Pole To Pole

My son told a pretty funny joke on the way home, something about God striking down a cursing golfer (you had to be there).

I started to tell a joke of my own, and stopped because I realised it broke our rule of disparaging a group of people (in this case, it was a “blonde” joke).  Instead, I veered off into a conversation of how jokes are sometimes used to perpetuate negative sterotypes, and how many times the “truth” behind them is far from it.

Some of you who are from the north might be surprised to learn that, at least in my neck of the woods, African Americans were NOT the subject of “dumb” jokes when I was growing up (widespread racism notwithstanding).  No, that honor was reserved for Polish jokes.  Or “Pollock Jokes” as my friends called them.

As I told my children about this, I had to ask myself, “Why the Polish?  In Nashville, TN?  It’s not like Nashville is overflowing with Polish immigrants.  Where did this particular prejudie come from?”

The only guess I have is that returning WW2 vets brought the prejudice back from Europe.  Maybe it’s a long-standing thing in Italy, France, and Germany to make fun of the Poles?  I really don’t know; I DO know that a couple of you are historians who probably know the answer.

I remember that “Pollock Jokes” were all the rage US-wide in the 60’s and 70’s.  Archie Bunker (from the show “All In The Family”), I remember, had a lot of contempt for “pollocks”.  Maybe Nashville kids were just joining the national trend.

I did tell my kids how all of us kids were shamed a few years later when Lech Walesa and his countrymen became the first oppressed people in the eastern block to stare down the mighty Soviet Union and win.  After Solidarity, you really didn’t hear too many Pollock jokes anymore.

So, anyway, a Fundie, a blonde, a Jew and a Mexican walk into a bar…

Would Jesus Be An Enabler?

Josh Tinley wrote a great post.  So great, I tried to write a comment, and ended up with something so long I felt it would best be its own post.  You see, we’ve been talking a lot at MCB and other places about extending Christian mercy to those who are suffering, even those who are in the situations they are in due to unwise decisions.  I think the conversation is specifically about certain elements of the homeless population.

We have actually discussed this in Sunday School before, without coming to any kind of consensus:

As followers of Christ, what do we do when we suspect someone receiving our aid is gaming the system, or at the very least, taking advantage?  I know what common sense says, but what does Christ say?  Are we supposed to care if we strongly suspect we are, basically, giving a drunk a drink?  Do we even give any consideration to the thought that we’re possibly doing more harm than good, that we’re enabling a person in a way that will keep them in misery, instead of getting them out of it?

I ask, because I struggle with this.

I have no problem extending mercy to even to criminals who have committed what could be awful crimes; I’ve prayed with such men many times before, and made many friends behind prison walls.  Same goes for just about any situation a person gets himself into.  There but for the grace of God go I.

Yet, I have this blind spot about people who I know, or very strongly suspect, COULD work, but do not. 

The backdrop to this is that I come from pretty humble beginnings.  Everything I say has the backdrop behind it of where I come from, where I am now, and the concepts that got me from there to here.

My father never really preached religion to his three sons; he just sent us to church and let us get our religion by osmosis.  But, he preached nonetheless.

The only thing my blue collar father ever preached about, what he did drill into me was sermon after sermon on the value of work.  He would preach, “If you don’t have a job, and aren’t spending every waking moment looking for a job, you have shamed your name.”  Well, he didn’t say it like THAT, but I got the meaning loud and clear.

He believed that if you have a condition that keeps you from working, do everything possible to alleviate that condition - make it your number one priority - so you can WORK.  The work is the most important thing a man can do. Not the getting paid part - working itself.   Always work, and if you can’t, make a job of looking for work.

He taught me not to turn turn my nose up at ANY job, whether I found it beneath me or not, whether it could support me or not - the act of working was more important than the pay.  He taught me that taking a menial job, and outworking everyone, is the way to having a job that DOES support you and your family.  Other rules include never being late, that sick time is NOT “Not Feeling Well” time, that volunteering for the hardest tasks will get you ahead.  No matter what you do, be the best there is at that job, outwork EVERYONE, and prosperity will follow.  Approach the world of work with the attitude that you have something to prove, because you do. 

And my life has taught me that he was right.

I always have this voice in the back of my head telling me that a well spoken person in an area with 4% unemployment should be working.  He just should, period.   I can see my dad, shaking his head. And I just can’t shake that voice.

So, I have to square this teaching with my Christian beliefs. 

