By now you’ve heard, and have probably received the emails, about the religious right’s newest hobbyhorse, the movie version of The Golden Compass opening this weekend.

Personally, I think the design of the thing looks like the price of admission. I intend, if nothing else, just to luxuriate in the subcreation. But I do hope it’s a good flick.

Our right-wing friends have no such concerns. As bloggers smarter than I have pointed out, they cannot conceive of art without a political purpose. (And yes, I know there are left-wing nutjobs the same way.) Every offering must be judged as to whether it will support their worldview or not. The idea that an alternate or even opposing viewpoint might have some artistic soundness or be a viable means of enlightenment never enters their brains.

Or how about this: The Golden Compass might have been written by what the right-wing Christianists are describing as a “devout” atheist, a neat dialectical position, to be sure, but what if it were a tremendously well-done work of fiction? Or film? What if it were a rollicking good time?

Ah, there’s the danger, you see. If children enjoy this movie — follow the argument closely, it tends to dissolve — then they will ask their parents for the book, and then… they’ll read it! And if they read it, they would be completely unaware that Philip Pullman is leading them down the path to eternal damnation, because in the third book, not in this one, you see, but in the third book, he reveals that the conflict the whole time is over control of the universe, because, again, pay attention here, the God of his particular and particularly fictional set of parallel worlds is, besides being tangible and comprehensible, worn out, a senile nothing. Heaven and the saints preserve us from Norsemen and science fiction conceits!

Yes, I understand they fear the children will be suckered in by the metaphor. I also understand they fear that the children will have their brains cracked open by art and too much light will flood in. I understand completely that their secret fear is that their children’s faith, and their own, for that matter, cannot withstand a different idea.

So, the newest email to make the rounds calls for a boycott, and, isn’t this just so subversive?, silent:

The weekend of December 7, 2007, we are encouraging all Christians to boycott your all movies at your local theatre. We are asking that for the entire weekend (Dec. 7-9), you not attend, rent, or purchase any movies. Hollywood understands one thing for sure: “If it makes money, we’ll do it”.

We, as a body of believers, can show Hollywood that although we are quiet, we still have strong voice. My hope is that we will let the silence in the theatres be deafening to the producers, actors, sponsors, and supporters of movies like “The Golden Compass.”

Oh, why not? Full speed ahead, I say.

Here’s what I predict, though: nothing will happen. On Monday, in the Times, I’ll read that Golden Compass topped the box office. The simple fact is that this subculture is actually very small, if loud and nasty. They haven’t caught on yet, but they never were winning the “culture wars.” There are no culture wars, there are only 21st-century Christianists who really really wish there were a Colosseum with lions, and since there’s not one, they project its façade every time they can and hope we’ll all think it’s real.

I had a week’s worth of New York Times waiting for me when I got back from Munich. I can’t leave this nation alone for a minute!

Herewith are a couple of quick rants:

It seems we are considering a new way of achieving Eternal Lasting Victory Over Evil™ in the Near East, as we used to call it. We’re thinking of giving arms to that sea of troubles (i.e., the tribal factions in Afghanistan and Pakistan) and by letting them oppose the Taliban and Al Qaeda, end them.

Well, it’s never worked before, arming people who don’t like us but who appear to hate some of the same people we do, other than help create Al Qaeda in the first place, so why not see if it might not help this time?

In a really neat little story, the Belgian Federal Police have hired a handful of blind detectives. The reasoning was that their more acute hearing would prove useful in surveillance and in analyzing recordings, and so it has proved. The detective featured in the article, one Mr. Van Loo, is a neat guy and has chalked up several anti-terrorism cases. He’s able, when listening to surveillance tapes, for example, to tell where the person is calling from by listening to the ambient sounds and echoes on the tape.

I suppose our country could try hiring blind detectives to help with the Eternal War on Terror™, as long as they weren’t gay.

India has started requiring tourists to pay admission fees to national monuments like the Taj Mahal in rupees. They used to accept dollars, but they found they were losing money as the dollar slid more than 12% against the frigging rupee! What can one say?

In the Eternal War Against Brown People Who Mow Our Lawns™, we were successful in tracking down the arch-criminal Saída Umanzor, a maid. We quickly imprisoned her and were able to snatch her three children at the same time, including her nine-month-old daughter, who adhered to her communist/Marxist/socialist/liberal background and immediately refused to eat for three days. Something about being breast-fed and refusing a bottle or something. The arrogant infant also tried to hide behind her status as a natural-born citizen.

According to the Times:

Groups advocating curbs on immigration say that children of illegal immigrants cannot be spared the consequences of their parents’ legal violations just because they are American citizens (…or children! , Ed.)

