Thursday, October 12, 2006

Time to build an ark

Is the Religious Right angry at the GOP? Is the Pope Catholic?

Coach Dave Daubenmire, in an open letter to James Dobson asking him to start a third party and to draft Roy Moore, the disgraced former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, to run for president in 2008:

Note to reader:  Please forward to all Christian leaders that you know.

I write this letter to you as an admirer, and as one who is eternally grateful for all that you have done to fight for Christian values in America.  Although fine Americans such as Don Wildmon, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Tony Perkins, Phyllis Schlafly, The Arlington Group and others have fought the fight as well, you more than anyone, are the face of the pro-family movement.  You have the scars to prove it and I consider you an American hero.

But Dr. Dobson, it is time to build an ark.  It is time to leave the Republican Party.  Jesus will not ride into town on an elephant.

I know that seems like a radical move, sir, but it has become increasingly apparent that the core values of the Republican Party are not Christian values.  It is time all Christian leaders ask ourselves if it is possible for God to bless a polluted party.  Make no mistake, the Republican Party is polluted.

Via The Slacktavist, “Dobson, the founder and emperor of the Focus on the Family media conglomerate, is more than a bit batty, but he’s not dumb...”

And remember, even if this guy’s not, the Religious Right is reachable.

Green screen winner

Not nearly enough comment on the significance of Colbert’s Green Screen Challenge. TV Squad’s got some:

Last night, Stephen Colbert finally announced the winner of his Green Screen Challenge (which was not a contest). The competition had finally boiled down to two finalists… Bonnie R. and some random guy named George L.

Yes. Yes. George freakin’ Lucas made an appearance on the show to present his green screen entry.

Here it is. Not as available for embedding and swapping as I’d like, it’s a start. Here’s Bonnie - the winner - R’s. And from YouTube, Stephen’s montage of entries:

biG Mail on campus, expands

Not exactly new, but pitched at Educause gets it good mention in The Chronicle:

Google has expanded its efforts to provide student e-mail services to colleges, and while some campus officials are not yet ready to hand over such a critical function to an outside company, they are tempted by the price—it’s free.

Google announced the expanded service here on Tuesday at the Educause conference on technology in higher education, which ends today. The service, called Google Apps for Education, lets participating colleges outsource their student e-mail while still allowing campus users to have an address that originates from the college’s domain—meaning it will still end in .edu.

Besides Google’s popular Gmail service, the package includes an instant-messaging client, a calendar, and a Web-page tool.

Google is not the first company to offer free or discounted e-mail services to campuses: Microsoft and Yahoo have similar programs.

They got it up and running for the 65,000 students of Arizona State in 2 weeks.

[R]unning its own student e-mail service was costing the university about $400,000 a year. And though the college offered more storage space than some campus systems—students got 50 megabytes of space each—they hardly got a thank-you note from users, who can get more space with a free e-mail account. “People complain about it. They want more.”

Google provides each user with two gigabytes of space, about 20 times as much as what Arizona State allowed, and it charges the university nothing.

Makes sense to me!

Colbert: A Salute to the American Woman

He also had Ariel Levy on. Here’s her take on the Playboy Bunny.

The South

I lost the link to the most recent three part series from who-knows-who on how the Dems can win without the South.

Yes, yes, yes, we know they can but it drives me crazy that they think they should.

On this, Kos is precisely right:

[L]et me make clear that a national party needs to be a national party, and that includes the South. It’ll be the toughest nut to crack, and will likely happen after we bring most of the rest of the country aboard. But it needs to happen.

Whose Nuts?

Another repeat. In light of Tucker Carlson’s comments and Carl Roves’ alleged reference to “the nuts,” I thought it timely to consider again my contention that The Religious Right is Reachable. From August 2005...

In a post wishing good luck to Neil G. Giuliano, former four-term Republican mayor (1994-2004) of Tempe, AZ and the new President of GLAAD, Steve Miller criticized the organization for having “spent the last decade not constructively engaging the religious right.”

That led to this later post responding to a comment:

In our mailbag it’s suggested that the religious right is beyond the pale of debate because “bigots [aren’t] capable of dialogue.” I respond that “to refuse to confront the ideas of your opponents is a great, big cop-out,” and that “The religious right is not some splinter, Nazi sect; millions of hard-working, salt-of-the-Earth Americans find spiritual solace in its rituals and worldview. I don’t believe we should simply give up on trying to reach them (the religious right’s adherents, if not its leadership).”

This is a sentiment I agree with completely. I was pointed to it by Terrance, who in a post titled their way or the highway, points to the polar opposite opinion to make his point:

There might be a few adherents out on the fringes of the religious right that might be reachable. They might be one experience of knowing a gay person, or having a gay relative, away from softening their positions. Those religious right adherents might be reachable on a one-to-one basis, such as when gay & lesbian relatives, acquaintances, and co-workers come out. But that’s about all I can see.

Frankly, I’m at a loss as to how to constructively engage the rest of the relgious right’s footsoldiers. Like I said before, they seem to want a world in which we don’t exist. Trying to engage with true believers on the right, with that as a starting point, seems like a collosal waste of time, energy and resources that might be better spent elsewhere.

I’m sure we can each point to the other side’s extremists to prove that we are right in stewing in our own little pot with our like-minded peers but I think that makes us just like “them.” Only justified in our view. Where does that get us?

My goal is, yes, to reach those “few adherents...that might be reachable” who are “softening their positions” and I’m glad to reach them “on a one-to-one basis.”

To do that I will likely be less strident and more respectful of their positions, not lump them into a stereotype, and consider their opinion. Then they might mine.

Jerry Falwell reminds me of my father, a smart man who sometimes says dumb things. And my mother, a good woman who believes some things I think laughable.

I can scorn them and laugh at them or I can try to change them and make them see my way. Or I can accept them and relate to them as they are and enjoy them in every way I can.

We’re a 50/50 country. I don’t have to change that many minds. But I have to live with all of them. I choose to live in mutual respect and tolerance.