Rush Limbaugh has jumped the shark

On his Friday 1.16.09 broadcast, grossly overpaid shock-jock Rush Limbaugh related how a publication asked him -- to mark Tuesday's inauguration -- for 400 words on his hopes for the Obama Administration.

His response:

"My hope, and please understand me when I say this. I disagree fervently with the people on our side of the aisle who have caved and who say, 'Well, I hope he succeeds. We've got to give him a chance.' Why? They didn't give Bush a chance in 2000. Before he was inaugurated, the search-and-destroy mission had begun. I'm not talking about search-and-destroy, but I've been listening to Barack Obama for a year-and-a-half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don't want them to succeed.

"If I wanted Obama to succeed, I'd be happy the Republicans have laid down. And I would be encouraging Republicans to lay down and support him. Look, what he's talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the U.S. government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don't want this to work. So I'm thinking of replying to the guy, 'Okay, I'll send you a response, but I don't need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails.' (interruption) What are you laughing at? See, here's the point. Everybody thinks it's outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, 'Oh, you can't do that.' Why not? Why is it any different, what's new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what's gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don't care what the drive-by story is. I would be honored if the drive-by media headlined me all day long: 'Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.' Somebody's gotta say it."

As Glinda, the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz, stated: "You have no power here. Be gone, before somebody drops a house on you."

Archbishop of Canterbury's New Year's Message

It's always a relief to have a bit of space after the busyness of Christmas to relax at home and mull over the past 12 months and the hopes and possibilities of the year ahead. The prospect of this coming year, though, is one that produces a lot of anxiety and insecurity for countless people. There are fears about disappearing savings, lost jobs, house repossessions and worse. While the headlines are often about the big figures, it's the human cost that makes it real for us.

A little before Christmas I visited a new academy in Scunthorpe named after St. Lawrence. Lawrence was a Christian minister in Rome in the days when you could be arrested and executed for being a Christian, nineteen hundred years ago or so.

When he was arrested, he was told to collect all the treasures of the Church to be given up to the courts. He got together all the homeless, the orphans and the hungry that the Church looked after in the city, and presented them to his judges, saying, 'These are the Church's treasures.'

Like any really good school, St. Lawrence's treats its children as treasures. In the last few months we've had to think a lot about wealth and security and about where our 'treasure' is.

But it set me thinking - what would our life be like if we really believed that our wealth, our treasure, was our fellow-human beings? Religious faith points to a God who takes most seriously and values most extravagantly the people who often look least productive or successful- as if none of us could really be said to be doing well unless these people were secure.

And as we look around in our own country as well as worldwide, this should trigger some hard questions – whether we think of child soldiers in Africa or street children in Latin America, or of children in our midst here who are damaged by poverty, family instability and abuse, street violence and so much else. Children need to be taken seriously, not just as tomorrow's adults but as fellow-inhabitants of the globe today, growing human beings whom we approach with respect and patience and from whom we ought to learn.

One of the most damning things you could say about any society is that it's failing its children. That's why I was really encouraged recently to be invited to open a project in Springfield in Birmingham - a church-based initiative supporting children and their parents from across the whole community. Here the church community took the brave decision to open up their church building for work with local families and to seek funding for further buildings and resources from the local authority. What's more, they've worked throughout in close collaboration with the local mosque and have a joint program with them for young people. There's a community with its eye unmistakably on its real treasure.

So what about a New Year in which we try and ask consistently about our own personal decisions and about public polices, national and international, 'Does this feel like something that looks after our real treasure, something that keeps our real wealth safe - the lives and welfare of the youngest and most vulnerable?'

Jesus said where our treasure is, that's where our hearts will be. Our hearts will be in a very bad way if they're focused only on the state of our finances. They'll be healthy if they are capable of turning outwards, looking at the real treasure that is our fellow human beings. A very happy and blessed New Year to you.

If it's such a magnificent day why spoil it for the rabbits?

Snoopy is one of my heroes, and Linus. I'm not so much a Charlie Brown, I don't think. Definitely not a Lucy, nor a Schroeder. My close friends might offer other observations.

I recently had the opportunity to see my friend, Jason, portray Snoopy in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, for the second time in two years. No mistaking, that boy is Snoopy personified. While I never saw the revival show with Roger Bart, and have only heard the cast album, I still prefer Jason. 

Charles Schulz imbued his characters with a lot of wisdom over the 50 years they originally appeared in newspapers around the world. The original strip was called "L'il Folks," but when offered to United Features Syndicate the name was changed to "Peanuts," a name vehemently disliked by Schulz: "It's totally ridiculous, has no meaning, is simply confusing, and has no dignity—and I think my humor has dignity."

The comic strips ran the gamut of subject matter, from religion to social commentary, and tackled many once-taboo ideas for a daily or Sunday comic strip. The words that came out of the mouths of the characters were adult words and ideas, but they were delivered by pint-sized actors, which made them all the more memorable.

