Just as freshly sprouted daffodils indicate the imminent arrival of spring, so the pop culture's yearly discovery (and exploitation) of Jesus Christ heralds the upcoming celebration of the Easter holiday. The entertainment industry in particular has developed a curious strategy of attempting to connect with America's massive, ardent Christian audience with pulpy projects that openly undercut key tenets of Christianity. These efforts range from blockbuster hits such as last year's The Da Vinci Code to scandalous and largely forgotten feature films such as The Passover Plot (1976) — which showed Jesus planning to fake his own death on the cross. The most recent effort at simultaneously insulting and intriguing the faith-based audience involved the shamelessly oversold documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus, which received its world premiere on the Discovery Channel last week.

One of the movies I reviewed earlier today is a stupid new release called “Gray Matters.” The title is a pun based on the name of the main character, a glamorous ad exec played by Heather Graham who suddenly discovers that Gray’s gay when she develops a passionate crush on her brother’s wife, Bridget Moynahan.

 

Oddly enough, this is the second movie in a month in which the beautiful main character bears the odd name Gray. In the execrable “Catch and Release,” Jennifer Garner gets an embarrassing role as “Gray Wheeler,” who finds out that her tragically deceased fiancé wasn’t the paragon she thought he was.

 

In any event, both these movies are lame, lousy chick flicks, directed by little-known female directors, appealing to no one in particular, and choosing to name their heroines Gray.

 

Why, I’d like to know.

 

Has “Gray” become a suddenly stylish name? The only previous Gray (or Grey) I can remember is the pathetic ex-governor of California, Gray Davis, who got booted out of office on the same recall election that installed the current Governator.

 

Will this hazy moniker now become more common, because people see these two charmless films and feel inspired by the main character? Stranger things have happened: remember the well-documented craze for the name “Nevaeh” (“Heaven” spelled backwards) after one Christian music star anointed his baby?

 

Popular culture is full of mysteries. One of them involves two different femme directors (a rare enough breed in Hollyweird) and two different lam-o romantic comedies, both of which decide for some incomprehensible reason to go “Gray.”

 

If someone has an answer to this perplexing situation, I’d love to hear about it.

I’ve been working on a major column for USA TODAY (it’s slated to run in the newspaper on Monday) about the Discovery Channel documentary “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.” In the course of my research I learned that Newsweek is planning a big feature story in its March 28^th issue under the headline FROM JESUS TO THE CHRIST.

 

Isn’t it amazing how our popular coverage discovers Jesus once a year, every year, at just about this time? Do you think it’s a coincidence that we get a major TV documentary (and a new book associated with it) as well as a big Newsweek article at just about the same time? Could this sudden flurry of interest possibly relate to the upcoming Easter holiday?

 

The strategy behind this timing is slightly patronizing, even insulting. Once a year, just before observances commemorating the crucifixion and resurrection, the media suddenly (and briefly) recall that hundreds of millions of Americans take Christ and Christianity very seriously indeed. They therefore strain to hype some “sensational new discovery” (“The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” “The Gospel of Judas,” etc.) in an effort to make their transparent exploitation of religious enthusiasm seem newsy and relevant.

 

I’ve begun speculating on what breathless, heavily-hyped “scientific breakthroughs” they may generate next (“DNA Identifies Skeleton as Pet Dog of Jesus!”) but it’s hard to take this too far without tilting over toward sacrilege.

 

It might be refreshing if our media gate keepers remembered that many Americans remain passionately interested in Jesus every month, every day, nurturing a fascination that isn’t limited to the few weeks leading up to a big religious holiday.   

Today’s papers featured photographs of joyous celebrationsin Ghana of thenation’s “Golden Jubilee,” commemorating the fiftieth anniversary ofindependence from Great Britainas the first African nation to throw off “the shackles of colonialism.”

 

With all the festivities in Accra,it may seem impertinent to ask what, exactly, they are all celebrating?

 

In his magisterial book, THE FATE OF AFRICA: FROM THE HOPESOF FREEDOM TO THE HEART OF DESPAIR, Martin Meredith makes clear that Ghana (inits former status as the colony known as Gold Coast) once represented thecontinent’s best hope to become a dynamic, prosperous, modern nation. At thetime of independence in 1957, the new nation boasted a slightly higher percapita GDP than war-ravaged South Korea(which suffered its own long-time colonization by the brutal Japanese). As theWorld Almanac Reports: “At independence, Ghanaboasted Africa’s largest man-made deep-water port andthe most productive gold mine in the world, and it was the second largestproducer of industrial diamonds.” Today, the Koreans enjoy a Gross DomesticProduct that’s reached an amazing $21,000; in Ghana,the figure is $2,300. The difference in development and growth relates to thenourishing nature of free market ideas, and the stultifying, dysfunctionalimpact of socialism and alignment with the Communist bloc. The prospect ofprogress for Ghanacame to an end with the autocratic, Marxist, cult-of-personality rule of thenation’s first president, the still revered Kwame Nkrumah.