And, let me tell you, it’s hard.  Paul had some things to say about the slothful, and Jesus used them as a “bad example”, but we are not told if Jesus was ever taken advantage of, and if so, what he did about it.  Something tells me that he would have helped.  His prodigal son parable makes me think that; although I wonder: the son had given up “riotous living” - Jesus never makes it clear that the father did not go to the faraway country and help the son financially while he was still living in a way that would just mean his help was wasted.  So, I don’t know.

I am torn.  You can’t just throw away 20 years of paternal teaching - it kind of gets under your skin.  And it has served me well.  So, sometimes, I guess, this Christian has what appears to be an unmerciful attitude.  I’m not proud of it - but now you know why.

I guess all I can do is pray about it.

It’s All In The Presentation

Forgive me if I’ve told this story before.

Since Kat has described Big Macs in tantalising fashion, reminding me of my greatest weakness: McDonald’s French fries, I can’t help but think of one of the funniest conversations I’ve ever had.  You see, I used to work night shift here at SCC, and my coworker (I’ll call him Rick) and I would have “man” conversations to pass the night hours.  Let me tell you, two men can have some strange conversations at 3 am.

One night, we were talking about how, as I’ve gotten older, food had replaced extramarital sex as my greatest temptation.  I often joked that I read Good Housekeeping just for the chocolate cake centerfolds.

My friend, who was older than me but had not yet made the transition from women to food as Great Temptation, was incredulous.

“You’re kidding me!”, he said.
“Nope”, I said.
You mean, if Shania Twain were standing before you naked, whispering “I want you, Slarti”, you wouldn’t be tempted in the least?
Nope.
[silence for about 15 seconds]
What if she were holding a bowl of spaghetti?

Y’know - it’s been almost ten years, and I still haven’t answered him.

Theological Pet Peeve #23875

I can always tell people who view their Christianity through the filter of their politics.  If they are politically conservative, their reading of the Bible totally supports their viewpoint.  Same with politicially liberal people.  I really think we need to ask ourselves, am I trying to fit my religious view into my political box, as opposed to the other way around?

Here’s a hint: if your Christian religious views don’t force you to take a stand that is opposite your political pursuasion (for me, it’s the death penalty and immigration), you’ve probably got it backwards. 

Now, twice lately I’ve seen someone use an argument that gets on my nerves to no end: an argument from biblical silence.  No, I will not link to the argument(s), because they are about a subject that is guaranteed to immediately get your blog bogged down in a flame war, and we don’t do that here.  But just imagine to yourself the statement: “Such-and-such controversial issue is never mentioned in the Bible”, and it really doesn’t matter what the underlying issue is, to me it’s a shoddy agrument.

Did you know, for instance, that the sin of child molestestation is not directly referenced in the Bible?  Does this mean that child molestation is not a sin?  Does God benignly approve of child molestation?  By no means!

Certainly, through regular Bible study, one can properly discern the Will of God on an issue, even if the issue isn’t directly referenced in scripture.  Anyone that’s done even a little bit of this knows that God seriously disapproves of commiting harm toward an innocent.  He doesn’t have to say, “Do not molest a child”, unless we blind ourselves, the will of God on this matter is there for us to discern, plain as day.

Back to the unnamed controversial issue: my understanding of the scriptures lead me to believe that God is really, really big on protecting the helpless and the innocent, even at great risk to ourselves and those we love.  There are probably a hundred examples in scripture where God asks someone to do just that. 

Back to the more general point, if you are still willing to accept an argument from silence, think about this: Jesus never once petitioned the governments in Jeruselem (either Jewish or Roman) to help the poor.  We know He was all about helping the poor, but He really didn’t seem to think government was the way to go about it.  Why is that?

There’s actually a whole sermon I could give about that (helping the poor is as much about changing ourselves  as it is about our fellow man getting treated with dignity - and if you are “helping the poor” through a payroll deduction, you never “feel” the help leaving your body and going to another.  There is no connection between the helper and the helped). 

But, I’m not going to make this argument, because it’s based on an argument from silence, and that really gets on my nerves.  I want to be consistent, you know.

Anyway, if you are going to make a political argument from a Christian point of view, try something with a little more meat to it than, “The Bible never mentions…”

Lord, Forgive Me

I will not be attending church today.  Like a good country song, I have run into the line between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Good Lord, there are pictures floating around out there.

More after a couple of pots of coffee.

In Which Slarti Gets Written Off As A Loon

This discussion a Kat Coble’s place is is wonderful and thought provoking.  I wish I could join it; but I’ve been hesitant because it has been such a logical and intelligent discussion.  I really have nothing to add on that front.  Intellectually, I agree with Kat 100%

But I oppose the death penalty.

