For every winner there is usually a loser. I guess what I recoil from is the jubilation—the exclamation points. I recoil from the idea that your financial security is built, unflinchingly and unabashedly, on someone else's family tragedy. I recoil from a formalized mindset that plainly encourages narcissism and even, at times, edges provocatively close to outright sociopathy.

I blame certain people, too. I blame Joe Vitale, who can talk without shame about a fire sparing like-minded business associates, but show zero compassion for those poor souls who hadn't yet found enlightenment and who, therefore, were penalized via the incineration of their homes. This, of course, is an expression of the "value system" promulgated by Rhonda Byrne, which has no sympathy for life's losers, and even attacks them for "attracting" their fates. (That belief—that we have cosmically/karmically "earned" whatever status we have in life, good or bad—is the core rationalization that supposedly entitles us to profit off our neighbor's misfortunes.) Most of all, I blame people like Robert Allen, business partner of our friend Mark Victor Hansen, whose wealth-building programs extol the very types of parasitic real-estate practices glorified on that Vegas billboard (and in countless other places coast to coast). On the site linked immediately above, Allen talks about "gobbling up properties at huge discounts all across the nation." Gobbling up. Just like a second helping of dessert at that Vegas buffet, perhaps.

My wife said to me recently that people of substantial means, who've managed to weather the current non-recession without ill effect, should indeed buy foreclosed homes...then just sign them back over to the people who were forced out of them, mortgage-free. Some would say she's a Pollyanna. Some would even say that such attitudes explain why she and I never made the money we probably should've made in life.

Believe me, folks, it's not that I don't have the head for the kind of success some of these gurus advocate. It's that I just don't have the stomach for it.

* Not the billboard shown in this post.
** Say what you will about their own stupidity or recklessness in signing up for mortgages that they couldn't pay. The bottom line is, they're losing their homes. That's a lousy deal, no matter how you slice it.

Cigarettes and SHAMpain.

You can't spend any time in Las Vegas without becoming acutely* aware that Sin City is one of the last refuges for that dying American breed known as the Unrepentant Smoker. It's not just that lots of people in Vegas smoke—there remain many cities like that, all the more so as one recedes from either coast—but that they smoke with an impunity that you rarely see anymore except in, well, places like Vegas. (Haven't been to Atlantic City in a while; I imagine it's equally true there. Although, AC exists in close proximity to a number of major urban hubs, like New York, that have banned most indoor smoking. That may have a mitigating effect.) I mean to say that Las Vegans smoke with an in-your-face gusto that's true to the term: They'll take a soulful, exaggerated, James Dean-style drag, savor the carcinogens for a moment, then spew the fumes back out with no apparent regard for whether said fumes have been propelled in anyone's particular direction.

In short, they smoke in a way that says: "This is our town, pal. Deal with it."

Some casinos have made a token nod to healthful living by setting aside small ghettos for non-smokers, and much is made of the newer casinos' state-of-the-art air-handling systems. BFD. The overall atmosphere remains literally and figuratively noxious. If you're an asthmatic, as I am, you can handle it for maybe 20 minutes. Which, then again, is about all it takes for me to blow my allotted $20 in gambling reserves anyway.

=====================================

One final dispatch from Vegas that I present in further support of my book's subtitle**: While awaiting my appointment for computer time in the (very nice and, thankfully, smoke-free) library off Sahara Boulevard, I was reading over a woman's shoulder and noticed that she was intent upon a site offering advice about "how to dress your kids." Intrigued, I later Googled the term and found that "how to dress your kids" generates 8.7 million hits; that's almost as large a number of Web citations as the phrase "how to diet," which yields 9.6 million.

How to dress your kids. Have we become so helpless, so bereft of resources within our own minds, that we're dependent on others to tell us what clothes to put on our children? This lack of confidence in the ideas that we generate internally is, to my mind, a direct outgrowth of conditioning inflicted upon us by the self-help industry.

There's even a YouTube video that purports to teach adults "how to dress so you don't embarrass your kids." (OK, it's a bit tongue-in-cheek. But still.) And while one supposes that this site, about dressing your kids "for success," means well, I confess that I can't read it without cringing. I kid you not, I ache physically when I see people giving themselves to this thinking (which goes hand-in-hand with that whole mentality that has millions of urban parents angling to get their kids into the "right" preschool). To me, sites like this may be the best argument yet for school uniforms, because what we're doing here—intentionally or not—is reinforcing an ethos wherein kids are judged (and judge each other) by the way they look. And even though some of the 8.7 million sites alluded to above are speaking to my basic point—that you shouldn't fall into the trap of worrying about how you dress your kids—that still leaves me wondering why we need someone else to tell us this!

