Someone is listening, someone is watching: The Anderson Tapes

The recent flap over government surveillance via Internet and cell phone interception by the NSA, should be nothing new to anyone who has lived in this country during the second half of the twentieth century. Someone watching us on camera or even listening to us via various devices has been going on a long time.

I read the novel, The Anderson Tapes by Lawrence Sanders when it was published in 1970, and saw the movie version the next year. To tell the story of a major burglary the novel is constructed as a string of various recorded transcripts made by the government: the IRS, district attorney, and even a private detective,. It would have been difficult to make a movie using that format, so the film is told in a more traditional fashion, with interjections to show that ex-con Duke Anderson (Sean Connery), is caught on audio tape and surreptitious filming as he goes about his business of arranging a heist.

Watching the movie again a couple of days ago I was struck by how modern it seems in its storytelling and location photography, but with scenes of outdated technology. It was 41 years ago, and while technology has gotten more sophisticated, the ideas have remained the same. They record people saying and doing things that will incriminate them in order to prosecute them.

The big leap forward in today's technology is the ability to track cell phones via cell phone towers, and cameras that are so small that they can be hidden virtually anywhere. It doesn’t hurt to have easy access to e-mail, where lots of people say lots of stupid things.

There has never been a technology developed that someone, somehow, can’t figure how to turn to their own advantage; especially governments and law enforcement. We often say that “Big Brother is watching,” after the famous paranoid novel, 1984 by George Orwell (“Orwellian” having entered the language, meaning that sort of constant surveillance), but how much is Big Brother, and how much might be called Little Brother, where private businesses do the work of government? They watch us in places of business, and provide a record of what we were doing (sticking up the place, for instance) to the police.

Being watched is nothing new. Privacy concerns aside, the technology is here, it’s being used, and used against us. And there doesn’t seem to be one damn thing we can do about it.

All of that being said, so Postino, you ask, how did you like the movie?

Well, I loved the movie. It’s directed by Sidney Lumet, one of my favorite directors. It has Sean Connery, stepping away from his James Bond persona.

 Christopher Walken, in his movie debut, is “the kid.”

There’s a tantalizing glimpse of Dyan Cannon’s superhot hardbody.

Martin Balsam, the great character actor, is a very gay interior decorator who helps with the heist.

There are other actors like Alan King (a comedian playing out-of-type as a Mafia boss) Dick Williams and Ralph Meeker. There is even a juicy part as a cop by Garrett Morris, in his pre-Saturday Night Live days.

The movie is tight, fast-moving, intricate, interesting and exciting.

It’s also, with the use of the surveillance devices, paranoid. I don’t remember how much that affected me when I saw it during its theatrical release. I may have thought, “Oh well, they’re all criminals. That couldn’t happen to me.” Four decades later I’m not so sure of that, anymore. We may have gotten more used to the idea that when we walk out of the house to do our daily business we could be watched. Maybe most folks just don’t care.

But I do. There are a lot of things I say in private conversation or on a telephone I wouldn’t want to be made part of a database on me, a file on my private thoughts or even idle chat. What are the chances of a collection like that being made on me? None, I hope.

Island of Lost Souls

“Are we not men?”

 Although I’m familiar with H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, and I’ve seen screen versions with both Burt Lancaster and Marlon Brando in the title roles, I’ve never seen the 1932 version starring Charles Laughton,Island of Lost Souls. I watched a restored version issued by the Criterion Collection in 2012, and was much impressed at how an 80-year-old motion picture can affect a modern viewer.

First, the story is classic. John Landis, who gives his opinions in a 2012 feature with the DVD, says Wells’ original story was meant as an anti-vivisectionist tract. Vivisection is part of the story, and was shocking to audiences in 1932. The House of Pain, where vivisection is performed, is shown, and a creature tortured by surgery without anesthesia is shown on the table. Dr. Moreau is a sadist, who enjoys inflicting such pain.

The story is about bypassing evolution, and turning animals into humans. Because the story has been told so many times the phrases, “What is the law?”* and “Are we not men?” have been worn out. But here they are given in their original, and sinister forms, as the beastmen cower before the whip of Moreau. They are forced by intimidation to worship him, and the Sayer of the Law, (Bela Lugosi), gives him the feelings of godlike power. Moreau puffs himself up at the Sayer’s obedient flattery.

