This essay popped into my head the other day. I was listening to — or rather had on in the background — a high school radio station (That is 1450 AM — which turns into a college radio station at night-time. There is a style to the whole outfit that the Entercom and Clear Channel stations lack.) The two high school djs played “I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred. When one of them asked, “Why did you play that?”, the other answered “To show that such a thing was popular at one time.” (I would mention that there is a godawful hip-hop song popular right now — I think by R Kelly but a google search isn’t showing anything up — that’s based upon sexual innuendoes around the kitchen table — and it rhymes potato with tomato. Life meanders forward; history is prolouge; some mendacities of pop culture never change.)

This one hit wonder is completely outside of these teenagers’ pop cultural purview. For me, it is just barely inside it. I remember a slightly sophisticated fellow student having a conversation with the (elementary school) teacher about the song, and either moral decay or changing standards of acceptability.

Later, I was in a line at Fred Meyers. The cashier was having trouble with the code for produce, and had to ask either a fellow worker or the supervisor. He gave the answer twice. Then he started chiming in some other numbers. “8675309.” The young clerk did not understand the reference. (And yet… Tommy Tutone lives right here in Portland!) [Everything vanishes for me. Various games of Trivial Pursuit show me not knowing things that it seems that I should know, and knowing things that it seems I should not know.]

As for Alf and Tom Cruise, I saw the Alf parody first — and no doubt did not make the connection when it was first run. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the movie “Risky Business”, nor do I have any reason to want to. Today’s teenagers — Alf not being a part of their pop cultural purview — may turn to the Homer Simpson parody when they hear the Bob Segar song. (Perhaps. I can’t really make heads or tails of how The Simpsons passes through its second run syndication… though, the episode in question comes from the show’s golden period when less surreality abounded.)

Just leave the high school djs with their “Vote for Pedro” t-shirts, and move on.

Once upon a time, somewhere after posting the words of Kent Hovind over yonder, with fundamentalist Christians not understanding that Kent Hovind was not in our midst and I was posting his words, the subject that someone oughta “debate” the man kept coming up.

I debated him. I can’t find it, but it went something like this:

Kent Hovind: In 1776, a man by the name of Adam Weishaupt started a group called the Illuminati, the enlightened ones. Their symbol is on the back of our dollar bill. They say, Once we get the New World Order in place, and institute the all-seeing-eye on top which represents Lucifer, the light bearer will be in charge. Yes, the all-seeing-eye on your dollar bill represents Lucifer. They know that, and they fully intend for Lucifer to rule this world.

Me: No comment.

Kent Hovind: I believe that the builders of the Great Pyramids were either Noah and Shem who built it after the flood. Or maybe it was Adam and Enoch who built it before the flood, and it was the only structure to survive the flood. The Great Pyramid is positioned perfectly, north, south, east, and west. We have no idea how they built it. We could not build it today. The symbolism for Christianity is all through the building. The sides of it have 144,000, smooth, polished limestone blocks. Ah, 144,000, that number is in the Bible.

Me: No comment.

Kent Hovind: Stanley Deyo, a Christian, is a genius who wrote the book [“The Cosmic Conspiracy”]. Way over my head. Deyo says that there are two kinds of UFOs. First, there are US government owned and operated UFOs. That really got my attention. The US government has UFOs? He said that the second kind is the satanically – owned and operated UFOs. He says that Satan has always used that mode of transportation to get around because the devil can only be at one place at one time, whereas God is all places at all times. That may be far fetched, so please do not accuse me of saying this is true. I do not know if it is true, but it is an interesting theory.

Me: No comment.

Kent Hovind: The Great Pyramid is a neat subject to study. If you go up to the kings chamber you will notice an empty tomb with a red granite coffin. The coffin has the exact dimensions of the ark of the covenant. The angle of the shaft leading down or the angle leading up is twenty-six degrees, nine minutes and seven seconds. It is noteworthy, that this is the exact angle from the pyramid to Bethlehem, right to the second. The Great Pyramid is positioned on the latitude line and the longitude line, which happens to be the longest ones in the world above sea level. This is all part of the New World Order, which was a conspiracy started by Satan back in the garden of Eden. He wanted to rule the world. He will cause everyone to receive a mark in their right hand or in their forehead. The mark is going to be six-hundred three-score and six, 666. In 1972, IBM Corporation developed the bar code where the computer can actually translate lines and spaces into zeros and ones, a binary language, and read it. If you look at the first two lines on the bar code, they are longer than the rest and are unmarked. The system does not tell you what these numbers are. It just so happens that two skinny lines with a space in between them is the computer binary code for the number six. Why would they put a six at the beginning, middle and end? Why didnt they choose a two or a four? Its on every product. Check it out and see for yourself. The Bible says if you receive that mark and worship the beast, you are going to be in trouble. Read Revelation chapter 14 and you will see how they will be tormented and punished. In 1990, they begin putting little magnetic strips inside our paper bills. If you examine a five, a ten, or a twenty dollar bill while holding it up to the light, you will see the strip about one-inch in on the left side. This is to prevent counterfeiting, but there are other things that they can do with it. They can detect, roughly, how much money is in your pocket when you walk past sensors, based on that strip.

