Across the Great Divide

One List We Don't Need to Make.

If you're a successful, discreet, discerning, selectively single man, chances are you're finding it difficult to meet the right woman.

Minnesota generally ranks high on quality of life and all over the map on various business climate lists and state rankings. On perhaps the most vapid of these surveys, Minneapolis ranked near the bottom. In October, researchers asked of the 30 largest metro areas: "Would you want to live in this city or its surrounding metropolitan area or not want to live there?"

And guess what? Results largely sorted themselves out by geographical location and weather.

Yesterday, as I was flying home from the number-one city in that survey, I finished my book prematurely. As a result, I may have discovered yet another index on which my adopted city is a non-factor.

I'm just not sure of the reason.

Dipping into the in-flight magazine — its odes to the obvious in out-of-the way places interspersed with ads targeting people with too much disposable income — I found two full-page ads for services specializing in romantic contracts. (Although the search companies say they use executive recruiting techniques, I suppose it would be rude to call them booty hunters.) 

Selective Search boasts offices in 23 cities where it trolls for high class babes and executive males who can't find them. Kelleher & Associates has only 17 offices, but it is "the only privately owned matchmaking firm with offices across the country and in Europe." (No, none of those offices are in Russia, Thailand or Liberia.)

And, you guessed it — no offices in Minneapolis, St. Paul or even Wayzata. What's worse, two other last-cities-on-earth, Detroit and Cleveland, do have offices.

Are we really the dregs of desirability? Or does it mean we have fewer inept men and desperate women?

Number of the Day: Almost.

One of the things I'm doing on this trip to Colorado is researching suicides in the Colorado National Monument. When I arrived in town yesterday, the main story was about a man who drove off a cliff in the Colorado National Monument.

His van caught a rock ledge 120 feet below the edge, which kept it from falling another 180 feet to the bottom of a canyon, which would've meant certain death.

He survived.

This is the paranoid fear of flatlanders driving the road, but authorities believe the driver went over the cliff intentionally. Still, he was grateful to be saved.

It's a point often lost when gun proponents tangle with suicide prevention advocates and say, "if they didn't have guns, they'd just find another way."

Sometimes.

But this man stayed in the van and called 911.

Many attempts are the result of transient impulses. A suicide method that is ineffective or takes too long to carry out may result in a victim like this one, thanking his rescuers.

Guns don't leave the same margin for second acts.

Daily Sentinel photo. More here.

The Samaritan.

What kind of town doesn't have a grocery store?

What kind of man does something about it all by himself?

And what kind of people kill him?

Abe Farkas was a native of Czechoslovakia, served in Vietnam and met my brother- and sister-in-law in Chile. But he died in the United States of America.

End of an Error?

Translation error, typo or political commentary?

Feeling the Love.

The Strib website apparently has two different comment threads in response to my piece, based on where someone clicks into it. Some agreed but these guys didn't like it so much:

"What about social security and medicaid Charlie?"

"Also, if you hate people so much, just take yourself out. One less person using up resources."

"It always makes me laugh when I see someone chastising us for living in a way that they feel may jeapordize life on earth 300 years from now."

Meanwhile, I had a letter to the editor in the local paper that has already sparked an angry call from a retail small businessman who insists the Obama tax plan will imperil his business. He asked for the name of my accountant and I asked for him to send me his numbers that show a much bigger hit on his income than I suggested would happen. We both declined.

For today, though, I'm operating on the advice of not getting into arguments with mad conservatives.

Team of Mavericks.

In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.

— "Make-Believe Maverick," Rolling Stone

The McCain profile published last week is now online.

*****

My favorite online comment on the news coverage of Palin's visit:

We must end this Bi-partisan way of government, that and that alone is the main cause of the mass amounts of problems that is ruining the country.

So much easier to reach across the aisle when you've eliminated the other side.

Pitching Palin.

Here in Minnesota, we have experience with funny-talking, inexperienced governors with a greater affinity for publicity than for governing.

Jesse Ventura, it's reported, will host a new program for TruTV — formerly Court TV —  that positions him as a psuedo-detective who'll "investigate" modern-day conspiracies. After hearing the evidence from believers and skeptics, he'll pronounce judgment and move on to the next kookery. (Ventura is a noted Warren Commission and 911 doubter. Here he tells a group how the CIA has a permanently installed operative in the Minnesota state government.)

This is just one in a string of Ventura media ventures, real and mostly imagined. (He reportedly walked away with three years' pay after MSNBC dropped Jesse's political talk show, and his name has also been floated for a "Judge Judy" type court show, although Jesse Ventura, Conspiracy Detective, may be the evolution of this concept.)

