Over.

Ron English's homage to/culturejam of Yoko Ono.

Packaging Jesus.

Jim Wallis, Sojourners founder and author of God's Politics, writes, "One wonders what remains of Jesus in American culture except his name," arguing that the me-first nature of our times has altered Christians' relationship to their faith. An excerpt, from his new book A Call to Conversion:

The gospel must be preached in context. We live in one of the most self-centered cultures in history. Our economic system is the social rationalization of personal selfishness. Self-fulfillment and individual advancement have become our chief goals. The leading question of the times is, “How can I be happy and satisfied?”

Not surprisingly, our self-centered culture has produced a self-centered religion. Preoccupation with self dominates the spirit of the age and shapes the character of religion. Modern evangelism has played right along with this central theme. The most common question in evangelism today is, “What can Jesus do for me?” In other words, the question is how Jesus can help us make it in the present order, not how we can respond to the new order. Potential converts are told that Jesus can make them happier, more self-satisfied, better adjusted, and more prosperous. Jesus quickly becomes the supreme product, attractively packaged and aggressively sold to a consuming public. Complete with billboards, buttons, and bumper stickers, modern evangelistic campaigns advertise Jesus in a competitive market. Even better than Coca-Cola, Jesus is “the Real Thing.”

Read more of "Betraying Jesus."

[Image: Illegal billboard by Ron English.]

ANWR spared, for now.

House Republicans have ditched a measure to open the Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil drilling out of fears that it'd prevent the omnibus spending bill it was attached to from passing. Good news...

He'll go down in history...

According to the Blue Dog Coalition of moderate and conservative House Democrats, the Bush Adminstration has borrowed more from foreign nations than all of his 42 presidential predecessors combined—$1.05 trillion.

FLIPpin' cool: Scripps' Floating Instrument Platform

Forty years ago, Drs. Fred Fisher and Fred Spiess of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography invented a special research station for studying how sound waves travel in rough seas. Called FLIP, the result was this motorless "instrument platform" that is towed to open sea, then partially filled with water so it jacknives into a vertical position. Dipping 300 feet down, the boat is more stable than ships that bob on top of waves, which has enabled important deep-sea research on "[t]he way water circulates, how storm waves are formed, how seismic waves move, how heat is exchanged between the ocean and the atmosphere, and the sound made underwater by marine animals."

The vessel goes from horizontal to vertical in just under a half hour, and as decks become bulkheads (or walls become floors) up to 16 crew memebers can go about their work using furnishings like sinks and tables that rotate with the change. Don't miss the site's animation, video, and even a project where kids can make their own model FLIP.

(Via the Daily Irrelevant.)

Challenging Kersten

The Minneapolis Star Tribune, a paper with a mostly left-leaning editorial board, must love conservative columnist Katherine Kersten. Her oftentimes oddball columns veer from gee-whiz triumphalism to caustic cultural critiques, all aping either White House or Vatican talking points; no matter what she generates letters to the editor. One such letter did a nice job of debunking her recent column, "North of the border, gay marriage spurs social revolution" (correction here):

...The Star Tribune should take better care not to employ a conservative columnist whose arguments can be easily dismantled by anyone with five minutes of time and access to Google.

• Bishop Frederick Henry of Calgary -- Katherine Kersten's primary, if not only, source for her column -- was tried by the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal not for promotion of traditional marriage, but for demonizing homosexuality from the pulpit. Henry equated homosexuality with adultery, prostitution and pornography, and called homosexuality "an evil act whether it is performed in public or private."

• British Columbian Chris Kempling was disciplined in 2002 -- well before same-sex marriage was legalized in the country -- by the school where he taught, not by the government.

• Neither individual was disciplined for opposition to same-sex marriage: Kempling was found guilty of conduct unbecoming a teacher, and Henry had two human rights violations filed against him for vilifying homosexuality in general. Both would have faced the same action if they had they chosen to malign a different minority group, such as women or blacks.

• Kersten fails to reason out the consequences of introducing children to positive GLBT role models and literature. Perhaps increased self-worth -- perhaps even feelings of equality -- of GLBT individuals at an earlier age rankles her "compassionate conservative" mettle?

Kersten's column serves not as an exposé into the Canadian culture after the legalization of same-sex marriage but as a poorly researched attempt to allow discrimination to blossom in the name of freedom of speech.

I recognize the need for a columnist whose viewpoints do not match my own. One would think those viewpoints could be expressed in a manner other than bigotry masked behind a thin veneer of ersatz intellectualism.

—James Proescholdt, Minneapolis

Fat for a day for pay

Put a thin former supermodel in a fat suit and record the reactions she gets. That's the madcap premise of a segment of The Tyra Banks Show airing today. What Banks calls "one of the most heartbreaking days of my life" arises from noble motives, I'm sure, but FatGrrl is suspicious, saying that "Contemporary black face gets a new jolt":

A person in a fat suit cannot get the fat experience. They are just a person in a suit. They try to bring back to their audiences accounts of their “heartbreaking” experiences - as if being fat is so unnatural, and THANK GOD!, they get to take this awful suit off at the end of the day and be their NORMAL thin selves again.