 

The sad story of Africa in the lastfifty years shows that socialism has proven far more brutal, destructive andcruel than all the ravages of colonialism. Some day, a true change of heart anda new commitment to free markets and democratic institutions may give Ghanaand the rest of the continent something worth celebrating.

When John McCain announced his candidacy on TV, critics focused on his statement that America had “wasted” the lives of our fallen heroes in Iraq. The Senator has already apologized for these remarks, but a bigger mistake involved his decision to launch his campaign on the David Letterman Show. The upcoming election involves fateful choices – the most significant race since 1980. McCain is a serious statesman who courageously, consistently stood up against Islamo-Nazi terror, Congressional corruption, run-away entitlements, and wasteful federal spending. Why, then, choose to begin a campaign about values and national survival with an appearance on a silly, late-night comedy show? His decision looks especially misguided when combined with his refusal to address the Conservative Political Action Conference. All other Republican candidates spoke to CPAC, but McCain didn’t want to “pander” to conservatives. Instead, he pandered to David Letterman and his audience, who don’t count as likely backers of McCain – or any other Republican.

Sunday night's broadcast on the Discovery Channel of the new documentary “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” represents one more attempt by media manipulators to distort and exploit Biblical history. James Cameron, recently foundering director of “Titanic,” sinks with this heavily-hyped Discovery Channel show based on 25-year-old Israeli excavations. Far outside the Old City of Jerusalem, archaeologists discovered ten ossuaries – or bone boxes- with indistinct lettering that may spell-out common Hebrew names, including Jesus, Mary, Matthew “son of Jesus”, and others. All leading Israeli archaeologists denounce attempts to link this tomb with Christ’s family, and use of dubious evidence to contradict the resurrection story in the New Testament. Israel’s former UN Ambassador Dore Gold makes clear in his new book “The Fight for Jerusalem,” that media outlets love focusing on challenges to Biblical accounts, but largely ignore mounting scientific evidence confirming scriptural stories. “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” follows this pattern as an insult both to responsible history and religious belief.

Conservatives are right to condemn liberal fanatics who jokingly wish for the death of Vice President Cheney, or compare Bush to Hitler, but we should also speak out against celebrities on the right who violate essential standards of decency. Ann Coulter is a brilliant, important, consistently provocative voice in our national conversation but she needs to apologize for applying a cruel, anti-homosexual slur to Presidential candidate John Edwards. Invoking this explosive “f-word” in a public address to a leading conservative conference is bad enough, but it’s totally unacceptable to direct it at Edwards – who’s been happily married for thirty years to a breast-cancer survivor and fathered five children, one of whom died in a tragic accident. Senator Edwards deserves condemnation for his left wing politics, his naked opportunism, even for his long career as an ambulance chasing lawyer, but laughingly smearing him as a closeted homosexual constitutes an inexcusable degradation of public discourse. This sort of assault on a husband and father, especially coming from the never-married Coulter, wounds the attacker far more than it damages the object of her contempt. I like and admire Ann Coulter, but if she insists on marginalizing herself, we shouldn’t allow her to drag the conservative movement with her to the fringe.

The left’s fiery obsession with removing Ten Commandments monuments from public property throughout the United States may seem odd and irrational but actually reflects the deepest values of contemporary liberalism.

In the last five years alone, the tireless fanatics at the ACLU have invested tens of millions of dollars and countless hours of legal time in lawsuits to yank the Commandments from long-standing displays in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Montana, Georgia, Iowa, Washington State, Nebraska, Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida. In one of the most recent battles, they delayed their litigation in Dixie County, Florida, because they couldn’t find a single local resident to lend a name as plaintiff in a drive to dislocate the tablets from the local court house.

Even for militant separationists like the ACLU, this ferocious hostility to innocuous and generally uncontroversial monuments looks excessive, even self-destructive. The overwhelming majority of Americans instinctively accept the Commandments as a timeless, cherished summary of universal moral precepts. A closer look at the specifics of the Decalogue, however, suggests that it makes good sense for leftists to hate The Big Ten: each one of the commandments contradicts a different pillar of trendy liberal thinking.

For the purposes of this discussion of these conflicts, I’ll cite translations from the original Hebrew in the excellent Stone Edition of the Biblical text (Exodus 20; 2-14), and I’ll use the traditional numbering favored by Jews and Protestants. (Catholics group Commandments 1 and 2 together, and make two separate Commandments--9 and 10-- out of the prohibition on “coveting” that Protestants and Jews identify solely as number 10.)

