My Short Story Will Be Published In New Anthology

Publisher, editor and writer C.C. Bye came to me with an offer I could not resist. He told me, "I want to publish a book that's off-beat, wild, maybe a little dangerous. Give me a short story that fits this description." So I did. "The Barefoot Hero" is my take on what Vietnam did to my generation, the lost generation of the '60s, if you will. The publishers loved it, and have readied it and the other stories for a November release. The front and back cover design is posted here.

"Writers On The Wrong Side Of The Road" will feature edgy, unconventional offerings of sci-fi, erotica, historical fiction, and more. More details to follow

A Modest Proposal To Stop Gulf Oil Leak

I've got a great idea to stop the BP Gulf Oil Leak--have Liz Cheney wrap her big mouth around it and see how much she can swallow. She's all over TV blowing off her big trap uselessly (trying to blame Obama for the spill), her family loves oil, and her father helped create the climate of Halliburton fraud and incompetence which led to the leak. Those responsible for the leak should fix it, right?

What happened to the good old days when ex-vice presidents and their families, especially hated ones, walked off into the sunset and were never heard from again? I wish Dick and his evil offspring would just disappear. But they've become corporate media darlings. Liz Cheney was on ABC's Sunday morning show (I don't even remember the name of this talking dead show...I just know it's imbued with George Will's right-wing hogwash) trying to blame Obama for the oil spill. This takes some outrageous audacity, considering it was Halliburton's faulty cementing of the pipe that caused the whole damn thing. At least Ariana Huffington ripped Liz a new one. She said, "This is just a continuation of the Bush/Cheney doctrine of allowing Halliburton to defraud American taxpayers out of hundreds of billions of dollars with incompetent, overpriced, and deadly work." Halliburton has made a fortune off the Iraq war and killed many soldiers with faulty labor. Some were fried while taking showers in quarters with faulty wiring made by Halliburton.

Yet Liz Cheney denied it all on national TV, and I'm sure the idiot right was appeased. As I watched her jack her fascist jaws (notice, she has the eyes of a snake...dead and soulless...just like Palin), I began to imagine what she would have done in previous times. Can't you just picture her screaming "Macht shnell, macht shnell!!" in 1940s Germany, as she herded prisoners into Dachau showers (made by Halliburton). Or blocking James Meredith's way as he tried to enter Mississippi U. in the '60s? Or shouting down women's equality marchers in the '70s? Or killing abortion doctors in the '90s?

America will be a better place when we are finally done with the Cheney tribe and its hateful, rapacious ways.

Opening Day Memories

Spring begins for me on the opening day of the baseball season. Warm winds are blowing across the plains today, and I am flooded with rich memories of Cardinal opening days.

In the early sixties I would rush home from school, flick on the large radio in my parents' bedroom, and hear the end of the opening game. I have always associated Harry Caray's voice (yes, Cubs fans he broadcasted the Cardinals games then) with the hope and heartbreak that comes with each new season. 1961 remains vivid for how the game ended. Daryl Spencer hit a long home run off Warren Spahn to beat the Milwaukee Braves in extra innings. Six days later the term Bay of Pigs became a topic of conversation in our house and on TV. I thought they were discussing the strange sounds farm animals make.

On a cold, gray day in 1965 the Cardinals and Cubs played to a 10-10 tie on opening day. The game was called because it was too dark to continue. St. Louis scored a run in the top of the eleventh to take the lead, but knuckleball reliever Barney Schultz blew it in the bottom of the eleventh. LBJ started sending ground troops to Vietnam the same year.

Back home from the Army in 1975, and high on an illegal substance, I attended opening day at Busch Stadium. I don't remember much, except the Cardinals lost to the Expos and I heckled our washed-up shortstop Eddie Brinkman. 23 days later, Saigon fell, and the war in Vietnam ended.

On April 11, 1981, a rainy Saturday in St. Louis, the Phillies beat the Cards to begin Whitey Herzog's first full year as manager. The players' strike shortened that year, and, though they had the best cumulative record in the National League, the Cardinals were excluded from the playoffs by a goofy split season playoff format. My daughter, born the previous autumn on a football Saturday, turned six months old in April 1981. We lived in a second-story shotgun flat in south St. Louis; not much of an apartment, but I remember it fondly now.

