This social season led
us out a second night in a row, this time to the annual Bill of Rights Dinner for the ACLU in New
Mexico, for whom I am the webmaster.
A few hundred folks gathered in a large room at the Hotel Albuquerque at Old Town
(formerly the Old Town Sheraton). For many, it was a chance to see old friends seldom seen otherwise. The crowd was more old than young,
but less so than at a PBS fund-raising concert. It was a drastically white crowd, hovered over by a largely Spanish-speaking wait-crew.
Some may have been drawn specifically by Phil Donahue, whom we can blame for starting the whole day-time talk(back) show concept.
Like it or not, Phil’s love-child is Jerry Springer or, shudder, Tyra B(l)anks.
But, what do you know, an old white guy who
frequently references his Catholicism opposes the corporate takeover of America with the assistance of the Army of God, the Radical
Religious Right. A guy who must have enriched more than one corporation finds himself shutdown for speaking up. If the Right can revere a
spoiled, failed faux-Texan, it’s no worse that the Left might support a daytime talk show host. Only in AmeriCo.
I appreciated
hearing that his first guest 40 years ago was Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the atheist’s messiah (sorry, that would only
irritate her). It was good to be reminded that 50 years ago the ACLU supported Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused to pledge allegiance to America. Between Supreme
Court decisions against and in favor of the abstainers, Jehovah’s Withnesses were beaten, scorned, and churches burned. Finally, the
Supreme Court decided that under the Federal Constitution, compulsion is not a permissible means of achieving “national unity.” These
days, Fox News does the job.
Court Decisions – West Virginia State Board of
Education v. Barnette
Symbolism is a primitive but effective way of communicating ideas. The use of an emblem or flag to
symbolize some system, idea, institution, or personality, is a short cut from mind to mind. Causes and nations, political parties, lodges
and ecclesiastical groups seek to knit the loyalty of their followings to a flag or banner, a color or design.
The State announces
rank, function, and authority through crowns and maces, uniforms and black robes; the church speaks through the Cross, the Crucifix, the
altar and shrine, and clerical raiment. Symbols of State often convey political ideas just as religious symbols come to convey
theological ones.
Associated with many of these symbols are appropriate gestures of acceptance or respect: a salute, a bowed or
bared head, a bended knee. A person gets from a symbol the meaning he puts into it, and what is one man’s comfort and
inspiration is another’s jest and scorn.
O, the times they keep a changin’.
I was particularly touched by Donahue’s observation that he used to wonder how we could have rounded up Japanese Americans for
internment but now understands how fear drives us to do our worst, drawing an apt parallel. I hope he was wrong in believing things will
get much worse — I take hope from seeing so many of BushCo’s excesses challenged by the left and right. mjh