First Commandment: I am the Lord Your God, Who has taken you out of the Land of Egypt, from the house of slavery…..

This one makes liberals obviously and instantly uncomfortable. According to political correctness, it’s rude and insensitive to proclaim God’s existence in public—and especially not in public schools! Faith is supposed to remain a private matter, an individual habit or quiet commitment, leaving plenty of room for doubt and uncertainty. Secularists therefore resent the notion of an open, out-of-the-closet Deity who shows off in such a noisy, flashy way, staging the Exodus from Egypt with all its plagues and sea-splitting, then announcing himself in a voice from the mountaintop heard by hundreds of thousands of people. For those who worry about too much religion in the “public square,” it doesn’t get much more public or communal or unequivocal than this opening proclamation.

Second Commandment: You shall not recognize the gods of others in My presence. You shall not make yourself a carved image nor any likeness of that which is in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the water beneath the earth. You shall not prostrate yourself to them nor worship them…..

Talk about intolerance and judgmentalism! This commandment denies the very essence of multiculturalism and diversity: by what right do we dismiss and disrespect the gods of others? Didn’t that wild-eyed, bearded guy who went up the mountain realize that it’s a demonstration of wrong-headed cultural imperialism to express such cruel, callous contempt for deities like the Aztec Quetzcotal or the Canaanite Moloch? Moreover, when it comes to worshipping idols, twentieth century leftists continued the noble traditions of the ancient cults of Baal or Astarte: in the old Soviet Union, every town boasted monumental statues of Lenin or Stalin (usually both) and to this day, the image of the divine Fidel graces every pathetic hovel in Cuba. Refusal to “prostrate yourself” and to “worship them” can lead to big trouble in such enlightened societies.

Third Commandment: You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not absolve anyone who takes His Name in vain.

For liberals, this rule highlights the right wing’s eternal, anal-retentive obsession with proper language and dirty words. Isn’t old Moses here sounding a little bit like the benighted FCC with its seven words you’re never allowed to say on the air? Cutting edge artists and entertainers love using holy names in shocking and disrespectful ways. Liberals supported the National Endowment for the Arts almost unanimously in its funding for the controversial Andres Serrano collage “Piss Christ,” and activists on the left are always more eager to defend any divine designations (like “God Almighty!” or “Jesus Christ!”) if they’re pronounced as curse words (protected speech) rather than with reverence (violating separation of church-and-state).

Fourth Commandment: Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it. Six days shall you work and accomplish all your work but the seventh day is Sabbath to the Lord your God….

Most liberals are okay with the Sabbath stuff, but they squirm over that part of this directive that says, “Six days shall you work….”?!! What kind of exploitative boss would dare to demand a six day work week from today’s unionized laborers? In enlightened nations like France, they’re working to get it down to a three day week--which ought to be enough to keep every citizen well-stocked in snails and frog legs. This commandment fairly reeks of the old-fashioned, restrictive Anglo-Saxon work ethic. In the Twenty First Century isn’t it time we moved beyond that outmoded notion that people should prefer labor to leisure?

Fifth Commandment: Honor your father and your mother….

And ignore the scintillating and liberating ideas of the younger generation? Are you kidding? The expectation of honoring your elders burdens youthful free spirits with the dead, oppressive influence of tradition and the past. Progressive thinkers understand that in defining proper standards of dress, grooming, music, entertainment and sexual mores , it’s kids (and particularly adolescents), not parents, who really know best.

Sixth Commandment: You shall not kill

On the surface, this sounds reasonable enough to liberals, but they can’t stand the context: just one chapter later in the same book of the Bible (Exodus, 21:12),God and Moses give orders to break their own rule: “One who strikes a man, so that he dies, shall surely be put to death.” The next verses stipulate capital punishment for a wide variety of causes (like “cursing your father and mother”) so the no-kill commandment really begins to sound like no-murder. In other words, the Bible makes a clear distinction that liberals emphatically deny. The left loves slogans that declare that that execution is murder, war is murder, meat is murder, and so forth, but the God of Exodus who emphatically bans murder also specifically authorizes execution, war and meat.

Seventh Commandment: You shall not commit adultery

To which the post-modern left would quickly add: unless you really, really love her. It’s not just Clinton apologists who have a problem with this inconvenient taboo on extra-marital involvement: when people take their vows by pledging to remain committed “as long as our love shall last,” the Seventh Commandment begins to look incurably outmoded.

Eighth Commandment: You shall not steal

For lefties, this prohibition smacks of the right’s selfish emphasis on private property. Back in the glory days of the 1960’s, the beloved hippie hero Abbie Hoffman penned a liberationist manifesto called “Steal This Book.” Radicals and revolutionaries have always devised comfortable euphemisms to describe the act of theft: “liberating” or “boosting” or “collectivizing” or “nationalizing” private property, or simply “taxing the rich.” If you believe it’s virtuous for government to seize by force the majority of an individual’s earnings (remember the pre-Reagan, top income tax rate of 70%?), you ought to feel somewhat uncomfortable with an absolute ban on stealing.