Some of the wisdom:

• Charlie Brown: "Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Why me?' Then a voice answers, 'Nothing personal... your name just happened to come up.'"
• Sally Brown: "I would like to say I enjoyed this first day at school. I realize the teachers have put in a lot of effort, and a host of administrators have worked hard to develop our current scholastic program. The PTA has also done its share as have the school custodians. Therefore, I would like very much to say I enjoyed this first day at school. But I didn't!"
• Lucy van Pelt: "All I need is a little love now and then, but some chocolate will do for now."
• Linus van Pelt: "There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin."
• Rerun van Pelt: "Riding around all day on the back of your mom's bicycle gives you plenty of time to think...it gives you time to think about people and about life...and about what would happen if we ran into a tree!"
• Schroeder: (To Lucy) "Who cares about money?! This is ART, you blockhead! This is great music I'm playing, and playing great music is an art! Do you hear me? An art! (pounding on piano) Art! Art! Art! Art!"
• Peppermint Patty: "Yes, ma'am, a report on the French Revolution. Two thousand words? Yes, ma'am. Please allow four to six weeks for delivery."
• Marcie: (To Peppermint Patty) "You can't play Brahms on a canoe paddle, Sir."
• Frieda: "People hate cats. People hate people who own cats. And people especially hate people with naturally curly hair who own cats."
• Pig-Pen: "I have affixed to me the dust and dirt of countless ages...who am I to disturb history?"
• Violet Gray: "I'll be glad when I can grow up and move out of this neighborhood. I need to see new places, and meet new people. Everyone around here bores me."
• Patty: "It's a lot more fun not inviting people than it is inviting them."
• Shermy: (To Charlie Brown) "I'm the kind who needs to win now and then. With you, it's different. I think you get sort of a neurotic pleasure out of losing all the time."

So, in the writing of this post, I did a lot of reading up on Charles Schulz and Peanuts. One of the more interesting analyses I came across was written by life coach Jim Allen. 

Here are three other analyses, from a decidedly religious vein:

• Dennis Hoover's assessment of the media disconnect on religion and faith in its eulogies of Charles Schulz
• A sermon delivered at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester shortly after Charles Schulz' death; and
• Bob's Comics Reviews

Originally this post was to be a commentary on why should I spoil a perfectly good day by getting out of bed. It meandered, obviously.

It's been almost nine years since the death of Charles Schulz, but his creation lives on.

Here is his final daily strip and his final Sunday strip, published the day after his death from colon cancer in 2000.

I best like what Italian author Umberto Eco said of the Peanuts gang: "These children affect us because in a certain sense they are monsters; they are the monstrous infantile reductions of all the neuroses of a modern citizen of the industrial civilization."

Reading and reflecting back on Charles Schulz' gift to the world has made me feel a bit better, so I think I shall now get out of bed.

(I reference aaugh.com for more complete information on Peanuts and the works of Charles Schulz.)

Resolutions? We ain't got no resolutions. We don't need no resolutions! I don't have to show you any stinkin' resolutions!

Because it seems to be the thing to do this time of year, I offer herewith my resolutions for the new year:

1. Um

2. Uh

3. @!%!**#~@#!!

Eh, talk to me in July!

(Don't ever Google "curse words in comic strips." Don't. Not. At All.)

What Shall I Do With Today?

The turn of the year has given me a brand new page on which to write. What shall I write? At this moment, 734am, on the first morning of the first day of the new year, I do not yet know. I awake in my bed, somewhat refreshed, somewhat sleepy. I did not party the night away, though I had invitations to three parties. I opted to remain in. As I told friends, I would be one less idiot out on the streets. That was explanation enough for me.

As for the turn of the year, I find myself both reflective and filled with melancholy. I do not yet possess the exuberance to say: I greet the new year with anticipation. I gladly bid adieu to the year just passed. Borrowing from Queen Elizabeth's Christmas message of 1992, I will paraphrase: 2008 "is not a year I shall look back on with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an annus horribilis."

As the year dawns, I find myself: 

• rich in friends but not rich in funds
  
• older but not necessarily wiser
• enveloped by a sense of regret about many things (academic, personal, profesional)
• faced with the prospect of dwindling resources on which to rely
• forced to bid farewell to friends who have entered the ranks of immortality
• drowning in the detritus of life to which I should have bade farewell years ago
• aching to hear the voice of my mother in the kitchen of our old house as she busily prepares the New Year's meal that would include black-eyed peas and cornbread
• confronted with changes I do not welcome and did not order
• evermore suspect that God has forgotten about me
• single, and heart-heavy, with no prospects
• precariously balanced on a precipice with one yawning abyss of "screwed up" and another yawning abyss of "fucked up" rising on either side
• drifting without purpose and unable to do anything but procrastinate
• suddenly in need of a cup of coffee and a happy movie

I am one who is constantly in need of being surrounded by people so that I do not feel so alone, when, in fact, I can honestly feel alone in a crowd.

I am one who tends purposely puts others first before myself in peril of my own wants, needs and desires.

I am one who craves the limelight, but I have no talents to force its beam in my direction.

I am one more individual who takes up space on this orbiting sphere and wonders what his purpose in life really is.

I'm not quite sure what my purpose in writing this was, except perhaps to fill a page with words in some sort of quest to figure things out.

I need me to kick me in the ass to gear up and get things done. Alas, my ass-kicking mechanism seems permanently disabled either through disuse or ennui.

I guess this has been my wallow in self-pity, an exercise that rarely bodes well for any who attempt it.

I will close with a quote from a Leslie Bricusse song, "What Shall I Do With Today," introduced by Petula Clark in the rarely-seen 1969 MGM movie musical, Goodbye Mr. Chips: "Today is mine. What shall I do with it? Throw it away? That's what I do with it, nine times out of 10."

What will this year bring for/to me? I know not. 

Will I rise up out of this? I haven't failed to do so yet. But for the moment, I will remain in this morass. It's warm here.

I am curious to see how I react to this read a year from now as another new year begins.

What shall I do with today? Probably forget about my own problems and try and help someone else.