Left Behind

Richie Rich gets all righteous on us

by Alan Bisbort

Source: Hartford Advocate, November 18, 2004.

The story line keeps changing. It's not about the quagmire in Iraq, the tanked economy, trashed environment and compromised national security. It's about "moral values." That's the phrase favored by the pundits and pollsters since Nov. 3rd.

The election losers do not possess "moral values" and, according to Larry Dobson, head of the extremist Focus on the Family, are also "God people haters." Dobson, by the way, is taking credit for putting Bush in the White House; he's now hitting the talk shows as though he were a mainstream figure and not the polarizing cultural warrior he truly is.

Also, according to radical clerics Falwell, Robertson and Bob Jones III -- now also setting public policy -- the winners were selected by God. The anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic and racist Rev. Jones wrote directly to the president: "God has graciously granted America -- though she doesn't deserve it -- a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ."

Even the Wall Street Journal is slinging it around. Once the Wall Street Journal starts talking about "moral values," language itself has been hijacked. Yet, there it was: The day after Bush was declared winner, the WSJ scolded Democrats for "sharing their contempt for the President's intelligence, moral values and religious beliefs" and for having "nothing in common with what's quaintly known as Middle America."

As if the sweater-vested coastal intelligentsia who write WSJ op-eds care deeply about "common" Americans. On these same op-ed pages not long ago, the WSJ sweater-vesters called the working poor of America -- that is, those who have no health insurance and make so little money that they're spared most income tax -- "lucky duckies" and derided such "escape hatches" as tax credits for child care and education.

Moral values it is, then. From all sides, we're told that a deep, seemingly unbridgeable "moral-values" divide exists in this country. With that in mind, I now keep my antennae up for chances to find common ground with fundamentalist Christians. Surely some common ground exists; after all, Jesus Christ was the most radically left-wing leader the world has ever known.

However, at the sub shop the other day in my quaintly Middle American town, I overhead a conversation between a man and woman. The man was talking confidently and aggressively about the Bible.

"If it's in the Bible, it's the truth," he said, patronizingly adding, "Do you understand that?" When the woman, who didn't disagree, demurred on the rigidness of his stance, he hectored, "Did you know that ignorance is no excuse before the law of God or man? So you don't care if you go to heaven or hell then?"

"That's not what I'm saying ... " She was trying to explain why Santa Claus was a cultural thing, a benign thing, not necessarily a pagan thing.

But the man was unfazed. "Did Santa Claus come down the chimney of that manger in Bethlehem?"

"Uh ... no," the woman said.

"Don't you see that it's a pagan ritual?" he sneered. "We need Christian holidays, not pagan holidays. Pagans and Christians shouldn't mix. I'm telling you the truth, not what your liberal humanist friends believe, but the truth." Then he segued into a complaint about how he had to sue the state after it refused to reward a contract to his company. The state had apparently made him recuse himself from bidding because a family member stood to gain financially. "There is nobody more qualified in the world than me!" he puffed. "That's a 2 million dollar account! I'm a taxpaying businessman. It's ridiculous."

From there he segued into his golf game, the situation in the Middle East, and the proper way to blend coffee. All of this while I drank my soda and my son ate his chocolate chip cookie. There was not a subject about which this man was not an expert. And he was so loud and clear, so eager to allow all the other people, trying mightily to enjoy their repast, to hear him.

It was oppressive, weird and frightening all at the same time. It made me wonder if aggressive Christian browbeating is the new fad. I go to church every Sunday and I never meet people like this.

And yet, here was someone with whom the Wall Street Journal says I have nothing in common. They're right. How would I find common ground with such an insufferable person?

I guess I'm just one of those Santa Claus liberals.

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reprinted from The Hartford Advocate