Let me say, first of all, that giving "the finger" is extremely rude. (I prefer, in traffic, instead to give people the hand — this exasperated, "What the …?!?" gesture conveys a broader displeasure that I think makes its point without the phallic imagery.) One should never, ever, "flip the bird." Unless, that is, it's really necessary. For example — The Motley Fool offers a helpful guide to the world of ATM service fees. These are charges that banks levy... Read more
In a few weeks, Meg McSherry Breslin reports in The Chicago Tribune, a college in the suburbs near Chicago will hold a school dance. The reason this is newsworthy is that the school in question is Wheaton College, which has forbidden "social dancing" for all of its 143 years. But now the school has announced some changes in its "community covenant," and it is time, finally, to boogie: After years of student pressure to lift the dancing ban, the college... Read more
I get an e-mail newsletter from a Christian nonprofit that has been outspoken in its criticism of the war on Iraq. In response to this criticism, they received the following letter: I believe that we are in the last days as indicated by the Revelation of Jesus Christ to the Apostle John. We will be in Iraq and other areas of the Middle East because it is in God's plan. To condemn President Bush … is naive. Muslim terrorists will... Read more
“It’s hard to write something new about the end of the world,” writes Crawford Gribben in Books & Culture: What is interesting about much of the comment on the Left Behind phenomenon is the assumption that this market did not exist before the publication of the series’ first novel. … The opposite is the case. Rapture fictions have been a feature of Western evangelicalism throughout the 20th century, and end-times novelists have repeatedly rewritten the apocalypse to take account of... Read more
"They were rockets. The tubes were used for rockets." That's from "Australian Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Meekin, who commands the Joint Captured Enemy Materiel Exploitation Center, the largest of a half-dozen units that report to [David] Kay [head of the Iraq Survey Group]." Meekin is quoted by Barton Gellman in today's Washington Post in an article bluntly titled "Search in Iraq Fails to Find Nuclear Threat." And it's just one aspect of a long list of reasons Gellman cites that... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 10-15 We turn now to the worst crime against plausibility in Left Behind’s early pages. I’ve already said quite a bit about LaHaye and Jenkins’ description of the massive, all-out, leave-no-warhead-behind nuclear surprise attack that Russia and Ethiopia launch on Israel. (A war motivated, they suggest, purely by spite and envy.) What I haven’t mentioned yet is that this massive nuclear assault produces not a single casualty in Israel. The only thing damaged, we are told, are... Read more
Ben Smith has a fascinating piece in the New York Observer on GOP plans to orchestrate media coverage of next years Republican National Convention in Madison Square Garden. (Also the site, Smith reminds us, of the Westminster Dog Show.) The man in charge is Jim Wilkinson — the guy who was in charge of U.S. Central Command's technologically impressive and journalistically useless media center in Doha, Qatar during the beginning of the war on Iraq. Some background on Mr. Wilkinson,... Read more
I think we'll all sleep better tonight, knowing that our government is vigilantly protecting us from sneaky foreigners who enter this country illegally and clean our Wal-Marts. Federal investigators raided two Delaware Wal-Mart stores early Thursday, arresting six undocumented cleaning workers in Seaford and four in New Castle as part of a national sweep of 61 Wal-Mart stores that netted 300 workers, a federal official said. The early-morning raids at Wal-Mart stores in 21 states were part of a federal... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 10-15 I like Ezekiel. Even by the standards of Old Testament prophets, the guy was pretty over-the-top. Lots of prophets accused the faithless nation of “promiscuity” and “whoredom,” but Ezekiel took it a step further: “Every prostitute receives a fee, but you give gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from everywhere for your illicit favors. … no one runs after you for your favors. You are the very opposite, for you give... Read more
Former Philadelphia Steve Lopez crosses the supermarket picket lines in Los Angeles to go shopping with a self-employed fellow named Jim Chavez. Like most of us who are self-employed, Chavez has a lousy, expensive deal for health insurance. This makes him less than sympathetic to the striking grocery workers who are having to pay more for even less of a health-care benefit. "I'd walk through a lava pit for the deal they've got," said Chavez, who, like a lot of... Read more
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