A CHRISTMAS CAROL FOR ALL AMERICANS WHO CHERISH THIS COUNTRY MORE THAN THEIR REVERED ANCIENT HOMELANDS,  FORMER  TRIBAL AFFILIATIONS, CUSTOMS AND RITUALS

I woke from one of those dizzy nightmares brought on by a back pain relieving cocktail of vicodin and robaxin and it being the holiday season there in front of me were the ghastly spirits of Lenin, Some Chicago Radical and a bleary smear of a shifty Grey Presence that I couldn't make out, though I thought I knew who or what it was.  The three of them were glowing and wavering at the foot end of my bed like rubbery radium half-life faces on black-light t-shirts flickering in a night club.  I knew at once they were the ghastly rave vapors of past, present and future.

My still half-slumbering mind swam up into the middle of the conversation and Lenin was saying, "Well Marx was right, you know."

 The Chicago Radical shook his head. " Karl was a numbers guy. Numbers, numbers, always the numbers."  But in the next second his wavery he-radical image morphed into an angry she-radical with a bushy head of flourescent yellow hair and a snarl on her pink lipstick lips. "I hate accounting," she shouted.  "Kill the pigs!"

And then the Chicago Radical reverted to his former bland male self.  It was a bit o a jarring transposition, at least to me.  He looked like a mild-mannered middle-aged assistant manager at a McDonalds with overtones of professorial superiority.   He flipped one hand in a weary gesture that said he knew more than even the spirit of Lenin might, "Lennie-boy, Seeing the faults in the system is a nice way to make a living, but factual arguments get you nowhere."

His other half resolved herself back into the visual plane long enough to scream, "Right, kill the dirty fascist pigs!" 

On the instant of his quick-morphing return, the Chicago Radical looked only slightly annoyed; he was used to such interruptions.  "Solutions are what count. Results count. "

"Carl should have spent more time energizing his own penis!" the comeback lady with the pink lipstick shouted.

Lenin smoothed his beard, which was more dapper than I remembered it from the old photographs on the History Channel. "What is that crude-ness supposed to mean?" he said, calmly eyeing the wild feminine ranter.

The Chicago Radical returned and cleared his throat.  He looked a little embarrassed.  "She means Marx could count the spots on a pig and the stars in the sky, but he didn't know human nature."

"Which is?"

"Greed. Our natural instinct is to gather crops and horses and stuff against the bad times. We don't share it, we hoard it.   Nothing else matters--not race, religion, nationality--people are all the same; that's why we call them the masses.   And as individuals we're not nice.  We're all  mean mudderfuckers."

Lenin nodded, "It is true, we do not kiss the cheek that farts on us."

"Right.  See, us...that is, you and me and her, we're just the best of the bad.  The way I see it, in our deal people's stuff does get spread around.  It's just that we're the ones who say who gets what. And that's because we care.  We care more than anybody else.  So no more checks and balances.  Just us."

Lenin nodded his approval.  "You certainly have achieved the dumbness down spiral of  Mr. and Mrs Average American since World War II.  Commendable!"

The Chicago Radical took on a look of smug satisfaction.  "Well, yes.  Vietnam helped a lot.  There was Me First, the Sex Revolution, and Feel good, everything is going to be okay.  Incredible!   Not even a generation after the Great Depression and radiation bombs on Hiroshima, and they could believe that! 

"Still, you may not be out of the birch trees yet, Comrade."  Lenin gave the Chicago Radical a wry look, "What if your  Supremes will show some balls."

Pink Lips shrieked back into sight, "Motown? Are you nuts, you fruity old Ruskie?"

"You misunderstand me, unpleasant one," Lenin said with a slight bow in her direction, "Not the musical expressionism of the Daffy-In-Love Afro.  I speak of the Supreme Court."

"You're just history, Lenny."

"Do you not believe there is some small chance your countrymen, even in their mind-weakened state,  will wise up in time?"

"I don't think so." the Radical said.   His feminine alternative popped back in, "Not in a million years, Bolshitski!!"

The third apparition, the smeary blotch that that hadn't said anything up until now, had manufactured a fixed smile that was making me uneasy.  I had the impression that he was impatient with all the talk.  He wanted to eat something and he looked fiercely hungry. 

"What do you think?" Lenin asked.   And with that, the  three of them turned their expectant gazes on me. 

I believe

"How could any bug with such powerful convictions as I possibly be wrong?" the grasshopper asked, hopping into traffic.

Imagine Joe...