Ninth Commandment: You shall not bear false witness…

Some liberals may endorse this commandment, but only when it’s applied to Scooter Libby. Otherwise, there’s a problem with the ancient Jewish understanding of the deeper meaning of this verse. Our sages suggest that a secret to understanding each one of the Big Ten involves the parallel structure of the two tablets. In other words, the first commandment corresponds to the sixth, the second to the seventh, the third to the eighth, and the fourth to the ninth. That means that this “no false witness” order connects to the imperative of keeping the Sabbath. The association relates to the basis for Sabbath observance stipulated in the text: “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and the sea and all this is in them, and He rested on the seventh day.” In other words, the Sabbath bears witness to God’s role in creation, and the Rabbis say that the denial of divine creation represents the ultimate in bearing false witness. On this basis, today’s libs insist on false witness, the whole false witness, and nothing but false witness. The very idea of questioning a random, materialistic origin of the universe makes them crazy with rage and contempt: they strenuously condemn the mere notion of suggesting in schools that it was an Intelligent Designer who must have “made the heavens and the earth”

Tenth Commandment: You shall not covet your fellow’s house. You shall not covet your fellow’s wife, his manservant, his maidservant, his ox, his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your fellow.

Among many other problems, this commandment outrages PETA with its unacceptable suggestions like animal companions like oxen and donkeys can ever “belong” to their human friends. Meanwhile, the ban on coveting involves a restriction on a feeling, a desire, and it’s politically incorrect to suppress or deny or stifle authentic emotions, Blaming yourself for coveting can only undermine self-esteem, and the emergence and liberation of your precious inner child. Moreover, the entire leftist project is largely based on covetousness: resenting the “filthy rich” for what they’ve earned, rather than feeling grateful for your own achievements. The implacable liberal focus on the “gap between rich and poor” – as if impoverishing the wealthy worked in any meaningful way to actually enrich the poor – represents covetous attitudes at their irrational worst. The sacred leftist goal of “redistribution of wealth,” mandating heavy taxes on “haves” for the purported benefits of “have-nots”, depends on coveting for its energy and rationale. On the other hand, the Bible’s unmistakable emphasis on the sanctity of private property (“You shall not covet your fellow’s house”) clearly contradicts the left’s emphasis on a communitarian and collectivist outlook, in which the state becomes the ultimate owner of everything.

Reviewing the Ten Commandments one by one exposes their irreconcilable conflict with the demented and dysfunctional philosophy of today’s left.

In other words, in contrast to most aspects of Twenty First century liberalism, the implacable hostility to the Biblical Big Ten actually ends up making perfect sense.

Many conservatives wonder how liberals maintain their long-term stranglehold on higher education. A new survey of private donations suggests that one of the reasons universities continue to tilt so sharply to the left is that they continue to rake in big bucks: charitable giving to colleges and universities soared by 9.4% in 2006, to a staggering total of $28 billion. My own alma mater, Yale University, took in $433 million dollars in donations, or some $40,000 per student— without even counting additional millions from the federal government, another billion in profit on the endowment, and yet more money in obscene tuition fees. Colleges won’t change their ideological direction while taking in this kind of dough. That’s why I stopped my own contributions to Yale 15 years ago, and now support only conservative and religious institutions. Until more alumni and philanthropists make similar “tough love” commitments, there’s no hope for ending the hegemony of the left.

For more than ten years, medical science has provided mounting evidence that circumcision brings substantial health benefits. Last week, the release of data from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) made worldwide headlines and gave new impetus for an ancient practice.

“Circumcision’s Anti-AIDS Effect Found Greater Than First Thought,” the New York Times declared, updating the results of clinical trials involving 8,000 men in Kenya and Uganda. In December, initial analysis showed that circumcision reduced the risk of HIV transmission through heterosexual sex by at least 50%. The latest figures in The Lancet, the British medical journal, show that the actual risk reduction is closer to 65%.

“Look,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which financed the trials. “This is a one-time, permanent intervention that’s safe when done under the appropriate medical conditions. If we had an AIDS vaccine that was performing as well as this, it would be the talk of the town.”

He said that the $15 billion U.S. AIDS initiative and the World Health Organization were considering paying for circumcisions in high-risk countries. Daniel Halperin, an AIDS specialist at Harvard, cited a positive trend leading to greater acceptance of circumcision among African men. A review of 13 surveys in different African communities showed that 29 percent to 87 percent of uncircumcised men said they would be willing to be circumcised as protection against AIDS.