Me: No comment.

Or something to that effect.
……….

Later on, I would see Kent Hovind on cable access television. Speaking in Russian, before a Russian crowd. Russian Creationists, I guess.

THIS continues to get me.

Tie it in with the “We were all wrong.” (a statement made by Alan Greenspan when, ohmygosh, Bush’s tax cuts resulted in huge budget deficits, or a statement made regarding weapons of mass destruction — which, clearly isn’t the case or else where do these cartoons come from?)

What you had was Rumsfeld stating things about how “Iraqi oil will pay for the war itself”, and Rumsfeld not being laughed off the stage. A low ball figure thrown out about the cost of the Iraq War, and people still considering the Bush Administration’s predictions credible. The question arises, and I’ve never been able to answer this question: Did they really believe themselves?

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

Administration officials still emphasize how much they have achieved despite the chaos that followed the invasion and the escalating insurgency. “Iraqis are taking control of their country, building a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And we’re helping Iraqis succeed,” President Bush said yesterday in his radio address.

It is here that I chime in with a great irony. Keep in mind that what you hear, that Bush chimed in about “liberation” and “freedom” late in the game after wmds disappeared as a reason, is false. It was always in there — and the name “Operation Iraqi Freedom” served some purpose therein. Indeed, it doesn’t take much scratching to see that for most true-believing pioneers of the “Neoconservative Clique”, freedom rushing in through Iraq to the whole Middle East was the reason to go into Iraq.

So. What and where is the free Iraq? If you’re a woman in Iraq, you’re probably less free in the most likely outcome for most of Iraq. It appears Secular Dictatorship is preferable to Theocratic Constitutional mumbo-jumbo for women’s rights. For the male — it’s a bit difficult to guage. (Assuming someone gets around to giving them electrical power.)

But the realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how the initial U.S. ambitions have not been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad’s 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.

Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent.

Okay. You’re male — you have facial hair. Is that all? Oh well… at least it’s a basic social custom.

You’re just going to have to get used to the idea that “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is most likely going to result in some other form of lack-of-freedom, and not freedom, for the Iraqi populace. Take it from there.

“We didn’t calculate the depths of feeling in both the Kurdish and Shiite communities for a winner-take-all attitude,” said Judith S. Yaphe, a former CIA Iraq analyst at the National Defense University.

Sectarianism is what George Washington warned us about. Sectarianism is, reportedly, what George W Bush got a crash course on a couple days before we went into Iraq — ie: what is a Kurd, what is a Shiite, what is a Sunni?

Actually, I’m stuck with the great question of “freedom”. Iran, as we all know, elected their nationalistic leader — Mossadegh– prime minister. The US got rid of him, installing the Shah. A much despised figure, the Iranians tore him out and replaced him with a Theocracy. So… Iran rid themselves of dictatorship (of a sort) and replaced him with… dictatorship (of a sort)?

Is it more free if the imprisionment is somehow inherently more from the nation as opposed to stamped from an external source? I don’t know.

On security, the administration originally expected the U.S.-led coalition to be welcomed with rice and rosewater, traditional Arab greetings, with only a limited reaction from loyalists of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The surprising scope of the insurgency and influx of foreign fighters has forced Washington to repeatedly lower expectations — about the time-frame for quelling the insurgency and creating an effective and cohesive Iraqi force capable of stepping in, U.S. officials said.

I sit here stunned. “Greeted with rice and rosewater”, ye say. I recall the Statue-dropping stagecraft had roses. I don’t remember the rice. But perhaps my memory is shaky.

The good news is we’re just a few months shy of that great “wait. maybe George W Bush was right all along” moment. (An election in Egypt, which has held many elections over the years; an election in Iraq; a protest in Lebanon. If our attention span could handle it, a bit later Kuwaiti women were given the right to drive.) So, maybe we can get an empharial high again in a few months.

Wow. Looks like Phil Hendrie has created for himself a blog, crafted to the scion at the url “http://www.georgewbushisgod.com/”. Quite provocative, he.