There is a strong aura of sex in the story. Lota, The Panther Woman (Kathleen Burke) is pushed at the other male lead, the marooned sailor, Edward Parker (Richard Arlen), with whom Moreau expects her to mate. He tells Parker she is Polynesian.

Too bad “the beast flesh creeps back,” as Moreau puts it, and Lota begins to return to her animal self. Parker probably realizes this after he has kissed her (did he feel her raspy tongue in his mouth?)

What I didn’t expect from this version of the movie was the darkness, not only within the story, but the photography. Cinematographer Karl Struss made a shadowy world of Moreau’s island. The darkness is everywhere, and the film is a superb example of film noir.

John Landis, in additional comments, said that director Erle C. Kenton was something of “a hack” in his later career. Landis was surprised at the excellent job he did with this movie. Landis also said that in the twenties and thirties horror movies were A-movies, but by the forties, with budgets reduced, had been downgraded to B-movies. It’s evident in Island of Lost Souls that much precious Depression-era money was spent on this film. There are many extras in makeup and costumes, and the sets, built especially for the movie, are wonderful.

Something Landis did not mention was the undertone of homosexuality that Dr. Moreau exhibits. Laughton, who was gay in real life (although married to Elsa Lanchester from 1929 until his death in 1962) uses somewhat effeminate mannerisms, and appears to be attracted to Parker.

But the work comes first. He expects Parker to be sexually attracted to Lota, rather than him. There is one scene that seems clumsy, even laughable, when Laughton hops onto a table to talk to Parker. It is  ridiculous because his corpulent body just isn’t comfortable there.

Moreau’s actions are coquettish. I wonder if this scene was filmed as planned, or was an ad-lib by Laughton? It is just so odd in context that it doesn’t look like it was part of the original script.

The script was written by Waldemar Young, from an adaptation of the Wells book by novelist Philip Wylie.

The power of the movie was such that it was banned in twelve countries, including England, from whence the Wells novel came. Individual states in the U.S. were allowed to make their own snips and cuts for censorship purposes.

The booklet accompanying the DVD explains how the technical staff at Criterion was able to take various versions of the movie (both 35mm and 16mm) and restore the original motion picture. The negative is long gone, and what you see in this DVD is probably the best-looking and the most complete version we are likely to ever see.

*Incredible Danny Elfman and his former band, Oingo Boingo, did a very stirring song,  “No Spill Blood,” based on the story.

Get well quick to my fellow Madman, Eddie

My friend, Eddie, is not feeling too well these days. He’s having some medical problems that we all hope can be taken care of soon. Ed and I met through the old Prodigy service, in 1992, when both we and computer technology were young. We introduced ourselves on a DOS-based bulletin board devoted to EC Comics and specifically Mad, of which we were both lifetime fans.

Eddie, like me, loves the inspired craziness of editor/writer Harvey Kurtzman and artist Will (then known as Bill) Elder.  The title of Eddie’s blog, Chicken Fat, comes from the old Mad comics.

Here’s one of my favorite Mad stories, a spoof called “Frank N. Stein!” I scanned it from a comic book called The Nostalgic Mad. From 1972 through 1980 the publishers of Mad magazines produced eight issues reprinting the best of the classic comic book Mad, which they bound into their issues of Mad Special. This is from issue #15, 1974.

I hope it’ll help Eddie on his road to recovery. Get well soon, Ed!

Copyright © 1974, 2013 E. C. Publications, Inc.

Man has sex with unconscious woman to “save her life”

I’ve been looking at a newspaper article, “Cops: Man said he had sex with unconscious woman to ‘save her life,’” trying to think of something to say about it. The least is to give the guy credit for being original with his excuse.

The copyrighted article, by Janelle Stecklein for the June 11, 2013 Salt Lake Tribune, says Rodger William Kelly, 50, of St. George, Utah, was arrested for raping an unconscious 29-year-old woman he found on her apartment doorstep. He brought her into his apartment. He placed her on the bed, laid down next to her to warm her up, and inserted his penis to bring up her body temperature.

When police arrived on a report of an unconscious person, they found Kelly giving her CPR. It was only later when the woman saw bruising that she came to believe Kelly had penetrated her. The article ends by saying that the woman and Kelly had been intimate at some point in their relationship, but Kelly admitted she had told him she didn’t want to have sex with him again.