There's more.

Quote of the day:

In his meeting with the president of Brazil yesterday, George W. Bush added a quotable quote to compete with the likes of "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" and "Ask not what your country can do for you..." When looking at a map of his host country, here's what he reportedly said:

"Wow! Brazil is big."

Bush's war against (liberal) Christianity

As a member of a liberal Catholic parish that, because it works to emulate the Prince of Peace, opposes the war in Iraq, this is scary:

The Internal Revenue Service has warned one of Southern California's largest and most liberal churches that it is at risk of losing its tax-exempt status because of an antiwar sermon two days before the 2004 presidential election.

Rector J. Edwin Bacon of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena told many congregants during morning services Sunday that a guest sermon by the church's former rector, the Rev. George F. Regas, on Oct. 31, 2004, had prompted a letter from the IRS.

In his sermon, Regas, who from the pulpit opposed both the Vietnam War and 1991's Gulf War, imagined Jesus participating in a political debate with then-candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry. Regas said that "good people of profound faith" could vote for either man, and did not tell parishioners whom to support.

But he criticized the war in Iraq, saying that Jesus would have told Bush, "Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine. Forcibly changing the regime of an enemy that posed no imminent threat has led to disaster."

On June 9, the church received a letter from the IRS stating that "a reasonable belief exists that you may not be tax-exempt as a church … " The federal tax code prohibits tax-exempt organizations, including churches, from intervening in political campaigns and elections.

The letter went on to say that "our concerns are based on a Nov. 1, 2004, newspaper article in the Los Angeles Times and a sermon presented at the All Saints Church discussed in the article."

The IRS cited The Times story's description of the sermon as a "searing indictment of the Bush administration's policies in Iraq" and noted that the sermon described "tax cuts as inimical to the values of Jesus."

Scariest, as AmericaBlog points out, is that this assessment was based on a newspaper story! Read the full story.

Art imitates Life: Bush as Chicken Little?

Michael Berubé writes that Hollywood's latest animation effort, Chicken Little, plays out the Bush family drama, following "the trauma of a son who isn’t adequately recognized or supported by his accomplished, well-respected father." But the similarities don't end there.From Peek:

After a flukey success, Chicken Little—along with a cabal of misfits—begins to hallucinate that the sky is falling. Berubé explains that: "he experiences a complete psychotic break, and begins to believe he has obtained material evidence that the sky is, in fact, falling. The delusion builds until he is fantasizing a full-scale attack on his homeland, involving fearsome weapons of mass destruction..."

Maybe the sky is falling: Last night, a Times Square theater loaded the wrong reel. Instead of Chicken Little, eager kids were treated to the first scene of Andrea, a Spanish film that opens with a young man committing suicide.

Bootleg artist shut down by high-rent gallerist

Tom Moody calls Eric Doeringer "a practicing appropriationist in a lineage with Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Sherrie Levine, and especially Elaine Sturtevant." But a Chelsea gallerist has called the cops on the artist, temporarily putting an end to his creation of "bootleg art," recreations of high-priced artworld commodities—or what Moody calls "best souvenirs of art world brand names." It's still not entirely clear if the problem with Doeringer is his knockoffs (and the critique of contemporary art's commodity fetishism) or the fact that he sells them on the street without a street-vendor's license. But the gallery owner, Mike Weiss, admitted to Doeringer that he didn't like "seeing people walking around with tiny paintings," while he was paying high rent for his gallery and, "trying to sell $30,000 paintings."

[Image: Doeringers from Moody's collection.]

Contradictions and crap: Hitler's art.

Naturally, there's something repulsive about the trade in Nazi artifacts. But Mike Palmer of Torpoint, England, who recently sold this small drawing by Adolph Hitler for 5,000 pounds at auction, has a circumspect view of it all:

I totally abhor what Hitler did, but I like looking at people in the whole. Hitler loved animals, and he was a vegetarian. There's good and bad in us all, isn't there? That's what fascinates me about people: their contradictions... He was a crap painter. He was never going to be an artist.

Naming the homeless.

At the liquor store a few Fridays back, I saw two of the panhandlers who often work the corner of Lyndale North and Olson Memorial Highway: one, the surprisingly good looking guy who'd seem comfortable in fleece and a canoe, the other, a man whose skin was weathered to a leathery red. I couldn't help but be just a little excited; it was like seeing celebrities. But then I realized that panhandling, which I'd never before connected to celebrity, involves a flattening of dimension, both a distancing and a caricature: I know nothing about these guys, yet because of familiarity I feel like I "know" them. Hell, I don't even know their names.

Enter: Project Hello. Created in 2003, the project aimed to distribute 5,000 "Hello my name is" signs to homeless in Los Angeles. It came out of a personal encounter by one of its founders with a homeless guy in Venice, CA. "It wasn't until I learned his name, Robertson, that I stopped looking at him as a panhandler, but a person that I wanted to know more about and help."

(Via Wooster Collective.)

Rosa and the conspiracy of justice.