For religious Jews, these developments look intriguing, but neither startling nor particularly significant. We’ve been circumcising our baby boys for 3,000 years because of holiness, not health. Some research may suggest medical benefits from this sacred rite, just as the Biblical dietary laws may (or may not) confer health advantages to keeping kosher. The point of both practices, however, isn’t physical, it’s spiritual: making distinctions in behavior (and even in the most intimate part of the anatomy) based on a covenant with God. Of course, we welcome the good news about using a timeless procedure to protect against a modern pandemic, but encouraging studies in the Lancet won’t alter our basic commitment to circumcision any more than some prior research eagerly trumpeted by circumcision’s opponents who deny the utility of the practice.

Meanwhile, there are various factors about this horrible plague of AIDS that deserve special attention from all those who take Scripture seriously.

For many years, we’ve known that the best way to contract AIDS is to engage in a practice (male homosexual “intercourse”) strictly prohibited by the Bible.

Now we learn that one of the best ways to protect against the disease is to follow a procedure solemnly commanded in the Bible (circumcision).

These observations in no way prove that AIDS represents some sort of divine scourge, or that a supernatural God goes out of his way to reward those who are circumcised.

The emerging facts, however, provide haunting reminders that the Bible doesn’t outline the way the world should work in some Messianic future, so much as it describes, with sometimes uncanny accuracy, the way the world does work in the painful and imperfect present.

 

The left seems to feel a powerful, passionate, irrational and all but irresistible urge to use government power to silence conservative voices in the media and to regulate the terms of public debate.

 

For instance, it’s not enough that the Dixie Chicks won five Grammy Awards in a so-called “victory for free speech,” and laughingly scoffed at their right wing critics.

 

Now, columnist Edward Morris of the Nashville Tennessean (hometown paper for the Country Music industry) wants to make vindictive use federal power to strike back at “all those who tried to silence their voices and destroy their careers.”

 

Under the headline, “Radio Was Wrong to Ban the Group,” he includes the startling (but typical) subhead: “Regulations Should Be Imposed” and complains that “country radio stations were wrong to ban the Chicks’ music and regulations should be imposed to ensure that nothing like this happens again. It is eminently reasonable for a station to decline to play a record if it doesn’t ‘test’ well with listeners; but it is outrageous to blacklist a performer’s entire catalog simply because it doesn’t like his or her politics.”

 

Morris might argue that turnabout is fair play: conservatives tried to use boycotts and powerful station owners to gag and stifle the Chicks, so it’s only fair that liberals try, in return, to shut down the would-be censors.

 

There’s a big difference, however: the right tried to use the power of the marketplace, but the left wants to use the power of government (“Regulations Should Be Imposed”). Nothing in the First Amendment protects controversial performers from boycotts or protests or radio program directors who disapprove of their political activism. The Constitution does, however, prevent government (“Congress shall make no law…”) from using its unique power to stop citizens from expressing their opinions or uniting with others in economic protest.

 

Even after the triumph of the Dixie Chicks, commentators like Morris still don’t trust the marketplace and the private choices of consumers to guarantee the free exchange of ideas. He demands “regulations” (initiated by the FCC, no doubt) to “ensure that nothing like this happens again.” Nothing like what, precisely? Leaders within the music business and millions of private citizens expressing their displeasure with an edgy, unnecessary comment and demanding that political posturing could bring business consequences? He apparently believes that the government must guarantee that there will be no commercial price to pay to comments on current issues, no matter how outrageous. Would these regulations also apply to situations like the famous backlash against John Lennon, when he said that “the Beatles are more popular than Christ right now”?

 

This line of thinking neatly parallels current efforts by Congressional Democrats (led by Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Maurice Hinchey of New York) to re-institute the “Fairness Doctrine” relating to the expression of political opinion in the media. Rather than relying on the multi-faceted “free market of ideas,” with at least 100 times more outlets for controversial expressions on all sides of every issue than prevailed when the Fairness Doctrine disappeared in 1987, they seek to empower bureaucrats to insure “balance.” The right way to correct the “conservative lies” that Democrats abhor is to broadcast your own version of the truth, not shut down the other guy – or to force that other guy to give you “equal time.”

 

That absurd equal time provision (should conservatives also get “equal time” to answer shows like “The West Wing” or “Will and Grace”?) wouldn’t merely end the existence of conservative talk radio and other right wing media, but would close off political discussion altogether. If you’re forced to “balance” an hour of conservative opinion with an hour of liberal opinion, no station could appeal to the public with a clear ideological orientation. Sure, I relish the idea that the FCC would force Air America to balance the obnoxious nonsense of Randi Rhodes with all three hours of the Michael Medved Show. But forcing that sort of “equal time” resembles an effort to force a Country station to balance, say, the Dixie Chicks and Faith Hill with several hours of Tchaikovsky, or to compel an urban Hip Hop station to counter each number by Fifty Cent and Snoop Dog with classic performances by Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.