I guess when he found her passed out he saw his opportunity to give it one last go.

Having sex with an unconscious person would be like masturbating with a doll. But Kelly’s “doll” is a human being. The unfortunate victim, in need of medical attention, had no control over the situation. By not calling 911, yet committing a sex act, he multiplied his offenses against decency.

People try to mitigate their guilt even while admitting to a crime. A guy who puts another guy in the hospital by hitting him with a baseball bat might say,“Sure I was mad, sure I swung the bat at him, but if he hadn’t been standing close by he wouldn’t have got whacked upside the head.” Ariel Castro in Cleveland blamed the three girls he kidnapped and held as sex slaves in a house for ten years. If they hadn’t gotten in his car, he claimed, they’d have been okay. It's human nature to try to put the blame elsewhere rather than where it really belongs, especially when it belongs to us.

But how would the guilty party go about mitigating his actions in inserting his penis into the vagina of a woman who is clearly out? “I thought I could bring up her temperature.”

Wow. That might be original, but it’s also the worst excuse I’ve ever heard.

He left out the part about being aroused at the sight of her unconscious body, and his decision to take advantage of the situation. It clearly turned him on.

Some people are twisted like that. In my own case I would need my partner awake, in the moment, and above all, willing.

Shallow Grave now part of Criterion collection

Criterion has released a beautifully restored version of Danny Boyle’s 1993 debut film, Shallow Grave. It is a dark comedy, and so dark sometimes the comedy barely shines through. In 2012 interviews with the lead actors done for the DVD, the movie is described by actor Christopher Eccleston as being about “the corrosive effects of money.”

It is also inspired by the success of the Coen brothers first film, Blood Simple, and while the movies are miles apart in many ways, the audaciousness of the filmmaking sets them both as trendsetters.

David, Alex and Juliet are flatmates in an affluent area of Edinburgh, Scotland. They interview applicants to be their fourth roommate. They are rough on the applicants, unnecessarily cruel and sarcastic, and turn them down one by one. (Before the final title was chosen, at one point it was called Cruel.)

Christopher Eccleston is David, an accountant, Ewan McGregor is Alex, a tabloid journalist, and Juliet, a hospital doctor, is played by Kerry Fox. It was McGregor’s first major movie role.

Enter Hugo, who applies with Juliet and passes one of her tests.

Juliet tells any men in the flat to answer the ringing telephone, and if a man asks for her to tell him she’s not in. Hugo handles that job for her readily. Juliet is something of an enigma, as is the relationship of the core three. None of them are having an affair, but both of the men desire her sexually. In one brief scene, Juliet steps out of the shower, nude, in front of Alex, and he is sort of stunned, but nothing happens.

Hugo is given no time at all in the flat. He locks himself in his room and when he doesn’t answer the men break down his door. They find him dead, apparently of a drug overdose.

The group opens Hugo’s suitcase and find a million pounds in cash. If they report the death the money will come to light, and they decide to keep it. It’s how they go about it that drives the plot from then on.

Sneaking the corpse, wrapped in black plastic, down several flights of stairs is a tricky business. Luckily none of the neighbors sticks a head out of their door to ask why all the noise in the middle of the night. Later in the movie Alex plays drums  loudly  yet no one complains. They either have neighbors who keep to themselves, or the rooms are soundproof.

They take the corpse to a wooded area, and draw straws to see who will go about the grisly business of burying Hugo, and also cutting off his hands and feet and smashing out his teeth. David gets the job, and in a fit of total revulsion, vomits when cutting off body parts.

Unbeknownst to our three friends is that two very bad men are torturing and killing anyone whom they think can lead them to the money. In one scene a guy is drowned under interrogation. Another man ends up locked in a freezer, alive.

The group does not realize someone is looking for the money. Alex and Juliet, in a frivolous mood, spend £500. Angry, David decides to take charge of the money. He moves himself into the loft (attic), and hides it, with himself sitting as guard.

We don’t know how the bad men learn where the money is, but they burst in to the flat, and after banging Alex’s shins with a crowbar he gives up the location of the money, “in the loft.”

The bad guys aren’t told that David is up there. He has heard the commotion. He is prepared.

What we learn is how much the “corrosive effects of money” has affected David, and what he is willing to do to keep it. The friends become pitted against each other.

