PeaceBang

From Michael Chertoff

terror-all
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Americans, please note.

(from www.Misfitting.com)

Pin The Tail On The Blogger

The lovely people in this photo are (in no particular order) the keyboard lackeys who regularly bring you the great joys of:

The Chalice Blog
Philocrites
Prophet Motive
Daily Kos
Peacebang
Debitage
The Socinian (Fausto)
Unity
Transparent Eye
Philocrites
(went home early, Paul Wilczynski)

We got together today at an undisclosed location to eat hamburgers and to plot our takeover of the Department of Homeland Security (will this get me some cool links? Google hits? Personal mail from Michael Chertoff, or whoever that new guy is?).

Personal to “Boy In the Bands:” We missed you. And Peregrinato, and The UU Enforcer.

Peacebang is now taking to her bed to nurse a really slammin’ sinus headache.

Runaway Bride

I love this.

Nervous Nervy Bride
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

This woman from Georgia disappeared a few days before her wedding. A major womanhunt ensued. She called her fiancee from a phone booth claiming that she had been kidnapped, then later recanted the tale, saying that she had cold feet and needed some time alone.

Peacebang hates to make snap judgments based on one photo, but dear readers, don’t you just think this jittery bride needed, at the very least, a good meal and some time off the Stairmaster?

Wedding invitations went to 600 guests and the bride and groom each had 14 attendants.

That’s not a wedding, my little peach blosson, that’s a bloody coronation!
No wonder you went kaflooey! Mere mortals should never attempt to plan such a production without the help of David Merrick or perhaps Busby Berkeley. Cecil B. DeMille?

Of course Ms. Bride should be soundly spanked for scaring everyone so much (not to mention wasting tax dollars on police involvement) and for lacking the nerve to just call the whole thing off, but she represents brides and grooms everywhere who have serious reservations about walking down the aisle, but who silence their anxieties because they’re too deeply into the grips of the Wedding Industrial Complex.

Here’s to Just Calling It Off when you need to.

Peacebang wishes the couple every happiness, together or apart.

MAY 1st UPDATE — THIS JUST IN:

“On Sunday, members of Peachtree Corners Baptist Church [how much do you love that?], where Mason is a member, said prayers and expressed concern for the couple, who did not attend services Sunday morning. [ya THINK?]

Hometown anger persists. Many in Duluth were visibly angry Saturday. “There should be some responsibility for all this expense to the police,” said Jo Cripps, eating boiled crawfish at a downtown Cajun restaurant. “Certainly she owes an apology to all the people who came out and volunteered.”

(Italics mine, of course. You know that reporter waited around in that restaurant all day waiting for someone to make a comment while eating boiled crawfish.)

I’ll Be Here Today

People’s Filibuster and Rally
Joseph Moakley Court House
Boston 1 Courthouse Way Boston, MA 02210
Wednesday, 27 Apr 2005, 5:00 PM
(Take the red line to South Station,
hop on the silver line one stop
to the Courthouse)

MoveOn.Org has organized this 24-hour rally to protest the so-called “Nuclear Option” threatened by Senator (::cough::: fascist, cough:::) Bill Frist.

I’ll be there with my dog collar on, bearing a sign that says

“I HAVE FAITH IN THE FILIBUSTER.”

I think the most depressing thing about having become a clergyperson in America is that, as much of an honor and a joy as it is to serve in such a capacity, I never imagined I would feel the need to attend so many political rallies wearing evidence of religious leadership around my neck. Because I never imagined in my wildest dreams that TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY LEADERS (and that goes for the late twentieth century, too) would be such a bloody medieval bunch, waving their Bibles around and using some bizarre perversion of Christianity to justify their crazy fascist misogynist Mother Earth raping maniacal capitalistic imperialistic agenda.

I love ministry, but whenever I don the collar to make a public appearance it makes me somewhat nauseous. I always imagined that by now in this extraordinary country of ours, we would have reached an understanding of the centrality of faith in people’s lives, yes, but that while we would maintain a respect for the ways that faith informs political views, we would be committed to basing our public policy arguments on such mutually esteemed documents as, say, the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, not the sacred scriptures of one or another’s religious tradition.

If I was the Teacher of the United States I would send him home with this comment on his report card: “Sam is a very promising student but he is not working up to his potential. And he needs to learn to play well with others.”


[Update: It’s 4 pm and I’m home with a sore throat. Lady Death required my presence in the parish today, so I’m all talk and no action as far as the rally goes. Still, you might want to note that my brother blogger The Boy In the Bands would disagree with my appearing in the collar at all (see his latest post on clerical garb) since I am not wont to wear it while about my daily ministerial tasks. Also, bloggers: how does one access the strike-through function? I thought it would have been funny to leave this post up, and to strike through the whole thing….but I don’t know how. — P.B., not so bangin’ today.]

Women’s Intuition Gets A Thumbs Up By the Boys

Blink
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

I’ve just read Sue Halpern’s review of Malcolm Gladwell’s much-touted new book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

I haven’t read Gladwell’s book, and I will, but I was terribly interested in Halpern’s characterization of the book as having an evangelical tone, (”in a got-religion kind of way”), with much worshipful praise of rapid cognition as a form of higher consciousness.

In Blink, Gladwell wonders what would happen if we took our instincts seriously.

And in his book, he offers a compelling series of anecdotes to prove why we should ( some more quirky than truly persuasive):

(1) LBJ asked Lady Bird to marry him the first time they met.