I have an idea: Rather than talking about dressing kids for success, why not let this be the generation where we begin dismantling that entire you-are-what-you-wear mythology that has children thinking they need to own the "right" clothes. Maybe then little girls won't grow up into big girls who simply can't live without those "darling" $500 shoes with the red soles. Maybe then inner-city teens will stop killing each other for their sneakers. Of course, that would require some cooperation from the likes of Nike as well as the major NBA stars who aren't content with the millions they get paid in salary. But it's just a thought.

More to the point: What happened to the concept of Self in this bizarre latter-day notion of self-help? Regrettably, this was an area I didn't explore very much in SHAM, because my editor felt we were getting quite airy enough as it was—but think about the philosophical implications of needing help in such areas as dressing. It implies that the Self is not really a true self at all; rather, it's more like something you must recast in someone else's image in order to conform with millions of other supposed selves. If everyone reads the same books and sings the same mantras and follows the same principles, then in the end you don't have any true selves. You have one mass, universal personality. You have a cult of the collective.

That kind of advice is not self-help. It's self-abandonment.

* as well as bronchially, if you're asthmatic, as I am.
** which, for the record, is How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless. Or, if you're reading this in the UK or Down Under, How the Gurus of the Self-Help Movement Make Us Helpless.

Greetings from Vegas, where I'm gellin', but not happy about it.

I've long felt that if there's one critical-thinking skill that colleges should be sure to drill into students, it's a solid appreciation of the Law of Unintended Consequences. There are all sorts of complex theoretical models designed to illustrate how the LoUC works*, most of them venturing into Chaos Theory, the so-called "butterfly effect" and the like. But the past few days have provided me with an excellent illustration that's somewhat more low-tech and easily comprehended.

My right heel.

A bit of background. Last year was a nightmare baseball season** for me, physically. I began with knee stiffness, suffered a groin pull midway through, then finished out the season by hurting my heel. And when I say "finished out the season," I mean it literally. On my last sprint (I use the word advisedly) to first base, in my final at-bat of our final playoff game, I landed awkwardly on the bag and knew immediately that I'd done something to my heel. When the pain didn't subside over the next few weeks, I did what any red-blooded guy would do: I pointedly avoided going to the doctor and instead adopted a new walking technique that favored my right heel. This made my gait look a bit odd, and will probably result in further injuries down the line, but it seemed effective at minimizing the heel pain much of the time. And that is how I've lived out the past six months: walking kinda funny but mostly in little or no pain.

Then the other day, after hearing another one of those insipid "Dr. Scholl's" spots, I decided to splurge $5.99 for a set of gel inserts. And let me tell you, people, they're amazing. Just amazing. Not only was there no pain at all from the moment I stuck them in my shoes, but it was as if I were walking on a velvet cushion. In fact, they're so amazing that over the past few days, I've gradually (albeit unintentionally) reverted to normal heel-to-toe walking.

And today my heel hurts like hell. It hasn't been this bad since I first injured it last August.

That is classic unintended-consequence: You do something that's supposed to make something else better, and it does make that something else better, except that the making-better has a downside you couldn't have foreseen that makes another something else (or, in this case, the original thing) worse.

I guess sometimes, even if it is broke, you shouldn't fix it. Clearly when I get back from Vegas I'll have to have it looked at by a medical professional. Hmm. I wonder what the unintended consequences of that will be.

This is why, when we posit our solutions to life's issues and dilemmas, we should do so with humility. You never know what chain of events your brilliant idea may set in motion.

* And the interesting part is that this is one law that actually has much to say about what happens in real life, as opposed to the Law of Attraction, which seems to hog all the press nowadays.
** Dedicated SHAMbloggers know that I've played on various men's amateur hardball teams since 1991.

De-Genderizing Jesus?

In the doctor's office a week or so ago, I was leafing through a new bible put out by Zondervan Press, one of America's leading religious publishers. Zondervan's offering is called Today's International Version New Testament, and I recall that when it was first published a few years ago, much was made of the effort that went into substituting gender-neutral language for various occurrences of such words as father and sons. This was my first chance to take an actual look at the end result. (And you gotta wonder about the subliminal message of finding a bible in a doctor's office...but be that as it may....)