Assuming Alaskans are going to look at their governor a bit more carefully next time around, Sarah Palin may want to start developing her next projects as Jesse did, while he was still in office.

In fact, I've started thinking about show concepts for her. And in an across the great divide spirit, I'm throwing them out there for free.

Shooting with the Stars. Palin joins up with co-host Wayne LaPierre to school various celebrities on using firearms. The guests work their way from a standard target range to a tactical training course. Those who make it to the next level hunt caribou and shoot wolves from aircraft. Barbra Streisand appears with Alec Baldwin (who reprises scenes from The Edge) in the blockbuster first episode. All season long, there are rumors that Palin will recreate for real her Photoshopped gun-toting bikini babe role.

The Junior College Bowl. From the campus of alma mater Matanuska-Susitna College, Palin will pose questions to teams from the nation's junior colleges from categories such as foreign travel, famous Supreme Court decisions and presidential doctrines.

The Flintstones Live. Dinosaurs and humans walk the earth together with an all-ex-governor cast! Palin stars as Wilma Flintstone, with Ventura as Fred and Haley Barbour as Barney. George W. Bush reminds viewers of his previous job in the role of Bam Bam.

Lost: The Reality Show. Tourists from backwater towns compete to see how far they can get in foreign countries, winning points for applying for a passport, changing planes in international airports, passing through customs and leaving their hotel. Winners must return with a photo of themselves and a foreign leader.

The Preggers Pageant. Contestants model evening wear, swim suits and do aerobics routines while viewers and studio audience try to guess which women are pregnant. In the breaks, Palin offers parenting tips.

Let's Make an Ebay Deal. Palin describes products offered for sale on Ebay and contestants try to guess final sale prices. She mixes it up by including scam transactions and goods that never received winning bids.

Who Would You Fire? The Mole meets the Apprentice. Each season, Palin gets a new personal staff and has to decide which ones are loyal. Baby sitters, chefs, security details, briefers, schedulers, spinners, librarians and assorted in-laws are at risk.

Feel free to pitch your own.

 

Splendid Isolation.

She's just like a Penguin in Bondage, boy
Oh yeah, Oh yeah, Oh . . .

– Frank Zappa

I may be a little too isolated out here, or else I should get a television. Until yesterday I had managed to miss the unfolding Max Mosley Nazi bondage scandal.

No links to the released video here. Not worth the trip, unless you're into unimaginative scripts, cheap costumes, unconvincing readings and poorly framed shots — surrounded by other lurid promos from Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. Less excitement than watching video of somebody else's kid fishing for sunnies on a foggy day — and not catching any.

No, what you had in mind would've been much better than this sad little episode.

Mosley was probably not thinking about reputation management when he commissioned this set piece, but had he consulted PR professionals, they might've counseled the son of notorious Nazi sympathizers to go with a Penguin theme and hope none of the hookers belonged to PETA.

Meanwhile, an honest-to-god bondage story has been playing in this country, again involving supposedly willing women. (No one has found the girl whose calls alerted authorities to abuse at the Texas ranch where sex with underage girls has been elevated to a sacrament. An expert on the church believes she's been spirited to another Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) community, after being caught making one of the calls for help.)

Whether ritualized, tribalized, sacramentalized or simply carried out in the privacy of one's home, the practice of subjugating women to male authority follows a disturbingly similar pattern.

Well, he didn’t start out with the fundy stuff right away—I suppose you could call him a charismatic, because he believed in speaking in tongues, all that crap. It had nothing to do with religion at first; he never talked about it, then he became possessive, wanting me to be around all the time (he had no qualms about living together BTW), wanting me to quit my job, wanting me to quit school, not see friends, break off with my family, worrying about “seeing me in heaven,” etc., and he crossed a physical line, so I walked out. That cost me.

Isolation is key, because it allows the controller to distort the victim's sense of what's normal and to cut off paths of aid and escape. FLDS has been able to perpetuate these practices on a large scale, thanks to the cloaking of the First Amendment, the isolating expanses of the rural West and a mythology that feeds off persecution.

"Maybe our legislators have cunningly laid a snare to catch the innocent just because they believe in an unpopular religion," Jessop continued. "So it was on the days of Jesus Christ. So it was in the days of Joseph Smith. So it was in the Days of Warren Jeffs."

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann almost had it right when she spoke out at an EdWatch National Education Conference when she denounced:

Personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement. And that's why this is so dangerous.

Of course, she was talking "the gay and lesbian lifestyle."

Colorado Weekend: Big Gun Coming to Town.

I'm not trying to set up Joel for our next gun discussion, really I'm not.