Director Danny Boyle has distinguished himself in theater, movies (he directed Slumdog Millionaire in 2008, and the cult zombie thriller, 28 Days Later (2002). He was also the artistic director of the 2012 London Olympic Games.

Boyle’s follow-up to Shallow Grave was Trainspotting in 1996, and cemented his reputation as a director to watch.

Welcome to my new neighbor, the NSA Datafarm

The National Security Agency is set to open its new datafarm at Camp Williams in Bluffdale, Utah, in October of this year. It’s a hugely expensive project, and yet it has gone largely unnoticed by Americans, even Utahns. That doesn’t mean it’s been hidden. It’s just that I hadn’t heard any alarm bells go off from the public until the recent news broke about the NSA keeping phone records of Americans.

Artist’s conception of the finished building.

In its official website, the NSA links to articles like “The NSA is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center,” which leaves no doubt that the purpose of the complex is to house information used in high-tech spying. The NSA calls it “the Utah Data Center, code-named Bumblehive.” Bumblehive! That’s a joke on the Utah state motto, “The Beehive State,” and someone with a sense of humor came up with that one. They further describe the data center as “designed to support the Intelligence Community’s efforts to monitor, strengthen and protect the nation.”

Here’s where it gets interesting (and scary): “The steady use of available computer power and the development of novel computer platforms will enable us to easily turn the huge volume of incoming data into an asset to be exploited, for the good of the nation. (Emphasis mine.) I’m drawn to key words like “novel computer platforms,” “huge volume of incoming data,” and especially “asset to be exploited.”

I’m not a numbers person, so “huge” in terms of incoming data doesn’t really compute in my brain, and adding to my confusion are the terms they throw around for capacity of data storage, using words I’m sure someone sat up nights coining: “The storage capacity . . . will be measured in ‘zettabytes”. What exactly is a zettabyte? There are a thousand gigabytes in a terabyte; a thousand terabytes in a petabyte; a thousand petabytes in an exabyte; and a thousand exabytes in a zettabyte.”

Oh, well, now that they’ve explained it that way…

That same sense of humor pops up again in the last sentence of the paragraph: “Some of our employees like to refer to them as ‘alottabytes”. The employees could refer to them as breakfast biscuits and it would make as much sense, but then, that’s just me. “There are a thousand breakfast biscuits in a terabiscuit…”

Edward Snowden, the man who blew the whistle on an operation called PRISM, which is collecting information on Internet use, and comes on the heels of the news of cell phone info gathering, is now in deep. Snowden is in Hong Kong right now. He admits he did it, is proud to be the guy who blew the whistle, and expects reprisals. If he was hoping to escape extradition he might have chosen a place other than Hong Kong, which has an extradition treaty with the U.S. It has exceptions for someone being charged for a “political reason.” We’ll have to see whether they consider dishing American secret spy operations as being political or not, and hand him over.

“Bad boy, bad boy, what ya gonna do…what you gonna do when they come for you?”

Since the NSA is building its Bumblehive so close to my home (it’s not computed in miles, but time, so my route map says it would take twenty minutes to drive), maybe I’ll apply for a job! As Snowden explained, anyone can access any information (that’s disputed, but he claims it’s so). By working there I could look up all of my enemies or old girlfriends, see what Internet sites they access. If I wasn’t keyboarding right now I’d be rubbing my hands with glee just thinking of it. But then, someone might want to do the same to me. Bummer. I don’t want that. So, NSA Human Resources, on second thought never mind. Tear up my application.

The main thing that comes out of these revelations of cell phone info and Internet info gathering is the further erosion of the holy American “right” to privacy. All the new technology is just so tempting for spies to access and use for whatever purposes they envision. As with a lot of other things about Internet and cell phone technology, many rules and laws have yet to be written. The damn gadgets and things are showing up so fast we haven’t figured out a precedent for how to handle the “alottabytes” of stuff out there floating through the ether, ready to be picked up by whomever, for whatever purpose.

Who watches the Watchmen?

Copyright © 2013 The Salt Lake Tribune

Sometimes answers are known only by the dead

Where is Susan Powell? Wife of Josh, mom of two very young boys, Charlie and Braden. She disappeared on a very cold December night, 2009. The next day when he reported her missing Josh said he took their sons camping at midnight in below freezing weather, and when he returned he found her gone.

A likely story, the skeptics said. Camping in December? He’s gotta be lying.