As my friend Black Bloggah pointed out recently, Rosa Parks did not act alone, nor was her resistance the spontaneous act of a fed-up woman: she, like many civil rights activists, trained in civil disobedience practices at places like the Highlander Center in the Great Smoky Mountains. The Smoking Gun posts a collection of mug shots found last year in the storage room of an Alabama sheriff's office. Most are booking photos from arrests made during the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott. Click through them and see the ministers and lay people, men and women—of whom Rosa Parks was just one—who did what they had to in the name of justice. I love the looks on some of their faces, a mix of defiance and pride (with a little bemusement thrown in): this is what it looks like to stand for something.

Pictured, top to bottom: C.W. Lee, Jo Ann Robinson, Mrs. A.W. West, Sr., Rev. J.W. Bonner

Zapatista murals

As Summit of the Americas protesters turn out against Bush and his (now stalled) efforts to make all of the Americas a "free" trade zone, a look at the photos page of Visual Resistance seems appropriate. This one was painted by La Caravana de Artistas en Resistencia in Chiapas.

Headlines

Dick's directive: Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, told NPR that Dick Cheney's office—and new chief aide David Addingtoon—was responsible for directives which led to U.S soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. "There was a visible audit trail from the Vice President's office through the Secretary of Defense, down to the commanders in the field," authorizing practices that led to the abuse of detainees.

Tax cuts at the expense of the rest of us: Writing that the time isn't right for tax cuts, the New York Times editorializes: "Tax-cut zealots are also misleading Americans when they imply that they are offsetting reductions in revenue by slashing government spending. These lawmakers have largely spared pork-barrel spending and are instead cutting deeply into programs that foster better health, more education and a stronger infrastructure. Those are precisely the things that are crucial for widespread economic vitality."

Debt: The US national debt is now $8,028,204,675,510.52. That's around $27,000 per citizen, or $61,000 per taxpayer.

Brand America and Bush's blunders: Cheney and Bush were both failed businessmen, writes Mark Engler, and despite government handouts to Halliburton, an investor who sunk $100,000 in the company before Dick Cheney became VP would only have $60,000 to show for it today. Same's true for the American economy: Bush and Cheney's policies in Iraq and elsewhere have sparked a "Corporate Quagmire": "If Bush is an oil president, he's not a Disney president, nor a Coca-Cola one. If Cheney is working diligently to help Halliburton rebound, the war he helped lead hasn't worked out nearly so well for Starbucks."

Driving a tank: Bush's approval rating has sunk to 39% and Cheney, who probably won't be running for president on these numbers, is seen favorably by only 19% of Americans.

Killer Coke: NYU will follow the lead of 19 other universities December 8 when it'll begin banning Coca-Cola from its campus. Gothamist writes that there's one way for the company to not get booted: they have to agree to an independent investigation of its Colombian bottling operations, site to alleged kidnappings, murders, and labor violations.

Rosa and responsibility: At Rosa Parks' funeral, Rev. Joseph Lowry urged us to honor her legacy by moving from ceremony to sacrament, from lip service to meaningful action. "Sacrament means that we must not tolerate homelessness and hunger in the midst of our community," he said. Meanwhile, in an America governed by "compassionate conservatives," hunger has risen by 43% in the last five years.

Branded nails.

Nothing says Classy Lassie like junkfood-branded fingernail art.

(Via A Welsh View.)

Star Wars: A Cremasterpiece?

Is Star Wars a postmodern film masterpiece on par with Cremaster and Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books. This guy thinks so.

More here.

Facial hair uprising

The North American Free Beard Agreement's Whiskerino is in it's third day. What is it, you ask? A movement to reconnect men with their hirsute nature, I think:

We are alienated from our own facial hair. Society tells us that full beards are unacceptable. Businessmen, politicians, bankers, and the like are all clean shaven; all demonstrating the standards that middle class society expects us to maintain.

In other words, these are all examples of "the man" keeping down nascent beards everywhere. These are the people that alienate us from our masculinity, forcing us to shave and adopt public personas which might not reflect our own true inner animal.

The goal: grow a beard—a big hairy full one—between November 1 and February 28. Progress by contestants will be recorded photographically on the Whiskerino site. "Winning beards will be determined by a variety of criteria including: Beard Official opinions, ratings, overall participation, attendance, beard style, and spirit. Note: Immense facial hair density, girth, and coverage does not neccasarily determine winner. Spirit and Beard Fellowship are the highest ranked criteria according to the North American Free Beard Agreement."

Breaking: Pot calls kettle black!

Bill "Blind Trust" Frist wants to get his finger on the pulse of the American people with this poll (shown) on his website. The Party of Hope, I'd conclude is supposed to be the one that's home to swindlers like Lewis Libby, Tom DeLay, Elizabeth Dole, Jack Abramoff, and Frist himself, who remains under investigation by the SEC. (Via Atrios.)

[Update: Frist has since removed the aforementioned poll.]

The Party of Ideas that never get a fair hearing: Republican claims that the Dems are obstructive partisans just ain't true, according to Bob Geiger. He's crunched the numbers to find that the GOP rejected a full 80 percent of all Democrat-sponsored legislation: only 24 of 118 bills were "agreed upon."