As I read along, chuckling over some of the awkward-sounding replacement text, I couldn't help wondering what the earliest editorial meetings for such a bible would have sounded like. As luck would have it, I have now obtained a secretly made tape of just such a meeting for a forthcoming Zondervan version of the Old Testament. The meeting, at an undisclosed location, took place between a Zondervan managing editor (Ted), a chief copyeditor (Rob), representatives of various women's groups (Ellen and Marcia), a legal advisor (Leslie), and others. I present the transcript for you here, without further ado.*

====================================

TED: I thought we'd begin with a quick read-through. To kind of get us in the spirit of things, as it were. So: "And God said, Let there be…"

ELLEN: I have a problem with that.

TED: You have a problem with what?

ELLEN: I'm put off by the overtones. "Let there be light…" It's such a transparently macho way of speaking. So pontifical. Women don't speak that way.

MARCIA: I disagree. Why can't women be pontifical?

TED: Besides, you wouldn't expect God to be pontifical?

ELLEN: A macho God, yes.

MARCIA: What actually troubles me here is that everyone knows that Edison invented the light bulb.

[LONG SILENCE]

TED: Ohh-kay….

MARCIA: Well, Thomas Edison was, of course, a man. And if one reads the bible figuratively instead of literally—which as you know is the position taken by many theologians—one might infer that in this opening passage, as written, God was exhorting humankind to take dominion over the world, to improve their lot. And in the case of one of the most important improvements in world history, artificial light, it was a man who—

TED: We're in Genesis here, Marcia. Edison doesn't come along for like a million years. In fact, people don't even come along until—

MARCIA: I still think it's a way of foreshadowing a great male achievement. Thereby putting women in their place from the very beginning.

ROB: We could always substitute, "And God said, 'It's way too dark around here.' "

LESLIE: On behalf of women of color, I am personally offended by that.

TED: Look, maybe reading this line by line isn't such a great idea. What do you say we just go through and try to touch on some of the major themes?

ELLEN: Fair enough. But for the record, I'm not thrilled about this business of, "And on the seventh day He rested," either.

TED: I know, Ellen, I know: It can't be a He.

ROB: "And on the seventh day, rest occurred"?

ELLEN: It's not that simple. I'm curious about daycare issues. If we assume God might just as well be a She, a lot of our female readers may want to know what provisions were made for the children while—

TED: What children?

ELLEN: —while She was out creating heaven and earth.

ROB: Maybe She was a stay-at-home God...?

LESLIE: So again, right away we're curtailing Her options in life.

TED: Can we move on to Adam and Eve, please?

MARCIA: Fine. I am irked by the notion that God made Adam first.

ELLEN: I agree completely. We wouldn't want to leave it that way.

MARCIA: At the very least we should depict some protests. Some outrage.

TED: And who, may I ask, would be leading these protests? [Whimsically] "And God created Al Sharpton…"

MARCIA: Women's groups. I suppose we can have God make Adam first, but then we'll show N.O.W. picketing.

TED: N.O.W.?

ROB: Or we could we put in a clause, "God made Adam first, as there were not yet affirmative-action programs to guide God's decision-making process."

MARCIA: That still leaves us with all this nonsense about how God makes Eve because "it isn’t good for man to be alone, so I will make him a helper..." A helper. I mean, really!

ROB: Why not call her a consultant? Like, "It isn't good for man to be bereft of others' input, so I will make him a consultant"?

TED: He's gonna have sex with her, Rob.

ELLEN: Oh, like men don't sleep with their consultants?!

LESLIE: I've got some issues with the part where they're both standing there naked, prior to eating the forbidden fruit. That's textbook hostile-environment.

ROB: So could we put Eve in a jogging suit?

LESLIE: She still has to look at him.

ROB: Well, maybe he could he wear a jock….

TED: Now where the hell would they get jocks and jogging su—?

MARCIA: Wait just a minute, Ted. Are you implying that anything that makes a woman less subject to a man's prurient sexual interest comes from hell? Because if that's what you're trying to say, I'm not sure this dialog—

TED (sighing): It's a figure of speech, Marcia. I'm just looking at the overall body of the text and trying to see—

MARCIA: Hmmm, interesting, interesting…. Are you aware that you just used the words figure and body in the same sentence? It makes a person wonder where your thoughts are.

ELLEN: While we're at it, maybe we should just get rid of that stuff with the apple and the tree of knowledge and the like. It makes Eve sound so calculating. So shrewish.

MARCIA: Indeed. And gullible, too. We can't have the woman duped by the serpent—which, I'm sure you're all aware, is a classic phallic metaphor.