 

Further evidence of liberal support for government meddling in media comes with their thoughtless enthusiasm for using taxpayer money to fund PBS and NPR. Once upon a time, you could make the argument that you needed public money to provide history documentaries or children’s programming, but why do we now need to tax people to pay for material that cable networks (not to mention the internet) are providing without subsidy? The idea that federal bureaucrats will decide which programming gets government support carries with it the inescapable whiff of Stalinist “Ministries of Culture” – providing official endorsement of certain forms of entertainment over others. Why does the public need Congress and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to make those choices instead of individual consumers?

 

The essence of contemporary liberalism involves distrust of ordinary Americans – to feed our own kids, to decide where we choose to send them to school, to plan for retirement, to secure health insurance, to select our own entertainment and information sources.

 

Nowhere does this distrust, this contempt, for the general public come across more clearly than in the uncontrollable instinct to “impose regulations” and thereby limit alternatives regarding topical controversies in mass media.     

On occasion, small stories can reveal big problems.

 

On Monday, a tiny item in the national press reported on an “Air Force officer accused of raping four victims and attempted rape of two others, who pleaded not guilty in his court martial.”

 

The accused officer, Devery L. Taylor, formerly served as chief of patient administration at Eglin Regional Hospital at Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base He stands charged with drugging and raping or trying to rape his six victims, four of whom are also in the military, after meeting them at bars in Pensacola and on Okaloosa Island.

 

Considering the huge publicity generally associated with sexual misbehavior by the military (remember the gigantic national outrage at the “Tailhook” sexual harassment scandal?) isn’t it surprising that this story received so little prominence in the national media? An Air Force Officer viciously and criminally assaults six different victims, and is charged with four counts of forcible sodomy, two counts of attempted sodomy, three counts of kidnapping and one count of unlawful entry. If convicted of all charges against him in his court martial, he could receive a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

 

Is there an easy answer to the obvious question of why this horrific case received less attention than you might expect?

 

There is, in fact: all six of the assaulted and raped victims are male, not female, and Captain Taylor hardly comports with the heroic and patriotic and perfectly disciplined image of gays in the military that the mainstream media prefer to promote.

 

It seems obvious that if Captain Taylor victimized females (including four women from the military) instead of males, the case would draw far more attention.

 

This isn’t conspiracy theorizing; it’s based on the inescapable observation that the nation’s media gatekeepers want to give all expressions of gay sexuality the benefit of the doubt, even when these behaviors veer over to criminality. Captain Devery L. Taylor, gay sexual predator, might provide a powerful argument for maintaining the ban on open homosexuals serving in the military. Of course, defenders of the demand for allowing out-of-the-closet gays in the armed services would point out (quite rightly) that the overwhelming majority of rape cases in this country involve men attacking women, not men attacking other men.

 

That’s correct, of course, but irrelevant: the tiny percentage of male homosexuals (at most 4% of the total population, according to any reliable study) makes it inconceivable that this small group would represent a major percentage of rapists. Moreover most conservatives (including this conservative) oppose both the notion of gays-in-the-military and the idea of ignoring the tension and temptation of placing young men and women in the same barracks or the same unit.

The Taylor case suggests that it’s naïve and destructive to try to ignore the explosive power of lust and sexual compulsion – and to deny its dangers when considering either heterosexual or homosexual attraction.

Naturally and appropriately, most of our attention on the misshapen national holiday the government fashioned out of the wreckage of Lincoln’s Birthday (February 12^th) and Washington’s Birthday (which actually falls on Thursday), focuses on the greatest of all chief executives. Inevitably, we think of the Rushmore Quartet (Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt) with a few other heroes (FDR, Jackson, Reagan) thrown in for good measure

 

The holiday also provides an opportunity, however, to consider the contenders for the title of most underrated President in our history. The most obvious name in that regard is James K. Polk, who kept his promise to serve only one term (and then died weeks after leaving the White House) but still managed to preside over the most successful and beneficial war in our history (which enabled California, Arizona and New Mexico to become part of the United States) and to keep all of the four major promises he made in his 1844 campaign. Polk so obviously deserves recognition as one of the greats that he’s been steadily rising in historical esteem: the handy-dandy Presidential rating polls now regularly list him as “near great.” There goes his claim to “under-rated” or “under-appreciated” status, obviously!