Because God told me to.  In a dream.

See what I mean?  How the heck do you respond to THAT? When you’re trying to have an intellectual discussion on an important subject, there’s no better buzzkill than, “I disagree with you because God sent me a message about this in a dream”.  Heck, I’m pretty sure I’m nuts, myself.  I now am on the other side of this issue from most of my friends, family, and brothers and sisters in Christ (but not all).  Because of a dream.  Well, not totally.

So let me back up a bit.  God had been softening my heart for months, with the band’s trips to Riverbend prison.  We Christians say all the time that we are all equal before God, but, at least for me, it was an abstract concept, just words I said to prove my faith.  But, standing beside a man who certainly had committed horrible crimes, looking him in the eye, shaking his hand, putting your arm around him, and kneeling beside him before The Throne as a brother in Christ, makes it real.  You lose your cognitive dissonance.  The distinctions we all make subconsciously (Me=good, him=bad) disappear, and you know that you are just as deserving of death as him.

So, all of this happens over a period of months, and then a couple of months ago, I had the most intense dream I have ever had.  No, I wasn’t on Ambien, or any other substance at the time.  I’ve had those type of dreams before;  they seem more real than reality, but feel less real.  This dream seemed less real, but felt more real, even more “real” than reality itself.  I was shaken to my core.  Here it is as I remember it:

Lintilla and I were visiting my mom and dad.  The three of them were in another room, while Zarniwhoop and I played video games in the living room.  The three of them came into the room, and you could tell that my dad was very, VERY angry with Lintilla.  Not yelling and screaming, but in a reserved kind of way.  My mom seemed not as angry, but resigned to…something. My dad said to Lintilla, “You know what you did.  You have to pay the price.”  Lintilla just nodded.  My dad pointed to an easy chair, and Lintilla sat in it.

My dad told my mom to go to the kitchen to mix the poison.

I grabbed Lintilla’s arm, and said, “No!”  We ran to the garage, it was locked.  My dad quitely walked out to where we were, gently grabbed Lintilla’s arm, and led her back to the living room.  She sat down in the chair again, resigned to her fate.  She looked at me, with tears in her eyes; I was paralyzed.

My mom handed her the poison, and she put it to her lips.

I woke up in a cold sweat.  I breathed a sigh of relief that Lintilla was right there beside me.  I cannot properly describe the wave of feeling that came over me.  I was angry at my parents, angry at Lintilla for just accepting her own death, angry at myself for my impotence.  The dread that accompanied this dream stayed with me for days.

I would have called for my own Joseph, but this dream did not need interpreting.  Nevertheless, being a good conservative, I didn’t want to listen.  But the cloud over my head, the conviction in my heart, would not go away.  I had my own Hound of Heaven on my tail. 

Several days of prayer and random bible verses later, and I finally succumbed.  I prayed to God to forgive me if I was doing the wrong thing, but I felt I had no choice: I would no longer be one of those advocating for the death penalty.  I would listen, finally listen to the arguments of those in opposition.  Now, in the subsequent weeks, my position is clear: I oppose the death penalty, period.

Now, you could say that I’m just overreacting to an emotional ploy from my subconscious, with good reason, but you weren’t there.  I don’t LIKE opening myself for ridicule (anybody remember Reggie White?).  But I have never felt anything so strongly in my life.  It was as strong and real as it was irrational.  And it was a MESSAGE.

So, now both sides can write me off an a lunatic.  I have no doubt most liberals would rather not have someone who claims to have been spoken to by God on their side.   But, it is what it is.

Infantile

My post on Mary Winkler really stirred things up yesterday, in ways I did not expect.  It really was just supposed to be an academic exercise in demographics; a field of study which I really enjoy.  But, the best laid plans of mice and men, and all that. There was unexpected hostility from some quarters, and from others I had expected much hostility, but received reasoned and thoughtful responses. It was probably the most topsy turvy response to any post I’ve ever written.

But, sometimes God takes some silliness that we intend, and uses it for His own purposes to teach us.  I want to take a step back and learn a few things.  I’ll probably have several heart to hearts with newscoma.  Not long ago, someone used a term about me that stung to the bone: infantile.  In other words, if I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.  Being a grown man, thinking I’m somewhat intelligent, that hurt horribly.  No man like to be condescended to.  However, I’m slowly starting to think it’s an appropriate word.  Let me explain.