News reports say when West Valley City, Utah, police checked the Powell home there was a wet spot on a rug where a red stain had been removed. Josh was using fans to dry it.

Blood. He killed her and then he cleaned up.

Police impounded his van, looked for evidence. Josh rented a car, logged hundreds of miles on the odometer. Where did he go?

He took her body, dumped it somewhere far away.

It’s frustrating for the public. People called the West Valley City cops to demand they arrest Josh. “We don’t have enough evidence,” the cops told the news media. They also had no body. No body, no real evidence, no case.

Josh moved back to Washington State to live with his father, Steve. He had Charlie and Braden, and Susan’s parents were upset. They are media savvy. They kept the case public, and the heat on Josh.

In 2013 the cops said they had given up. The West Valley police said they had no more leads, they’ve searched and they’ve talked to people and they’ve examined evidence and yet Susan is still missing, and oh, by the way, Josh, the main suspect, is dead and so are his boys.

Josh fought Susan’s parents for custody rights. The boys were removed to Susan’s parents’ custody, and Josh was granted limited visitation rights. On Super Bowl Sunday, 2012, the social worker brought them to a house Josh had rented solely for the purpose of seeing his boys. He took the boys, slammed and locked the door in her face. Then he took a hatchet and in an inhuman act so egregious I can hardly write it he struck the boys down and set fire to the house. He had enough gasoline in the house that it exploded. He and the boys were dead.

That’s your proof of guilt. By his actions he admitted he killed his wife.

Josh’s father, Steve, was in prison. He is a pervert, a voyeur. He took sneaky-pete photos of little neighbor girls and was charged and sent up. When Josh and Susan lived with him Steve was obsessed by Susan. He wanted her, and made no bones about it. He asked if he could share her with Josh. It was why Susan wanted Josh to move them to Utah, where they could be away from Steve and his obsession.

Steve had something to do with it. He is a sick bastard, lusting after his daughter-in-law. Josh killed Susan, and Steve had something to do with it. We don’t know what, and maybe he’ll tell us what he knows.

Steve remained tight-lipped.

Josh’s brother, Michael, rented some woodsy property in Oregon. Cops searched there, just like they had searched other areas, campgrounds in Utah, the desert in Nevada. They found nothing.

They won’t find her because Josh was too smart. He threw her down an old mine shaft or a well and no one will ever find her body.

Josh’s brother, Michael, killed himself by jumping from a Minneapolis building.

He knew what happened. He was covering for Josh. His conscience got to him. He couldn’t stand the guilt.

It’s infuriating. Four people (at least that we know of) are dead, and probably Susan, also, and the mystery of where she is is not solved. The mystery is a jigsaw puzzle. There are so many pieces. People are taking the pieces, turning them this way and that, trying to figure where they all fit together. But when they put the pieces on the table there are too many missing.

When West Valley Police announced they had nowhere else to go with the mystery, they had other problems unrelated to Susan Powell. The Attorney General was throwing out cases because West Valley’s narcotics squad had screwed up.Cops were suspended. The police chief retired. The city advertised for a new chief, someone to come in and clean house and put the department back into a position of public trust.

Too bad they had some bad drug cops, and a high profile missing person's case that had dragged on and on and on and cost the police department millions to investigate, according to them, and still went nowhere. On TV and in mystery novels somebody would have figured it out, the public thinks. They’d have found her skeleton and identified her through DNA. You know, like CSI or Bones. Fiction is just so much more satisfying.

But this isn’t fiction. Too bad for the image of the West Valley Police that because of television programs people expect mysteries to be solved quickly and conclusively. Quick resolution — or any resolution at all — is sometimes impossible in real life. And so the question is still out there, where is Susan Powell?

She’s in heaven, say her faithful fellow Mormons. She’s in heaven with Charlie and Braden, free from care, in the loving arms of Jesus. And Josh...? Well, he’s somewhere else.

The $imple Joy$ of $uburban Home Owner$hip

I wrote this in 2007. Check out my 2013 update below.

Ah, home ownership. The American dream.

After about 40 trips this morning up and down a ladder to fix a problem on my roof, I'm exhausted. I'm 59 years and 10 months old (that's almost 60, for you mathematically impaired types out there). I'm too freakin old to be going up and down a ladder.

I should pay a guy but he'd charge me about $100 to do what I can do with some labor and some equipment. So up the ladder I go. Down the ladder I go.