“Children are not human shields,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Hear, hear, Mr. Mehlman. Next thing you know, that damned baby is going to be squalling about equal justice for all. But let her; she and her whole family were deported later this week. Suck on that, brown underaged American citizen communist!

Tomorrow, Al Gore returns to the White House. It’s sort of embarrassing, really. It seems the man who won the 2000 popular vote also won the Nobel Peace Prize, and since the White House has always honored American laureates, it couldn’t find a way to back out this year just because Mr. Gore has been honored and vindicated every which way to Sunday. However, Dear Leader’s administration has overcome tougher realities than this one, so I look for the Eternal Terror Alert Level™ to be raised to PURPLE by tomorrow afternoon.

The Democrats continue to pass funding for Bush’s Eternal Iraqi Occupation™, and Bush continues to block it via his Congressional toadies and lickspittles like, oh, every one of Georgia’s delegation. Must be one of those Washington things.

Your president told reporters this week that Mukasey should be approved quickly by Congress, because “he’s plenty qualified to be attorney general.” And yes, he said it in exactly whatever Bush-parody accent you want to deliver it in. “Plenty qualified.” He said it in a first-ever, for him, press briefing in the Oval Office. He got the idea after seeing a photo of Truman doing the same thing. Pretty dang cool, huh? Maybe we should show him some photos of Nixon ending the war in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Bush’s BFF Musharraf has all but declared martial law in Pakistan. That’s over there next to Afghanistan. Where Osama bin Laden is hiding. In the northwest regions so lawless that they’re simply referred to as the tribal “areas.” This is the country that already has nuclear weapons and has had them for some time.

Musharraf says he’s shut down the courts and the mass media out of security concerns. (He has left the Parliament functioning for the time being.) Dana Perino, White House press spokesperson, was asked about the situation.

Q: Is it ever reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism?

MS. PERINO: In our opinion, no.

Mercy. Didn’t that set off alarms in the press room? I mean, when the irony meter blows a fuse, doesn’t that set off an alarm somewhere? I guess not.

In Lahore, a name which I’ve always tittered over, not unlike the word titter, now that I think about it, the main protesters against Musharraf’s power grab are the lawyers.

Yes, lawyers. There’s something odd about the photo on the cover of the Times, a man in a suit and tie hurling a tear-gas canister back at the police. There’s something odd about all the photos of these black-besuited barristers taking to the streets. There’s something awfully Monty Pythonesque about it.

Including the following scene: Two new judges who had taken the oath of office under the emergency rule were forced to leave the courtroom by hundreds of angry lawyers shouting, “You’ve taken an unconstitutional oath; if you don’t go we will throw eggs at you.” Apparently they left.

So, lawyers, eggs, and support for the Constitution. I’m in. Anyone else?

If you haven’t read this, do so.

I want someone publicly executed. (And I have a little list.)

I haven’t written a lot about our political situation because I might have to start actually ranting. Let’s face it, Microsoft’s crimes against humanity are nothing, nothing, compared to the current administration’s. For one thing, the current administration’s crimes are actual crimes that could be tried in The Hague with some degree of success, not to mention the intriguing daydream of public execution. And I’m not even talking about the high crimes and misdemeanors that could be laid at their impeachable door.

Their whole mise-en-scene these days involves staying in Iraq. Something blows up and kills people: it means we need to stay. Something goes moderately well (only 150 people died instead of 155): it means we need to stay. The insurgency is swelling: we need to stay. The corrupt sheikhs of Anbar have been paid off to turn against the insurgency: we need to stay.

At no point does anyone in power, either the scumbags who got us into this hellish situation nor the Loyal Opposition, say, “You know what? I think it’s been one six months too many. What say we cut our losses and bring our army home?”

Will Iraq collapse if we come home? As compared to, say, what it’s doing right now? Just today, the “progress” on the sharing of oil revenues went south. Oops, there went the political progress we’ve spent how many lives and how many billions of dollars on?

Some say Bush should call for new elections. Parse that one for a moment. Bush should jerk the rug out from under the duly elected (we all saw the purple fingers, right?) government of the country we’re occupying? That should set well with the insurgency. George W. Bush cannot even run this government, much less the non-government of al-Maliki.

Okay, I’ll stop there, or I will go mad.

What prompted all this, besides the recent barrage of lies and half-truths, was a brief into today’s Times about Russia:

The governor of a central province told employers to contribute to a Kremlin campaign to boost the birthrate by giving couples the day off to have sex… This is the third year the Ulyanovsk region, famous as the birthplace of Lenin, has dedicated a day to encouraging couples to produce more babies. (NYT, 9/13/07, A6)

I mean, don’t you wish our leadership was as innocuously inept?