 

Another great (or at least near-great) chief executive still languishes, however, without nearly the recognition he deserves: Calvin Coolidge. When President Reagan moved into the White House in 1981, he took down Thomas Jefferson’s portrait (the third president after all had his very own memorial a few blocks away) and installed in its place a handsome painting of Silent Cal.  As Professor David Greenberg of Rutgers points out in a brisk, readable 2006 biography: “Coolidge, with his trickle-down economics and commonsense piety, inspired today’s conservatism. Employing the new arts of publicity, radio, and movies, he promoted the values of thrift and hard work that many feared were in eclipse. Embodying old-fashioned principles, he reassured Americans that their plunge into modernity didn’t have to lead to decadence.”

 

Meanwhile, in the other recent (and far more detailed) Coolidge biography (by Professor Robert Sobel of Hofstra University, published in ’98) you can see that the wildly popular chief cut taxes four different times (dropping the rates more sharply than anyone else save Reagan) while boasting a budget surplus every year in office and cutting the national debt by a full one-third! Long before anyone coined the phrase “Supply Side Economics,” Coolidge proved that it worked. And as Sobel reports: “Though his list of accomplishments is impressive, Calvin Coolidge was perhaps best known and most respected by his contemporaries for his character…. He was the last president who wrote his own speeches, who spent hours each day greeting White House visitors, who had only one secretary, and who didn’t even keep a telephone on his desk… His programs in the 1920’s presaged the recent movement toward smaller government and returned taxes… in a period of unprecedented economic growth.” 

 

He also delighted the nation with his elegant, artistic wife (surely the most glamorous First Lady next to Jackie Kennedy) his wry, celebrated wit, and his uplifting, freely expressed religious faith.

 

It’s therefore a shame that his one best known quote –“The chief business of America is business” – is regularly misunderstood and generally quoted out of context. In an illuminating letter to the Boston Globe, John Karol (who’s produced a magnificent, thrilling and altogether inspiring Coolidge documentary that is just a small foundation grant away from completion) clarifies Silent Cal’s celebrated platitude.

 

“This misquote comes from an address President Coolidge gave before the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1925. Speaking on the topic “The Press Under a Free Government,” the President made the point that newspapers serve a dual purpose – providing crucial information for the electorate, at the same time they stimulate business growth through their advertising departments. He emphasized the idea that these two functions complemented rather than contradicting one another.

 

“After all,” he declared, “the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.”

 

But the President went on to note that at the same time that we rightly concentrated on business and productivity, “The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction…I could not truly criticize the vast importance of the counting room, but my ultimate faith I would place in the idealism of the editorial room of the American newspaper.”

 

In other words, Coolidge neither said nor suggested that business success of economic progress represented the only appropriate concern for the nation. He specifically emphasized the need to balance the economic engine of society with the enduring ideals of the people.

 

No wonder that after assuming the Presidency upon Harding’s death in 1923, he won a crushing landslide victory in 1923—beating his Democratic opponent (the colorless John W. Davis) by nearly 2 to 1 in the popular vote  (15.7 million votes to 8.4 million votes) and nearly 3 to 1 in the electoral college (382 votes to 136 votes, with 13 electoral votes for Third Party candidate “Fighting Bob” LaFollette).

 

When, four years later, Coolidge announced “I do not choose to run,” he contributed his other famous quotation to the history books. Without doubt, the enormously popular President  (who left the White House at age 56) easily could have cruised to victory in 1928 (and perhaps thereafter), helping the nation avoid the ravages of the Great Depression, with the big government interventionism of booth Hoover and FDR that made a bad situation much worse.

 

Yes, it’s too bad that the marvelous Coolidge chose not to run in 1928. Actually, it’s even worse that we don’t have Silent Cal (or some other obvious contender in his courageous, common-sensical, morally rigorous, small government image) to lead a Republican revival in 2008.

Retired NBA basketball star Tim Hardaway was right to apologize for telling a radio interviewer, “I hate gay people” but there’s nothing outrageous in his expressed reluctance to share showers and locker rooms with open homosexuals. Issues of sexual attraction can distract or shatter any team: just look at the recent tragedy involving highly disciplined military careerists in “The Astronaut Love Triangle.” In the same way that the women on a WNBA team wouldn’t welcome a male into their intimate quarters, the straight guys on a male team have every right to feel uncomfortable with an open homosexual in their midst. Political correctness now seems to make the odd assumption that erotic arousal should never be considered a potential distraction among young people – hence the bizarre push for co-ed bathrooms and dorms on university campuses, or the reckless and wrong-headed integration of men and women in our military.. But common sense and long experience both show that we ignore the power of our sexual drives only at our peril.

You've probably heard about the new comedy show on Fox News that appeals directly to conservatives and you've also probably heard some of the negative buzz in the blogosphere. Some bloggers have even called on Fox's big boss Roger Ailes to kill the program outright before its premiere since it's allegedy an embarrassment to the conservative cause. One commentator known as "Hog On Ice" (who had watched only a few minutes of the new show) even argued that "sometimes a late term abortion is not a bad thing."