It’s midnight here in California and I can’t sleep. I’m having bad visions and scary dreams after the Vice Presidential debate. They say you can tell a man by the friends he keeps and the people he hires. I keep seeing Vice President Joe Biden’s super-white teeth, grinning in the darkness like some mad Cheshire cat. I know what’s bothering me; I’m worried this guy might stumble into the presidency and I don’t think he’s got a clue.

Let’s say President Obama ate one too many greasy hamburgers behind Michelle's back and snuck a few too many puffs on the hookah after a strenuous game of hoop ball with a few pros on their down time and the cumulative effect caused the boss man to keel over and speak in tongues or exist in such a vegetative state that even the New York Times would have to admit he was no longer the man for the job. Hey, it could happen; they still have one or two serious reporters at the Times.

Now imagine that after ascending to the throne, President Joe Biden has a meeting with Putin where they discuss Russia backing off from their involvement in Syria. Try to visualize the guy you saw smirking and mugging while his debate rival was talking national security, health care and the economy. Imagine that Joe trying to persuade Iran’s mad neo-Hitler to give up his plans to annihilate Israel. See his brow furrow as he tries to grasp the dangers of Muslim terrorism, struggles to convince the Chinese to play fair, looks for ways to confront the economic stagnation, reduce bloated budgets, cure the cancerous national debt, solve the Mexican Border dilemma, repair the failed strategy in Afghanistan, reverse the lunatic plunge away from our natural energy resources. Is that the man for you?

This isn't some made-up scenario; the difficulties that would face a President Joe Biden are the current President's problems, and, even with his legendary arrogance and powerful biblical oratory, he hasn't solved anything in four years. The realization comes over me like a flaccid stroke of lightning: Barack and Joe, when it comes to style, are as different as night and day. But when it comes to problem solving, they’re two ineffectual little peas in the same pod. I don’t know about you, but in these times I don’t need sleep to give me nightmares.

 

The Cost of Common Sense

I couldn’t record my weekly radio podcast, the one hour Dark Landing. I have a home recording studio with limited ability to muffle loud bird chirps, overhead airplanes and local dogs, and here somebody was hammering like a crazy man right next door. I went out there and it was some guy beating on the cement sidewalk with a big mallet. Something worse, if you can imagine, I’d met him before. It was my neighbor’s father-in-law, and since he was wrecking my day, I thought I’d at least be bothersome in a minor key way.  I’d have done more if I’d been able to think of something, but I’m never quick enough at social mischief when it’s me on the bubble..

            “It’s really hot out here.”

            He squinted up at me with a look of dusty, sweaty annoyance. “That’s why I waited to start until later in the afternoon.”

            “What do you do in real life?”

            `"Financial services." He gave me a spectacularly annoyed look. How could I blame him? Here I was, wrecking his day.

            “Oh.”

            He reached for his chisel, but I was too fast for him. “Well, as long as you’re here, give me an off-the-top-of-your-head number.”

            “What number?” he frowned, my conversation clearly having the desired effect.

            “Rate of inflation. What’s our current rate of inflation?”

            That stopped him. He set down the mallet and wiped the sweat stinging his eyes. “The rate of inflation is very, very low,” he growled, giving me a look like I should know better. “It has been historically low for several years.”

            “Ohh…Then why is Peter Pan peanut butter selling at five dollars a jar at Albertsons? Last year it was three dollars, and the year before that a dollar ninety nine. Meat, cookies, gas for the car, everything is doubling and tripling.”

            “Christ,” he snarled. “You’re talking about the cost of living.”

            “Oh. That’s different?”

            “Of course it is,” he said, shutting off my nonsense by going back to his hammering.

I’m not going to watch pro football any more.

 

Those of you who know me are thinking that’s as unbelievable as some confused 240 pound linebacker showing up for the after game interviews in high heels and a flouncy skirt.  After all, I wrote HEADSLAP, the highly acclaimed bio of the great Hall of Famer Deacon Jones, and FOUL, my novel about that old NFL scandal everybody has been trying to bury for decades.  Football is one of those blood sports like hockey, bullfighting, boxing and war.  Graceful young creatures get battered about, maimed, and sometimes die.  To enjoy conflict you don’t need truth, justice and freedom on your side, you only have to believe the sport, no matter how bloody, is played by the rules.  It’s called the integrity of the game.  If you gut-shoot a buck, that’s on you, and you have to stalk him down until you can take a kill shot.  That’s one of the rules in hunting.  In mortal combat, poison gas, nerve gas, and chemical warfare are outlawed, just like chop blocks and piling on the quarterback.  Those are the rules.  But there is no rule in the game of football that says because 200 million dollars in gambling money is on the line a bad call should stand.  It’s only money, stupid.  I believe in all the players who have played hurt over the years.  I believe in all those brave footballers who die too young of their wounds.  But after this how can anyone believe in the integrity of the game of professional football?