If I were Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), arrested for soliciting sex in a men’s room, I don’t think I’d open my press conference with the words, “Thank you all for coming out today.”

But then that’s just me. Your mileage may vary.

And yes, I am truly enjoying the conservative nutjobs in this current “I’m a fiddler crab!” mode. I do hope they can keep it up. And I bet they can.

In other news, I’m a little behind on “Sir Christémas,” since I spent last night getting 144 balloons inflated, organized, and installed on my mother’s front yard so that when she awoke this morning on her 75th birthday, the whole neighborhood could see.

And this morning, when I might have done a little catching up, I spent racing Sam to the emergency room after he was chewed up by wandering dogs at 5:00 am. He seems to be OK: some puncture wounds on his butt which require stitches (and thus an expensive hospital stay), but otherwise by the time we left, he was ready to come home, he said.

So maybe I can knock out my GHP report very quickly this afternoon and then work on the music tonight.

Is it just me, or is George W. Bush just imploding?

What would possess any sane politician to hand the nation a Vietnam/Iraq analogy on a sliver platter? Especially when the point of the analogy is that we should have stayed in Vietnam?? Oh. My. God.

And then to use Arlen Pyle from Graham Greene’s The Quiet American as a symbol of all that was upright and virtuous about our involvement there when clearly Pyle was a metaphor for American stupidity/cupidity that got us stuck in that god-damned dead end quagmire hellhole in the first place?? Do his speechwriters hate him??

Or do they just think that the American public is that %^&*ing stupid???

Everything I’ve been reading suggests that our commentariat is just gobsmacked. What does one say in response to a president who has obviously lost all strategerical trains of thought?

Yes, I know it looks as if I’ve abandoned the blog. But I haven’t done anything for the last two weeks because the air conditioner in my attic study was broken and I couldn’t work on anything major. A laptop actually on one’s lap in the living room is not quite conducive to extended bouts of creativity. Anyway, I should be back on schedule this week, and then, my faithful readers, you’ll have something to read.

In the meantime, there’s this purely American phenomenon to distract you. Yesterday, my family and I were out shopping, and in the parking lot of Target was a jeep-like vehicle. From its tow thingie were dangling two very large and very red bulbous shapes.

What is that, my lovely and sometimes naive wife wondered.

Grayson and I clued her in: it’s a scrotum. Testicles. Balls.

Ew, she said.

Maybe if I had an iPhone I would remember that I am equipped to snap a photograph on the spot, but since I bought my phone to be just a phone until I get an iPhone next year, I keep forgetting that I can whip that sucker out and document the atrocities. So there’s no picture of this marvel. However, I feel sure my faithful readers will have no problem at all envisioning this. (And if you’re a liar and say you can’t quite see it, look here.)

But that was not enough. Above this dude’s testicular display, on the rear window, was a very large decal: Calvin, kneeling in prayer before the cross, with the statement, “Every knee shall bow,” in Old English text, of course.

Well.

Is it just me, or is there a disjunct between those two cultural signifiers?

Let me rephrase that: Shouldn’t there be a disjunct between those two cultural signifiers? Because, unfortunately, there’s not.

Observe:

Or this:

This is from a t-shirt sold by Operation Straight Up Tour, a group officially promoted by the Pentagon; it is an “evangelical entertainment troupe that actively proselytizes among active-duty members of the US military.” (quote from Max Blumenthal, writing in The Nation)

Shall we take care of the snickering first? Such is my readership that I think I don’t have to point out the Tom of Finland [NSFW] allusions in this Straight Up (what were they thinking?) merchandise. Is it possible, how is it possible, that our young men in uniform can look at this shirt and think, “Wow! That’s tough!” and not “I don’t know, Sarge, that looks a little homoerotic to me…”? [If I were very evil, I could continue with: Sarge says, “Hm. Take off your shirt and sit on my face and let’s see.”]

Enough of that. No, I said, enough of that. Back to our main point, which is that if I learned anything in Sunday School at First Baptist, it was that the main idea of the Christ’s teachings was that we didn’t beat up the other guys. Moreover, if they offered to whip us, we should let them. No, really, that’s what he said. Not a lot of wiggle room there.

So who are these people with Jesus Trucks and queer bodybuilders and badass attitudes? Besides Republican voters, I mean. Really, if one owns a t-shirt that says “Because J.C. lives in me,” should one be threatening the rest of the populace with violence? Or imprecatory prayer?

Is this testosterone-addled abomination now what Christianity has become?