On a warm Easter Sunday in 1994, Ray Lankford lined a home run, which never got more than 10 feet off the ground, over the center-field wall at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. The Cards won that night, but their season was doomed. And so was their manager, Joe Torre.

Pope's Publicist Pisses People Off

VATICAN CITY – At a solemn Good Friday service, Pope Benedict XVI's personal preacher likened the tide of allegations that the pontiff has covered up sex abuse cases to the "more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism." But within hours, facing a storm of criticism at the comparison, the Vatican felt it necessary to distance the pope from the preacher's remarks.

Both Jewish and victims' groups responded that it was inappropriate to compare the discomfort being experienced by the church leadership in the sex abuse scandal to the violence that culminated in the Holocaust. The Vatican has been on the defensive in recent days, saying the church has been singled out and collectively stereotyped for the problem of pedophilia, which it says is a society-wide issue.

This was the AP story that ran tonight after the Pope's "preacher" tried to turn Catholic pedophile-priests into victims/martyrs. First of all, what the fuck is a "personal preacher"? Is that the Pope's PR agent? And who is this Jewish friend of his? It sounds like this letter was made up by the PR agent in a desperate attempt to deflect blame onto the real victims--abused children and their families.

These "men of God" are showing their true colors. They are vainglorious, clueless, and callous. Descendants of Peter who care only about covering their asses, trying to spin the outing of child rapists into a witch hunt. What a bunch of scoundrels. I hope the story never dies, until the Church is forced to clean its own house. The Pope is a head of state (Vatican City is its own country), but once he leaves his palace he can be arrested like a common criminal for being an accomplice to rape. This would never happen, but wouldn't it be great to see Ratzenberg, ex-Hitler youth, doing the perp walk.

Mary and Jack, my apologies, but the pious hypocrisy makes me want to hurl.

Right-Wing Hate, Threats, Violence On The Rise

In the wake of passage of health-care reform, the loony right is becoming even more dangerous than usual. They are throwing bricks through the windows of Democratic offices; they are praying for the death of the President; they are even threatening to kill children.

No, these are not Minutemen hiding in some survivalist Idaho bunker. These are not Klansmen burning crosses in Mississippi. These are not neo-Nazis marching in Skokie. These are your neighbors, your pastors, your elected representatives.

Bricks have been thrown through the windows of local Democratic headquarters in Ohio and Kansas. Glass has been shattered at the offices of Louis Slaughter (D-NY) in Niagara Falls and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) in Tucson. A note was left behind by a vandal at another site. It referenced Barry Goldwater's, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

A fundamentalist California preacher named Wiley Drake urged his flock to pray for the death of all congressmen who voted for the health-care reform bill. (Now that's a Christian attitude!) Racist and homophobic slurs were hurled at prominent Democrats Barney Frank and John Lewis.

Are Republican leaders encouraging cooler heads to prevail? No, they are instigating the hate. Sarah Palin cries, "Don't retreat; reload." Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) shouts "Baby Killer!" at Bart Stupak (D-MI) on the House floor.

And it's going to get worse, if you listen to the extremist rhetoric of the fringe right. Like whiny children who can't accept defeat, Republicans are still trying to derail health care with parliamentary technicalities and whacky amendments. Apparently they believe in democracy only when it works for them.

America is a scary place now, and I worry for the safety of anyone on the left who speaks his or her mind in public. We are like the Jews of Germany in the 1930s, huddled in our homes hoping that fascists don't throw bricks through our windows or haul us off to concentration camps. They are armed, and we are not. And they have Goebbels Limbaugh spewing hate on the radio all day, inciting the worst of the lot to take action.

Unlike the German Jews, however, I won't go quietly. In my little corner of the Midwest, I am still loudly resisting the bastards, and I will not stop. See my previous post, entitled "The GOP (Gathering Of Primitives) At My Door," for tips on how to deal with these mindless fanatics. Remember the words of Huey Long, "Fascism will come to America, but they will call it democracy. But only if we let it happen."