My father is a big bear of a man.  Six foot seven, around 240 lbs most of his life.  He was a machinist, which at the time was both a very technical job, while at the same time involved much manual labor.  He was a very large, strong, hard, intimidating presence.  With all of the troubles in my childhood, nobody messed with me when my dad was around.  He looked like the kind of man who could kill another man with one punch.

Combine that with a very young marriage and fatherhood, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Yet, looking back, he never, ever raised his hand to any of us in anger.  Granted, the situation didn’t arise much.  His mere appearance meant he could walk into a room, and we’d behave.  “Wait till your father gets home” had added meaning for us boys.  There were controlled, physical punishments, and I know some of y’all consider that violence and abuse, but I do not.  I didn’t realise it at the time, but my father is a man of great restraint.

And his relationship with my mother?  Y’all, they could make a movie about those two.  Granted, most of it would be boring, but as they approach 50 years together (OMG!), their relationship is awe-inspiring.  There is so much I could tell you, but to stay on point, I’ll say that my father would rather chop off his own hand than strike my mother.  I  know many of y’all take offense to this word, but he cherishes her. There is much that I could go into about their history, about how it would have been quite easy to give up on her (especially in the 70’s, when everyone else was dissolving their marriages),  but this is their own business.  So, starting out, you could say I have no frame of reference for abusive relationships.

I always thought the way my parents would never  spend a moment apart if they could help it was kind of creepy, yet, as time goes by, Lintilla and I are becoming the same way.  How could I possibly hurt the other part of me?  I truly do love her more than myself, I cannot imagine striking her or even saying hurtful things on purpose (I say plenty of hurtful things, not on purpose, as many of you know; the polite thing is to admit it and apologize).  I can be an idiot, but it’s really something I can’t imagine, hurting my best friend, the love of my life.

And now, we get to the third generation in my frame of reference.  There’s one rule in our household that Zaphod used to hate: no male can ever strike a female, even if she hits you first.  I tried to explain to Zaphod that, it might be a fair fight now, but in just a few years he will be so much bigger and strong than the girls; if he’s used to hitting them then, it will be hard to stop.  He would get quite angry with me when I would punish him for fighting back when a girl hit him on the playground.

Y’all, this is hard to write without tearing up.  I am SOOOO proud of him!  He’s a big boy; he’s taller than most of his classmates, and heavier than all of them.  I’ve seen situations lately when a little holy female terror would provoke him physically, needling him, pushing him.  Yet, he’s only ten years old, and he shows an incredible amount of restraint.  He follows my wishes; he never, ever strikes a girl. It’s hard to explain just how proud of that boy I am.  Just thinking of it, I feel my heart might burst.

So, the situation is set up for my frame of reference to be “infantile”.  Lintilla, before she met me, had come out of an abusive marriage (the idiot was in jail by the time I met Lintilla, in fact).  But given my frame of reference, my assumption was that “doopy-head”, as she called him, was a rarity amongst men, that the vast majority were like my father and me.

Yesterday’s discussion makes me think I might have been wrong.  There is a dark, dark underbelly to the world that I know nothing about.  I’m wondering if men like my father are in the minority.  I know my theology speaks of the depravity of man, but we Methodists throw that term around, not giving it any weight.  What if the depravity is not some theological academic concept, but a real thing where real people get hurt?

If I walk down the street, how many men that I pass are slapping their wives around at home?  I’m beginning to wonder if it’s not a majority of them.

And it breaks my heart that there’s little I can do about it, except to spread the transforming love of Jesus, give money to battered women’s shelters, and to raise my son to be a real man, and behave toward my wife in a way that shows my daughter what a healthy relationship is supposed to look like. Then, maybe my grandchildren will be just as infantile about these things as I am.

I’d like to thank Aunt B, who wrote a post that moved me to tears.  Like I said, I have a lot of thinking to do.

The Unblinking Mirror (Stuff Edition)

The interesting thing about being a moralist:  the minute you point to something in the world and say “This is wrong”, hordes of people line up, waiting for that day when they can gleefully point out the fact that you have failed to live up to your own morality.  Religious people know this all too well.  But it isn’t just a religious thing.  I think Al Gore has recently discovered this concept.  They may say that hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue, but the sting is nevertheless strong - if you are the one who is falling short.

The cool thing about being a Christian, though, is that our failings actually validate our worldview.  We believe that man is incurably corrupted, and we prove it at every turn.  I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.  Being at home with my children this week of spring break has made me acutely aware of one of my biggest failings, and one of my biggest regrets.