All my life I was taught, by my parents, by my friends and coworkers, "Owning a home is really important. You have a sense of pride in ownership.”

Oh yeah? Take a look at the yellow patches in my lawn…take a look at some overgrown shrubs or some weeds in the backyard. The weeds are so damn tall I could camouflage a Humvee back there. Who’s responsible? Well, me, of course.

What happens when the toilet clogs or breaks? What happens when the stove or refrigerator goes out? Who has to buy new carpet, new mini-blinds? Who gets to worry about cracks in the driveway turning into chasms that will eat a tire next winter unless some needed repairs are done? You guessed it.

And as for “owning”a home, that's the biggest laugh of all. Laugh, laugh, I thought I'd die…sang the Beau Brummells. And I’m laughing.

Ha.

Ha.

Ha.

Who really owns your home? After 32 years of living in my palatial estate I have paid off mortgages one and two…but still owe on mortgage number three. That's another five years of paying, and who knows what Ill need then. (All this being conditional on me living through all of these trips up and down that ladder.) So the bank has interest in my house. Then when I get the mortgage paid off, get the deed back in my hands, then who really owns the house? Not me. The county really owns the house. Just see what happens if I neglect to pay my property taxes.

The simple joys of home ownership. What a crock.

***********

2013 Update:

That “problem on my roof,” referred to above, is my evaporative air conditioner (also called a swamp cooler), which needs more tender loving care than I can give. I have been vetoed by my wife on having a new furnace and a/c installed because they are yet more expen$e, but really...when it comes to wear and tear on my aging body, what are a few buck$?

Since 2007 I have aged to where I am now nearly 66, but in dog years much, much older. I have a bad knee, my stamina is none too good, and in the back of my mind is Harriett’s story. Harriett was a secretary for the school district where I also worked. At the time, 1979, she and her husband were about 55, and working toward retirement. Husband John went on the roof for the same reason I go on the roof, to keep the primitive air conditioner working. He fell off the ladder and shattered an ankle. It was while he was recuperating in the hospital that the injury caused a blood clot in his leg, which traveled to his heart and killed him. I asked my wife, “Do you want me to die like John?” You know what she said in response?

“Don’t fall off the ladder.”

Actually, that conversation is imaginary. It never took place except here in this blog. I’ve never said anything like that to her; it would scare her needlessly. I haven’t fallen off the ladder yet, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

It is also that if I live long enough, sooner than I expect I will be 70, then 75...way too old to be climbing ladders to the roof.

Oh yeah, and the final update is that on March 1, 2013, we have been in this house 38 years. Like me, the house is aging, and not showing its age any better than I’m showing mine.

Mortgage three was paid off in 2008, by the way, and I have been mortgage-free since.

How religious were America's Founding Fathers?

I wrote this in 2010. I have done some editing on the contents of the original posting.

My brother and I are non-religious, as were our parents. My wife’s family is mostly non-religious except for a couple of people who are evangelical types, born again Christians. I’m all right with that. I think people should find comfort and solace — or even answers to the age-old questions, “Why are we here?” and “What can I do to make life as painless as possible?” — where they can find answers. I just don't want them trying to convince me they have the answers for me.

I usually don't need answers because I don’t have the questions. Being non-religious means I don’t go looking for answers by supernatural means.

Note that I said non-religious and not atheist or agnostic. My personal feeling, based on dealings with some atheists is that they can approach their atheism with a religious fervor. In the same way a zealous Christian might try to convince me to bring Jesus into my life so do some atheists try to convince me there is no God. An agnostic is a person who doesn't know. I could fall into that category except that not only do I not know but I don’t care. So I guess I’m more comfortable referring to myself as non-religious and letting it go at that.

Because this is America, where free expression of religion is allowed — as long as it doesn’t involve human sacrifice, that is — many religious people like to mix their religion in with politics. I’m also all right with that as long as they understand this is a secular nation, and the taxpayers don't have to support religion. But, these religious people say, our nation was founded on religious principles. Well, perhaps. The men who founded our country were very much a mixed bag when it came to religion. To say they were all devout is misinformation by the patriotic religious people who propound such talk.

