Thursday, September 20, 2001

GRACE(LESS) UNDER PRESSURE

What, with recent events, I haven’t really felt inspired to write in this spot for the past week or so. Call me crazy, but somehow it’s hard to work up a good head of steam about the rotting groceries at the friendly neighborhood supermarket right now (though, as a messy attempt to pick up a banana on Monday proved, they still are).

But, as always, I digress. I have written some serious stuff about what's happened of late -- living less than 2 miles from the Pentagon, it would be hard not to -- but they’re more along the lines of things I’d want my kids to read someday. Besides, most of it’s pretty similar to what other people have already said time and time again in the half-century into which the past week has seemed to unfold.

However, it’s nice to see other folks have put on their thinking caps, and that in a crisis of this magnitude, some people are called to their, um, personal best. Consider this now-notorious commentary, courtesy of The Washington Post:



Television evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, two of the most prominent voices of the religious right, said liberal civil liberties groups, feminists, homosexuals and abortion rights supporters bear partial responsibility for Tuesday's terrorist attacks because their actions have turned God's anger against America.

"God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve," said Falwell, appearing yesterday on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club," hosted by Robertson.

"Jerry, that's my feeling," Robertson responded... Falwell said the American Civil Liberties Union has "got to take a lot of blame for this," again winning Robertson's agreement: "Well, yes."

...Falwell added, "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "




Luckily, they’re not elected officials. This guy is the elected official:


WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. John Cooksey, R-Monroe, told a network of Louisiana radio stations Monday that someone "wearing a diaper on his head" should expect to be interrogated in the investigation of terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and New York City.

"If I see someone (who) comes in that’s got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around the diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over," Cooksey said.




And here’s more cast-iron thinking from the same guy, courtesy of a Louisiana newspaper:



Cooksey acknowledged Tuesday that some people in turbans are American citizens, and not everyone wearing a turban is Arab, Muslim or a follower of Islam.

"No, but bin Laden does," he said.

"The leader of these groups, bin Laden, always wears a turban, and I think a lot of his followers — if they were not based here and trying to blend into our society — would be wearing them, too."




In other words, we should be on the lookout for people not wearing turbans and trying to blend in. That does it -- I’m turning myself in.

The good news? This guy won’t be in the House of Representatives for long. He’s running for the Senate.