After my home and all my possessions were destroyed by fire, I became acutely aware of the message that Jesus was teaching us in Matthew 6, verses 19-34.  Jesus says: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.

Jesus then goes on to tell us to quit worrying about “stuff”.

At the time, in prayer, I would repeat the “moth and rust” verse back to Jesus, reminding him jokingly that he forgot to add fire.  But, the important thing was, I not only understood the meaning of the passage, i felt it in my very soul.  We had lost everything, but we were OK.  God provided, just as He said He would.  I truly, for the first time, understood just how unimportant and temporal ”stuff” is.  I swore, I’d never look at it the same way again.

Here’s where it gets interesting.  I had always given this concept lip service.  Then, on that fateful day in July, 2002, God called my bluff.  He wiped the slate clean.  If I chose, i would no longer be slave to my “stuff”, because, well, I didn’t have any stuff anymore. 

Oh, we were insured.  But, here’s the thing: when we moved back into our house in January 2003, we had the perfect opportunity to live Matthew 6:19.  We had used the insurance money to replace exactly that which we needed (even that is relative).  We had all new furniture and appliances.  We had five days’ clothing for each of us.  We had rugs and decorations so our house almost looked like “a home”.  We had three (the big-screen HDTV, and two little bedroom TVs), surround sound, computers.  Everything brand new.  Certainly, this was enough. 

That’s what we told ourselves.  We swore, now that we had learned how unimportant stuff was, we wouldn’t clutter our house again with stuff we didn’t need.

I look around me this week, and I see just how wrong we were.  I’d swear we have more junk cluttering our house than we had before the fire.  It snuck up on us; it’s not like we went on some shopping spree and brought home tons of junk at one time.  We had said that God, ourselves, and what few possessions we started with were enough.  We believed it. 

We were lying.

To God, to others, to ourselves, I don’t know.  And I know we didn’t mean to lie - we truly believed this time would be different.  Yet, here we are; the folks from “Clean Sweep” would have a heyday with us.  It’s actually hard to keep the house clean when there just isn’t room to put all the stuff “we had to have”.

But I’m not worried about the practical side of things.  I’m worried about my soul, the soul of my wife, those of my children.  We are obviously broken.  We could say, “we’re turning over a new leaf, we’re going to get rid of all this stuff and just keep what we need to get by”, but, well we’ve been there, done that.  The slate will never be as clean as it was when we moved back into our house.

It’s just so insidious, this little voice that whispers to you while you’re in a store or online.  If only you had this, it whispers, you’d be happy.  Wait till such and such  sees that you’ve bought this! Won’t he be impressed!  It doesn’t matter that you know intellectually that what the voice is telling you is untrue.  Its seduction is stronger than any under-dressed temptress.

And then later, the voice mocks you as you’re trying to clean your overcluttered house, wondering to yourself why on earth you bought all this junk, and wondering where the happiness was you thought you’d have if only you possessed it. 

So, all I can do is pray that I one day can ignore the voice.  I could ask God to take away all my stuff and let me start over again, but I know how that story ends.  Jesus always stressed that the heart was more important that the deed, and now I know why.  I feel trapped within my own evil heart - and I know that even that feeling is of the Enemy, because no one who is in Christ is trapped.  I just don’t know how to let Him fix this.

So yeah, I’ve been in a rotten mood.  The Unblinking Mirror, if you have the courage to look into it, has a way of doing that to you.  The only consolation I have s that this whole thing reminds me of my second favorite episode of Mary Tyler Moore (the first being the “Chuckles the Clown” episode).

Ted has a heart attack.  He survives, but he has a whole new outlook on life. He stops to smell the roses, much to the consternation of his co-workers.  But his attitude finally rubs off on them.  When  the episode ends, they are all admiring a sunset.  But Ted asks them why they are wasting their time; he’s back to being the old Ted.

So am I.  And I hate it.

For Aunt B’s Dad

Sometimes God puts you in a certain place at a certain time, and throws what seems to be a throwaway incident in your path.  Mankind, being clueless, doesn’t even know he’s being given a sign.

This past Sunday, I was in the chapel at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison.  We had already played a set, and the service was on its third speaker, so I’ll admit I was only paying scant attention.  Ben, the man talking at the time, was telling us all, everyone in the room, that were were family.  He told us that we needed to pray for one another - volunteers for inmates, inmates for volunteers.  He then had someone read Nehimiah 4:14 .  We went on and finished the service; it was quite the moving finish.