In a July, 2010 article by Peggy Fletcher Stack in The Salt Lake Tribune, “How religious were they?” some of the American founding fathers are examined. There were some very religious members of the group, Patrick Henry for instance. There were some for whom religion was more or less accepted, but not practiced. For instance, according to the article, George Washington “. . . was a Freemason who embraced a deistic view of God as Providence but rarely mentioned Jesus.”

John Adams “. . . rejected the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, human depravity and predestination, like most deists, believed reason was a gift from God to find the truth.”

Thomas Jefferson “. . . revered Jesus as a moral teacher but did not see himi as Son of God or Savior . . . but [Jefferson] regularly attended and liked church services.”

Benjamin Franklin “ . . .declared ‘some doubts’ about Jesus’ divinity. He prudently contributed to every sect in Philadelphia, including a Jewish synagogue.”

Sounds to me like Ben wanted to cover the bases.

Every time there is political turmoil in America the religious right demands that America return to “Christian values,”which are defined as being what they, the religious right, point to and say are the Christian values. They like to point to the Founding Fathers, whom they imbue with spirituality those FF's probably didn't have. But who cares? Most Americans couldn't name three Founding Fathers, much less know how religious they were.

When I see a cringe-inducing painting like the one above, I’m reminded of the power of propaganda. Depicting Jesus with the U.S. Constitution is implying it came to us through divinity. There wasn’t anything divine about it. It was based, like most things, on human experience. What has worked in the past, what hasn’t, and how can we improve the lot of our citizens without making them subjects? It ignores the fact that even though we had such a document we didn’t always believe what it says, especially if it disagreed with our personal prejudices. The Constitution and Declaration of Independence are the holy grails of freedom-loving Americans, but they were framed during a time when it was legal to own fellow human beings.

The Founding Fathers were a group who had a lot to lose with a revolution, made a big gamble and luckily it turned out in their favor. They could have easily turned out footnotes in the history of the American colonies, hung for insurrection. That was a combination of a lot of factors that had little to do with divine intervention. Read some history or even watch the History Channel. When they tell the story of the American Revolutionary War Jesus isn’t usually mentioned.

“1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7...only white people go to heaven...”

I wrote this in 2009. I have edited it slightly from its original appearance.

Sleestak, at Lady, That's My Skull, a blog not unlike this one but more comics oriented, has a grouping of fascinating illustrations from a book called Bible Readings For the Home. It’s one of those mass-produced books from the 1950s, attempting to show the Bible’s relevance to “modern” society.

In the America of the 1950s we weren't used to seeing pictures of other races on TV, in textbooks or most other literature, for that matter. Only Northern Europeans need apply for heaven, according to the not-so-subtle message of Bible Readings. It must’ve been popular in Ku Klux Klan homes.

The question I ask is, what did Jesus look like? We have these sort of sanitized Caucasian versions of a man who would have had origins in the middle East, and probably looked a lot like the people around him, not like someone out of Central Casting.

So if you get to heaven and you want to look up Jesus (if he’s available, that is, and not presiding over his posse of all-white angels) then he better be wearing a name tag, because if you're looking for the popular version you might not recognize him.

I've written about this a couple of times. a crass attempt to commercialize some peoples' idea of Jesus, and other references to the popular image of Jesus.

Heaven seems to be a place that has different meaning for different people. The version in Bible Readings For the Home seems to be the popular version. Beautiful, placid, white buildings, white people in white robes. Everything sparkling in its whiteness! No global warming, no bad weather — so where'd that rainbow come from? — no crabgrass in the lawn. That would be heaven to some.

Me, I'd have to have a library with every book I've ever wanted to read. It would have every movie I've ever wanted to see, or at least all my old favorites, on DVD, which means I'd have to have a DVD player. What about transportation? Are we we stuck in that white city with its gleaming buildings without a bus system, subway, or taxis? And how do we pay for such conveyances, or will we need to have a (egad!) job?

Are there homeless people in heaven, or do we all get an apartment?

Whew. So many questions, so few answers.

“...and Satan will have his victory.”

Two letters in my Sunday June 2, 2013 newspaper caught my attention. They are both about the Boy Scouts and their recent vote to allow openly gay scouts, but not gay adults. The letters definitely have different opinions.

James C., who gives his Scouting bona fides in the first paragraph, is of the opinion that the policy “will create more problems than it solves.” Then he goes on to list a few problems: “A scout must be ‘morally straight.’ But that will be passing a moral judgment that many consider discriminatory.” Boys sleeping next to each other might cause a problem. “Decent families” may pull their kids out of scouting because of some “awkward encounters.”