That sort of plea is inappropriate and overstated, since the network has already invested considerable money and cache' in the project and the intense publicity all-but-guarantees a solid audience (in Cable TV's modest terms). 

For most people, the big question is whether The 1/2 Hour Comedy Hour, which debuts this Sunday night, February 18, is worth thirty minutes of your time?

After watching the first two episodes of the show, my answer is an unequivocal "Yes" -- it's worth watching, worth supporting, even if the project is very much a work in progress which, along with a few laughs, delivers a few moments of embarrassing, unfunny, ineptitude.

For me, the worst moment in the first two shows comes with a lame skit in the second show involving Peter Marshall of Hollywood Squares concerning the new demand by Jesse Jackson that everyone cut down on their use of the N-word. Marshall promises to reduce his "frequent" deployment of that racial epithet by 80% -- but opines that no one could be expected to eliminate it entirely. Obviously, the writers intend irony, since it's difficult to imagine Peter Marshall in his "stand-up act" ever using the N-word at all. But the humor's too subtle by half, and I'm virtually certain that some mainstream or liberal critics (that's largely the same thing, by the way) will use this segment to prove that conservatives make jokes about the most hateful racial epithet in the lexicon. Prepare to hear considerable hand-wringing about how we don't understand the wounding nature of such language, we shouldn't treat the hideous noun so lightly, etc., etc., ad nauseum. The last thing conservatives need at the moment is more fodder for liberals to attack us a racist.

In that context, it's too bad that the producers didn't make a point of innoculating themselves against such charges by using some "people of color" to deliver the jokes, the satiric barbs that fuel the entertainment.  The only darker skin shades on the show turn up among targets of the humor, not from those who administer the teasing. Unfortunately, the engaging male-female hosts and the various "experts" featured in skits, remain lilly white. The only "minority" is a curvaceous starlet who appears briefly in a mildly funny make-believe ad mocking entertainment industry earnestess and called, "Hollywood Helping Humanity." One of the slogans used for these mock-public service messages is particularly apt: "Remember, there is no 'I' in Hollywood."

Despite such concerns, there's scant justification for the hysteria from some malcontents on the right who've seen only moments of The 1/2 Hour News Hour on YouTube. For several reasons, the full shows aren't nearly as lame as claimed and there are several reasons that angry observers have gotten the show wrong.

First, the brief excerpts  that have been most widely viewed quite naturally (and inevitably) involve the two biggest names involved in the project: Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. They introduce both shows in very brief skits in which they play the President and Vice President, respectively. The two rightie icons play their parts energetically and look like good sports, but their material is feeble. Any page of a Coulter book, or any five minutes of a Limbaugh broadcast, provides more wit than their two minutes on camera here.

Does this mean that producer Joel Surnow (of 24 fame, of course) made a big mistake to feature the conservative movement's number one sweetheart and number one stud to open his broadcasts? Of course not. No matter how silly the skits, there's a guilty thrill at the very idea of these two as President and Vice President and their well-advertised presence here (no matter how awkward) will help bring an audience.

And then what does that audience get? A few laughs, a few telling jabs, a few comments that hit the mark so well that you'll want to repeat them to your friends. For instance, in the "newscast" segment that dominates the shows, there's a segment about that little rascal, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying (and I paraphrase from memory here): "And in other news, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke about the recent Holocaust Denial Conference in Teheran -- and denied that it ever happened. And if it did take place, he said that the number of participants had been greatly exaggerated."

Beyond the hit-and-miss pleasures of the first two shows, there's every reason to expect improvement. First, because any comedy-sketch show takes a while to find its way, to figure out its niche. None of the established comedy shows looked slick, excellent, and accomplished right out of the box.

Second, the producers worked under particularly difficult constraints with the first two shows. They had to produce the programs more than a month before the air dates--- undermining topicality and immediacy. When Fox News Channel gives an ongoing commitment for more shows, they'll be able to cover the news of the week just passed -- instead of covering stories that seem either "evergreen" or, even, a bit stale.    

Meanwhile, there's enough to enjoy in the launch of this enterprise to make it worth a few laughs (or titters), and all hopes for improvement (and an important new conservative resource in the media) depend upon the shows drawing strong audiences.

The efforts to bad-mouth, undermine and even kill the new program before it's even born amount to one more demonstration (if one were needed) of the conservative death-wish that seems to afflict too many of us in this Brave New World of Pelosi-and-Reid.

No, The 1/2 Hour News Hour doesn't count as dazzling, deathless television but if it fails -- particurly after the collapse of the Dennis Miller Show -- it will be a long, long time before right-wingers get another shot at entertaining our own troops via TV and demonstrating that conservatives do, after all, possess a sense of humor.