So, yesterday, over at B’s, she posts this:

…my sister-in-law has not enrolled my youngest nephew in pre-school as she had agreed to do when my brother agreed to give him back to her.

This pisses me off.

I said, “God, that pisses me off.” and my dad said, “Well, there’s no point in getting pissed off.  All you can do is smile and accept that that’s how life is.  God will take care of it.”

I KNEW in my heart that this felt wrong.  And then, in a later quiet moment, when contemplating the events this past weekend, I re-read Nehimiah 4:14.

“Then as I looked over the situation, I called together the nobles and the rest of the people and said to them, “Don’t be afraid of the enemy! Remember the Lord, who is great and glorious, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes!”

For all the clever things I could say about B’s situation, sometimes a straighforward command from the bible is more effective.  Nowadays, we Methodists tend to be doormats; we only seem to get excited about events that will get us on television, pushing for this or that leftist cause.  But it wasn’t always this way.

Methodists used to embarrass other Christians with our passion and fervor.  We took up causes of justice (whether or not TV cameras were present), and by all means we would fight for our families! 

We need to be soldiers of God again.  Not to establish some Theocracy on earth, not to be the religious arm of a certain political party, but to fight for our family.  Starting with our own personal families, and eminating out to the family of man.

Raise Your Voice

Confession time.  I realized yesterday that I have I bias.  Yes, me, who preaches that all people are children of God, who want to boil all the “big” issues of the day down to the personal because deep down we are all the same.  I have an ugly, despicable prejudice.  Here’s how I discovered it:

I was trying to be a good citizen and listen to Brittney’s interview of Megan Barry at Nashville Is Talking.  I’m hoping she posts a transcript; I wish I had waited for that.  But alas, I listened to the whole thing.  The substance of what Barry had to say was important (she was a little wonkish for my taste, and she’s more culturally liberal than I, although she kept trying to change the subject when the hot button issues came up - good job at steering her back to the question, Brittney).  But, substance really didn’t matter.

I couldn’t get past her voice.

Please don’t get me wrong.  Mrs Barry has a wonderful speaking voice.  Fran Drescher she is not.  Even tones, good cadence, not much interruption by “uhs” and “ahs” (most commendable considering the environment).  Her enunciation was absolutely perfect.  There was no discernable accent.

But, I heard her voice, and my mind immediately said “She sounds like a Wellesley grad”.  And it’s true, if one closes her eyes while listening, she’d think she was listening to a Hillary Clinton interview from 30 years ago.  And, immediately all kinds of negative assumptions jumped into my mind, mainly the word “elitist”.  Going to her website and reading her bio showed none of this to be true, so I felt even worse about my initial reaction.

If slapping myself would have cured me of this line of thinking, I would have done it.  I knew the thoughts were wrong the second I thought them.  But it was visceral.  My mind kept sighing with relief every time Brittney would speak; try as she might to have  a non-descript “anchor voice”, Brittney’s has a down-home quality that cannot be hidden.  Once again, this attitude of judging both women by the sounds of their voices is WRONG, wrong wrong.  I ask forgiveness.  I wish there were some kind of Ted Haggard-style “Accent bias” reeducation program where I could be “cured”.  Then maybe I could learn to love Ann Coulter; I cannot right now because I absolutely cannot STAND to listen to her overly-patrician voice.

But you know what?  I think we ALL do this, in one way or another.  If you look deep inside yourself, you know it’s true.  Some hear a deep southern accent and immediately think “ignorant”.  Some hear a California-surfer voice and immediately think “slacker”.  I personally find Hindi accents, by themselves, funny.  When I hear a “high” English accent, I automatically assume “intelligence and class”; when I hear a Cockney, or a British working-man accent, I immediately want to go ask the person if they’ll have a beer in the pub with me.

Once again, I think these visceral reactions are wrong.  The single biggest regret I have in my life was when I purposely trained myself to lose my southern accent in high school.  I thought it would make me sound more intelligent, and it probably did in the eyes of many.  But, looking back, it really hurt my father that I did this.  I cut myself off from my roots.  Today, most people that meet me think I’m from the midwest.  Being extremely proud to be a Tennessean, this makes me sad.

I apologise publicly here and now to Megan Barry for my reaction.  I may even vote for you, assuming the unlikely entering into the race of a level-headed conservative doesn’t happen.  And, for the record, I actually at one time had a crush on Dianne from Cheers, specifically BEACUSE of her “elitist” voice.  There may be hope for me yet.