He even says, “. . . but wait until your son returns from a campout and says that Johnnie tried to climb into his sleeping bag with him! If you complain, you’ll be accused of homophobia.” James ends his letter by switching to a purely religious tone when he says that it will “cause the demise of Scouting . . . and Satan will have his victory.”

I always perk up when people blame Satan. It tells me how their thinking processes go.

James’ argument is interesting because what he’s mentioning as problems are actually scenarios which have been created in his own mind. He doesn’t claim any of these things have happened, and unless he has a gift of prophecy they may never happen.

But that won’t keep James from trying to influence the beliefs of others by mentioning them, real or not. Or scaring them by invoking Satan. As for little Johnnie trying to climb into your son’s sleeping bag, how about a snake or a scorpion instead? They’ve been known to climb into sleeping bags. And bears, looking for food, have been known to slice through tents and maul campers. Frankly, I’d be more worried about any of those things, but James apparently thinks they are low on the danger scale compared to young, gay Johnnie.

I need to remind James, also, that boys who are not gay have been known to have sex play with other boys. It isn’t that uncommon.

As for being accused of homophobia for worrying about Johnnie and the sleeping bag, James gets some sort of award for homophobia for bringing it up in an imaginary situation.

My suggestion to James C. would be that perhaps he has already known gay Boy Scouts, and gay Scout Leaders, but because of homophobia they kept their silence on their sexual orientation. There are stereotypes, and I think a popular myth that refuses to die is that all gay males are child rapists and molesters. Statistically we know that more heterosexuals than homosexuals molest children. For a good reason: there are more heterosexuals than homosexuals. James should turn his scenarios back on himself. If as a heterosexual Eagle Scout he never molested anyone or climbed into their sleeping bag, then why would he just assume a homosexual Scout would? That gay Scout may feel just as much an obligation to be morally straight as James C.

For Richard, who wrote the second letter, the problem is different. It’s not gay boys (or even gay adults), but Scout leaders. He claims he was almost killed three times by a Scout leader. “Twice by accident; once on purpose.” He says, “If any of these incidents had been the result of a gay leader, he would have been lynched. But since they were by a straight Mormon leader, they were swept under the rug.”

Richard is referring to Mormons sponsoring a lot of Scout troops. And since these Scout leaders are also devout church members, the LDS church has done what a lot of religious organizations have done when faced with such claims: they believe the man and not the boy.

Richard ends his note with a warning: “Scouts are in a lot of danger at the hands of their Scout leaders. Beware!”

What Lincoln looked like in 1856

I hadn’t planned on making a sequence of posts about Abraham Lincoln, but I’ve just read another interesting article about him and wanted to share the information.

The March, 1990 issue of American Heritage, a special Civil War issue, featured a story about a hitherto “unknown” portrait of Lincoln. It was unknown in the sense that it wasn’t part of the overall history of Lincoln portraits, but known to the people who had seen it hanging over the mantle of a family with whom it had been since it was painted in 1856. The portrait, by artist Philip O. Jenkins, was done when Lincoln was a lawyer. In 1856 Lincoln was traveling, trying cases in Illinois, and apparently at some point the artist asked him to sit and have his likeness painted.

The article’s authors, James L. Swanson and Lloyd Ostendorf, who “found” the picture, made an additional discovery: a second portrait painted by the same artist was also found in another home. It was painted in 1866 and was based on the earlier painting.

The second portrait showed Lincoln with a beard, and was done after he was assassinated. There’s a reason for that picture, because by then Lincoln was iconic. The mystery lay in why Jenkins asked Lincoln, in 1856 then still four years from being elected President — and not on the radar for future greatness — to sit. A case could be made that Lincoln was a striking-looking individual, and his unusual looks may have appealed to the artist. As you can see in this scan from the magazine, Lincoln is shown in his asymmetrical glory. Lincoln’s eyes and mouth were crooked, his cheeks were deeply lined and he had protruding ears. He was no one’s idea of a handsome man. Or was he? The artist caught the intelligence in his eyes. His face, along with his rangy 6’4” height, made him a very imposing figure, easy to recognize and hard to ignore. Sometimes that trumps handsome.

Copyright © 1990, 2013 American Heritage