TED: A wildebeest, then?

MARCIA: Ted, I'm sensing passive-aggressiveness from you.

LESLIE: While we're on the subject, this whole section about Eve having to bear all this intense labor pain as a punishment for the forbidden-fruit episode—again, that's clearly sexual discrimination on God's part. After all, we don't see any special pain inflicted on Adam for his role in the birth.

MARCIA: I'd be willing to compromise if we added something about Adam having trouble with his prostate. Or perhaps we could make him impotent.

ROB: You know, I was thinking—the part where Eve gives birth to Cain and Abel? We should have her take family leave.

LESLIE: Excellent!

ELLEN: But about the children themselves. Shouldn't one of them be a girl?

ROB: So...Cain and Mabel?

ELLEN: Speaking of which, I know this doesn't come up till much later, but what are we going to call Christ? Jesus is a man's name.

MARCIA: I've already given considerable though to the matter. I'd argue for going with "Jesse." It's nicely androgynous.

LESLIE: Can we stick with Cain and Mabel for a moment? We might have another problem. Now, which one slew the other again?

TED: That would be Cain slaying Abel. Or Mabel, as the case may be.

LESLIE: Now, you see, I don't think I'm comfortable with that. It sets a very early precedent for domestic violence.

MARCIA: Yes, and notice, by the way, if we have Mabel getting slain, it's always the woman who seems to lose out in these things.

LESLIE: We could have her get a restraining order.

ELLEN: Cain pretty much beats the rap, too. That's a terrible message.

ROB: How 'bout something like, "And Cain slew Mabel...and got six-to-10 at Riker's Island"?

DEREK: Excuse me, but I want to go back to something from earlier. Why is it assumed that it's Adam and Eve? Why can't it be two men?

TED: Didn't you get the memo? That's the next bible, Derek. We meet tomorrow....

* Remember, this is just humor people, or at least a good-faith attempt at same. All thin skins must be checked at the door. ;)

I wonder who gave Carlin his copy of SHAM...?

First things first. I'm finally getting around to developing an item on Byron Katie. Hardly a week goes by that someone doesn't email me about her work—and no, that's not a misprint, since in this case Byron is a her. And further, when I use the word work, I'm using it quite specifically, because Katie's signature product is known as The Work. (Right off the bat, even if you know nothing about her, doesn't it already have "that ring" to it? That pungent, unmistakable whiff of...well, never mind.) Thing is, it's going to take me a while to do this right amid all my other looming deadlines—among other things, I'm supposed to write an annual report (!) this week*—and then I'm off to Vegas to visit the kids on Thursday. So, till I've finally got the Katie thing ready for prime time, please bear with me as I fill space with "maintenance blogging." Like this.

Don't know how many of you caught George Carlin's live HBO show last night. He calls it It's Bad for Ya. The point is, Carlin did a riff on self-esteem that sounded exactly like what you'd get if somebody (presumably Carlin) sat down and distilled Chapter 10 of SHAM to a 5- or 7-minute comedic riff. He followed the narrative line of the chapter almost as if I'd roughed out his routine: from the stuff about imbuing schoolchildren with the faux self-worth that has proved so disastrous for American education, to the part about taking the competitive aspect out of games, to the part about how the highest reliably measured levels of self-esteem are often found in drug kingpins and serial killers.** He even hinted at the emasculation of today's boys.

Whether or not Carlin was inspired by SHAM, or even knows a thing about it, I felt gratified nonetheless to see him skewer self-esteem the way he did: applying his uniquely Carlinesque coup de grace. I gotta admit, though, I wouldn't have minded if he'd mentioned the book by name. Of course, that's never been Carlin's style.

Anybody else see the show? I'm sure HBO will rerun it frequently in the coming months.

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I also wanted to mention that John Curtis' Americans Against Fraudulent Self-Help is sponsoring the nation's first (to my knowledge) Guru-Free Week, taking place April 1 to April 8. I mention it mostly because I thought the timing was nifty: having the event kick off on April Fool's Day. This is not to be construed as a specific endorsement of AAFS, which does solicit donations. Though it certainly sounds like a worthy enterprise along the lines of what Stephen Barrett has done with Quackwatch, I don't really know that much about Curtis except that he's been a solid supporter of my book and blog.

* Regulars know that I'll take on a select PR client here and there, if the money's right. This was an unforeseen but not unwelcome byproduct of the many years I spent writing about high-level corporate America for such publications as Worth, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal and others.
** See SHAM, pp. 200 ff., if you have a copy.