(2) Curators at the Getty Museum, who spent fourteen months carefully ascertaining the authenticity of a 6th century sculpture, were hugely embarrassed when three art experts, Frederico Zeri, Evelyn Harrison and Thomas Hoving, eye-balled the ostensible antiquity and immediately simply felt it was fake, and were correct.

(3) Tennis coach Vic Braden just knows when a player will commit a double-fault. His instincts are unerring.

And so on.

At this point, both hemispheres of my brain are starting to ache. Because not once in this lengthy review does Sue Halpern ever mention the historically feminist claim that women have always excelled at rapid cognition (”women’s intuition,” anyone?). Am I to assume that Malcolm Gladwell also ignores this massively important fact in is book? And that, by providing countless details of men who successful employ intuitive cognition, this male author finally proves to a popular audience the legitimacy of a form of “knowing” that feminists have been affirming from the ghetto of Wombyn’s Studies Departments as legitimate for decades (if not centuries)?

In his latest book, The Wisdom Paradox (reviewed in the same NY Review of Books article by Sue Halpern), neuropsychologist Elkhanon Goldberg covers some similar territory to Gladwell. Although Goldberg also winds up affirming the value of rapid cognition, let’s note his use of language to differentiate the functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain, (quoted by Halpern):

“The right hemisphere is the novelty hemisphere, the daring hemisphere, the explorer of the unknown and the uncharted. The left hemisphere is the repository of compressed knowledge, of stable pattern-recognition devices that enable the organism to deal efficiently and effectively with familiar situations.”

Gosh, given that explanation, who would you rather have running the world, right-brainers or left-brainers? One sounds positively sexy, thrilling, the Lewis and Clarke of the brain, the brain leading the parade you really want to join … while the left brain sounds as dowdy as grandma’s gingham apron, just meant for staying home on the farm.

I don’t have to tell you where women and men are believed to be typically located on the continuum of neurological inclination.

Goldberg’s conviction is that what is commonly called intuition is not really a snappy kind of thinking at all, but is the result of a condensation of long years of “vast prior analytic experience.” In other words, what seems to be instant and intuitive thinking is not really that at all, but the result of extensive prior knowledge and experience. I wonder if that’s another way of reassuring the right-brain dominated world that lefty-brainies aren’t as threatening or flaky as they may seem. They’re building, you see, on vast prior analytical experience.

Like the police officers who put forty-one bullets into the innocent body of Amidou Diallo were building on vast prior analytical experience.

This stuff is very tricky and, I believe, almost inextricably biased.

Both Gladwell and Goldberg obviously have a contribution to make, and Gladwell’s book is flying off the shelves. Good on him. But the vast silence in this review (and, I am guessing, in both books) regarding the long gender studies component to left-brain-right-brain research seems more than merely curious. It seems disturbing.

But that could just be women’s intuition.

You can read Halpern’s review here: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17954

Jes A Li’l Bit Down About the State Of The Nation Just Now

“Dear Ms. Peacebang:Thank you for your e-mail, and I look forward to reviewing and responding as soon as I can. Unfortunately, due to the high volume of mail I receive daily and the press of Senate business, your response may be regrettably delayed. In the meanwhile, you may find my website at http://frist.senate.gov to be helpful, as I endeavor to post my positions on most major policy issues there regularly along with other information of interest.Again, thank you for contacting me and know that I always appreciate hearing from you!Sincerely,William H. Frist, M.D.Majority LeaderUnited States Senate”

I love these form e-mail replies. It’s perhaps the most depressing part of activism: to get a polite form letter in response to your scathing letter expressing outrage against one more disgrace against our democracy. Why don’t they just be honest?

“Dear Ms. Peacebang…. we could actually care less about your futile, mewling little liberal complaints from bright blue Massachusetts, where you can marry all the gay couples you want to and drive all the Toyota Prius’s you can afford (which we know is only one, if that), because we have all the power and all the money and all the corporate buddies we’ll ever need to own this country and most of the planet until long after your bones have become dust, and then we’ll find your grave and hold a picnic on it and laugh and laugh until the very planet collapses around us, and when it does we’ll still be laughing at your worthlessness and powerlessness…. mwa ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!! MWA HA HA HA HA! Love and kisses, Billy F.”

I called Senator Frist’s Tennessee office to leave a message, too, because this open, overt, in-your-face (get what I’m sayin?)flagrant alliance of religious fanatacism and government makes my hair stand on end. Whatever happened to the notion of serving the nation, for God’s sweet sake? And I mean the whole, religiously pluralistic nation? I don’t expect lots of group hugs with the Democrats or nuthin’, but is it too much to ask that our elected officials not actually DEMONIZE a whole sector of the population for the crime of having a dissenting opinion? What happened to the days of keeping the freakazoid fanatics distracted in the corner, tossing them a little bone now and then, but basically understanding that the fanatics are not representative of the constituency, and that we do not pander to them??

Oh, I forgot. The fanatics are the leaders now. They got out of the corner and they want the whole pig, not just the bone.

I definitely need to spend some time out of this country this summer. Like I’m thinking Sweden.

Yea, What He Said

Um, you should read this:

“Just Us Sunday” at http://www.philocrites.com/

Sorry, I’m too busy to post anything original right now.

Peace.
Bang.

The New Pope Is Dangerous, Says Lerner

Rabbi Michael Lerner has some important words about the new pope:


http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/current_thinking/news_item.2005-04-19.4230239892/newsitem_view

A Contest

proactivad
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Simply this:

Peacebang will personally pay you five bucks for every time you can work the expression “moisturizes my situation” into your professional conversations.

If you’re a religious leader, ten bucks.

Once again we have PlanetDan to thank for this recent hilarity.