The Catholic Left: Forced Underground In The Heartland

We hear a lot about the radical right-wing Catholic anti-abortionists. They are the living expression of official Church dogma. But did you also know that the Catholic Church is anti-war and anti-death penalty. There are no public expressions of this dogma. Why? Part of the reason is that the right wing has taken over the Catholic Church, and left-wing Catholics have been bullied into submission. Not only do leftists not have a voice in the Church, they have been forced underground. What do I mean? Here in southern Illinois, the eastern wing of the greater St. Louis archdiocese (no small lot, Catholics make up about half of the area's seven million citizens), anti-war, pro-choice, humanist Catholics have been banned from gathering on church properties. I learned this from a friend named Mary, who is constantly trying to re-convert me. I am a Jesuit-educated, anti-Catholic, secular-progressive heretic, and she still clings to the old faith even though, like all disciples, she is a living contradiction.

Anyway, we had a conversation yesterday which went something like this:

ME: Whatever happened to the left-wing voice of the Church...you know the humanist movement that thrived after the proclamations of Vatican II?

MARY: I don't know. We used to meet in small groups in the basement of St. Clare's. But they banned the meetings a few years ago when they found out we were pro-choice.

ME: You mean they kicked you off church property?

MARY: Yeah, we started meeting in private homes, but they found out about that too and the priests started pressuring us to decease. We tried gathering at undisclosed locations, but it just became too much of a hassle.

ME: It's like Germany in the 1930s. Why do you want to remain a member of St. Goebbels' parish?

MARY: I still believe...I still have faith.

ME: Faith in what? That Father Pedophile will be tried, convicted and defrocked after raping his next 10-year-old? That's why the Church is anti-death penalty...its afraid priests will be fried for diddling altar boys.

(Note: Mary knows me and just shrugs and laughs at my irreverence.)

MARY: I believe we all have spirits that will live on beyond us.

ME: What the fuck does that have to do with organized fascism...err...religion?

MARY: We were both raised in the same traditions. You chose to fall away. I still believe in a just and loving God.

ME: I did not choose to fall away. The Jesuits made it perfectly clear to my young mind that intellect and faith are at odds with one another. And that there is no empirical evidence for the existence of God. You either leap the abyss from disbelief to belief...or you don't. But it has nothing to do with reason.

MARY: That's why when I get to heaven I'll have to pray for your soul to join me there.

ME: I don't think the big fella wants me there. I'll have too many damn questions for him.

MARY: Like what?

ME: Like why did He allow war, pestilence and evil to thrive...and that's just Dick Cheney.

MARY: You'll have all the answers.

ME: I don't think so. The right wingers will take over heaven, and we won't be allowed to hold our left-wing meetings there either.

MARY: You're a hopeless case.

ME: I know, but these are hard times. And in hard times, we left wingers cling to our First Amendment and our gun bans.

Study Shows Liberals Are Smarter Than Conservatives

It's long been my contention that right-wingers are right-wingers for one or more of these reasons: fear, ignorance of the facts, and just good old-fashioned stupidity. The most radical ones suffer from all three maladies. Now there is scientific proof to back up my suspicions. According to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch column written by Kevin Horrigan, Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, a social psychologist, concludes that "...young adults who described themselves as 'not at all religious' and 'very liberal' politically had adolescent IQ scores that averaged 11 points higher than the young adults who described themselves as 'very conservative' and 'very religious'...11 points is significant, because liberalism (defined as caring about large groups of people you'll never meet) is a very new thing for humans."

Kanazawa's contention is, then, that conservatives are much less evolved than liberals. Conservatives, like their neanderthal ancestors, care only about themselves and like individuals. It's a survival instinct that manifests itself in lower forms of species. For right-wingers, the needs of others are irrelevant. They care nothing for the greater good. Their myopic sensibilities extend to their own kind and no one else.

We see the effects across the sociocultural and political spectrum. Republicans, 99% white, are vehemently opposed to things which would benefit those not of their tribe, i.e., blacks, Latinos, Muslims, etc. Thus, reasonable policies that address the greater good--universal health care, affirmative action, civil liberties, social welfare programs, access to abortion, brotherhood, equal rights, world peace--have always and will always be despised by conservatives.

What can be done about it? The obvious answer is to elect liberals. However, we all know this is not feasible in Republican strongholds. We are still afflicted by millions upon millions of those who have not sufficiently advanced on the evolutionary scale. I can just hear the right screaming at me, "Evolution is a myth. We were created by God." My response? Then pay heed to your Good Book. God said, "What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?"

We liberals must try to inform and educate when confronted by a lower form of life.