After all, Minneapolis has a ripe current case that provides a provocative example of the ambiguities surrounding self-defense claims.

I'm just showing that out here in Colorado, where the buffalo roam, the varieties of gun news have a different tenor right now.

(The 32 buffalo were shot near my great grandmother's former homestead, a place the columnist called "the middle of a lot of central Colorado nothingness," which must make Denver the center of everythingness.)

*****

Some exciting news from where I sit. Dick Cheney's coming next week to the far left part of the state — a better description might be "to the right of Utah" — for Senate fund raiser for Bob Schaffer — a good description would be to the right of Mark Kennedy... or maybe near the center of nothingness.

I'm wondering if would be worth 150 bucks to get close to Cheney and really confuse the hell out of anyone checking out my political donations.

*****
My brother-in-law had Tombstone on when I went over for dinner. Damn, they ran a tight ship back then. Oh, sure there were murders and all. But they kept all traces of horse manure off the main street day and night, and the dirt stayed as smooth as my living room floor. Clothes were always clean, women were hot and well kept, except for the one doing the laudanum, and the good guys were are all pretty sensitive for the 21st century, let alone the 19th.

Even when there was bloodshed and Kurt Russell had blood up to his elbows, he could caress his dying brother's forehead and never leave a print! The bar and rooms, including the jail? Immaculate. The consumptive Doc Holliday? Pale, yes, but otherwise, Paul Verlaine with six guns. Three bad cowboys went to Boot Hill in curved glass-topped coffins that looked better than any piece of furniture I've ever owned.

Doc Holliday died in Glenwood Springs, the town where I grew up, and making the little hike up the mountain to see his tombstone was like going to Mall of America. (It's what you did when you had visitors and didn't know what to do with them.)

My grandfather's ranch (not the Colorado side of the family) was near Tombstone in Cochise county. I don't recall any woods like they rode through, but maybe life was better around there in the frontier days, and we don't realize how bad we have it.

Why Do Religious Conservatives Kill Their Kids?

On June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children, who ranged in age from six months to seven years, in a bathtub in her home. Prior to this, she had manifested symptoms of depression with psychosis, which were exacerbated in her postpartum periods. She had been hospitalized four times and was catatonic and mute during one admission. In statements made following the crime, she indicated that she believed that she was a bad mother and that she had concerns that her children would not grow up properly secondary to her shortcomings. She noted that she killed them to save them from eternal damnation.
— Psychiatry MMC

Here's a topic for study by some enterprising PhD student: Do more religious conservatives than liberals murder their children?

(You can spare me the comments about abortion. I'm talking about filicide here — and even more, our stupid tendency to explain differences in complex behaviors based on a generalized political affiliation.)

I was thinking about this even before George Will's latest column about how conservatives are more generous than liberals, which I'll take up in a separate post.

In Wisconsin this week, the home schooled daughter of a fundamentalist family died because her diabetes was left untreated. The mother says they are not crazy, religious people who belong to any organized faith. She just writes for an end-of-days ministry website on the side and actively proselytizes other women. Her sister-in-law, who called the sheriff, seemed to think there was a problem.

The aunt: "My sister-in-law, she’s very religious, she believes in faith instead of doctors ... and she called my mother-in-law today ... and she explained to us that she believes her daughter’s in a coma now and she’s relying on faith. ..."

The dispatcher got more information from the caller and asked if an ambulance should be sent.

The aunt: "Please. I mean, she’s refusing. She’s gonna fight it so ... We’ve been trying to get her to take her to the hospital for a week, a few days now so."

In Iowa, an embezzling banker bludgeoned his wife and four kids to death before killing himself. In communications left behind, he indicated he believed his family was in heaven.

And, not to leave anyone out, a Muslim cab driver in Canada strangled his 16-year-old daughter because she refused to submit to his control and demands she wear traditional Muslim garb.

I've looked for a study that examines the role of political and religious beliefs of parents who murder their children. Haven't found one. But golly, the circumstantial evidence doesn't look good, does it? And it stands to reason, when you decide to kill your kids with a baseball bat, the idea you're sending them to heaven might lets you swing just a little more freely.

Anyone offended yet? No, I'm not calling all religious fundamentalists child murderers. But if there's a pattern of behavior that could lead to prevention, wouldn't it be good to understand it?

Psychiatric researchers may not see much merit in testing my only half-serious hypothesis. The research already indicates that filicide is a multidimensional crime, and like most human behavior, is not likely to reduce down to red state/blue state simplification.

But it's hard to shake that whenever I see news of a suicide bomber or a murderous parent, God shows up pretty frequently in the story. John Kerry bumper stickers, not so much.