(Oddly enough, I agree with the sentiments of an earlier post about the emotionally charged phrase “Sending your kids”… maybe I’ll extrapulate the problem later on.)

The talk of the moment is the blog entry on Cindy Sheehan entitled “Anti-War Mom: Another Ignorant Cow”.

There’s this bit Phil Hendrie did once which was pretty funny, circa February 2003. He repeats the sliced clip all the time. The guest goes on about how Bush has “daddy issues” and that’s why he’s going into Iraq — the joke is that this war opponent is projecting his own “daddy issues” onto George W Bush (and the further joke is that — ha ha — look at the shallow reasoning.) The caller chimes in, and this is where I stammer:

“I’m a Democrat, and I didn’t vote for Bush, but you’re destroying our collective desire for Bush to take care of him. Saddam attacked us!”

That being more depressing than the cariacture of the war opponent. (Who, incidentally, at this point in time I’m going to go ahead and say that he was right.) More so than the “Saddam attacked us” (though I believe she used the word “he”) is the “collective desire”.

Isn’t Collectivism Communist?

What do you do with Phil Hendrie? Chunk him away, I suppose. Or the hours he spends discussing politics instead of, quote-in-quote “exploring the human condition”.

Richard Nixon wandered into an anti-war crowd once. Quite celebrated as how he reached out to those he disagreed with by Nixon supporters — somewhat hyperbolically. He… um… chatted to the group of college students and college-aged about… um… college football. Reportedly. A bit clueless, or a bit of a generation gap he could not heel. I don’t know. He did appear on Laugh-In, so all can be forgiven.

Herbert Hoover had a way with war-protesters. Or, rather World War I veterans protesting for their army compensation. (Wanting them early, as per the desperate economic climate of the time.) What he did was call in Douglas MacArthur to tear gas them and roll them over with tanks. It didn’t go over too well with the public.

At the moment, Cindy Sheehan sits outside Bush’s “ranch” in Crawford, Texas, question in hand “What is the noble cause my son died for?” Public opinion forced him out to answer the question — him choosing to answer something else entirely “Bring the Troops Home Now.” Meanwhile, Bill O’Rielly states that Cindy Sheehan has fallen in with the most radical left-wing elements of this country (“All you have to do is look at michaelmoore.com!”) and we’re off and running.

The scene in Crawford, as described effusively on liberal talk radio and in blogosphere, actually reminds me of something jarringly — the scene outside the hospital where Terri Schiavo was being retained several months back. The people who have hitched their wagons over to Crawford describe it in sort of psuedo-spiritual terms. I suppose the problem here is that I could say the same thing about the going-ons outside the Michael Jackson trial. As per Terri Schiavo and George Bush — somehow the idea of protesting outside the vacation-splot of the most powerful figurehead in the free-ish world strikes me as more noble than the hospital where a woman in a vegetative state sits (alongside many sick people) against — her husband, I guess.

Intelligent Design!

Intelligent DESIGN!

“In the world of two eyed men, the three-eyed man is king.”

And so it goes.

There was a caller into a KBOO host discussing Bush’s “fair and balanced” act with “teaching both Evolution and Intelligent Design”. He said that the host oughta debate Kent Hovind, of drdino.com fame. (As per, Dr. Dino, as per 7,000 year old Earth with dinosaurs living beside humans. That type of thing.) He who issues a $250,000 challenge that if someone can offer acceptable proof for evolution. A fool’s gambit, and stupid publicity stunt.

But I’m puzzled…

How is this Intelligent Design? Or rather, the sort of primming to be acceptable Intellignet Design that would, theoretically (and probably is currently sliding right into as per Texas Educational standards) be placed side by side with Evolution (that be the “Macro”) in the Biology textbooks?

There are no 7,000 year old Earths in this construct. Why did the telephone caller promoting “Intelligent Design” walk over to Kent Hovind, when Michael Behe angles for an Earth of millions of years?

I keep seeing this confusion. It’s a schism that I can’t wrap my head around.

As we travel this Fifth Great Awakening, are we going to arrive at a day where Evolution is stripped from Science textbooks, and we’ll get demands to have “Creationism” (of the 7k year old Earth variety) taught alongside “Intelligent Design”?

Nay. By then public schools will be thrown ashunder in favor of homeschooling, because of the socialistic practice that public schools represent.
Which brings us to this ponderance: in the old days, William Jennings Bryan and the attackers of Evolution in favour of Creationism decried the hyper capitalistic laissez-fare undertones of Evolution — social darwinism, you see. Today, it’s not that Evolution is leading to heartless capitalism — it’s leading us to, and is part of, the Great Socialist Revolution.

How weird.