I SAW A MAN FROM THE 7th CENTURY YESTERDAY

I SAW A MAN FROM THE 7^TH CENTURY YESTERDAY

So time travel is possible after all.  He was on the Drudge site on the internet, white teeth flashing, fist in the air, hoping to rip my throat out and see blood fly.  I don’t think we realize what we’ve done.  Say you want to experience unspeakable cruelties – eye gougings, torn limbs, lingering tortures and so on – well, history books had to suffice until the motion picture industry gave us Technicolor, Surround Sound and 3-D.  But even with the extravagances of the modern cinema houses, you still knew it wasn’t real.  You could have Spanish inquisitors pulling out tongues and frying skulls with branding irons, and depraved Kings could rape little girls, but it was just a story.  Historical drama, they call it at the awards ceremonies. 

This serf from the 7^th century was only on a website, but he was real in a way no movie could ever depict him.  He wanted me and my kind dead because I would not, could not, did not bow to his prophet, dead since 632 but eternally alive in the memories of the faithful.  And my time traveler from the early Middle Ages wasn’t alone.  Large populations of his fellows swarm our world these days.  I see them nightly on the news, burning flags, dragging our diplomats naked through the streets of their towns. 

I was warned of this some three decades ago by my learned and urbane Iranian brother-in-law, himself a ‘modern’ Muslim.  “The Shaw must move slowly,” he told me.  “He has no other choice.  If he moves too swiftly, he will anger the people.  And yet, your government officials are very impatient.”  He tried to explain to me how nearly impossible it was to view a 7^th century person in terms of modern perception, trying to make real for me the many blunt and unyielding obstacles that stand in the way of simply showing older-culture people the light of modern ways.  I didn’t give as much weight to his ideas as I should have, and that is unforgivable, considering I had the lessons of Vietnam at my personal beck and call.  But then, our U.S. Presidents from JFK and LBJ through Carter, Clinton, the Bush bunch and Obama – well meaning individuals, all – didn’t really get it either.  You can move the man from the 7^th century, but you can’t move the 7^th century from the man. 

Writing Like A Lady

A month ago I asked a lady romance writer (you know her) who often reviews genre fare if she would have a go at my new novel, The Freight Train of Love.  It is more a classic war romance novel than genre romance, but I liked her writing so I figured Nothing ventured nothing gained…She asked to see a few pages, but then, a few days later, declined to do the review.  I wasn’t surprised at her decision, but disappointed with her reasoning.  She said she found the person of my heroine Clair to be "crude and unladylike".

 I respect her decision, and in a way I was glad I’d contacted her, because her reasoning started me thinking about how important it is, the way we position ourselves as authors.  Hemingway.  Isabella Lady Bird.   Robert B. Parker, Louis L’Amour, Dick Francis.  Danielle Steele, Marsha Muller, Nora Roberts.

 Beyond this, I was moved to a somewhat controversial judgment.  It has been my experience that some of the women romance writers I have met love gutsy women when they are written about by other women.  But when a man writes about them, the same girls feel a bit undressed.  When a man is writing, they want to see the male idealistic image of a woman, rather than a real person. They are, I believe, vastly uneasy with the idea of a man knowing a woman's character well enough to write in the heroine POV. 

 This started me thinking, not so much about the inner feelings of a man writing the part of a woman character, but of the problems both men and women have faced since novel writing began. Early woman novelists had to use names like George and Tom. Today both men and women use pen names or first name initials to hide their true identies, and they do it, I think, for just these sorts of reasons. While I don't think it should matter one bit to a writer whether writing in the personna of a man or a women (any more than it shouldn't matter if a writer puts himself in the shoes of a demented mass murderer to tell a story) I think it does matter to many readers, and, as we see, even to professionals in the literature biz.  So if you’re going to write thrillers, maybe better you should be Wild Bill or Gutsy George.  And maybe my next heroine driven novel will be penned by Tinkera La Bella. 

Break Out Of Your Box

Don’t you resent being labeled by either the Republicans or the Democrats as to how you are going to vote?  The truth is, you are not Hispanic.  You are not a Black Afro-American.  You are not a White or a Jew.  You are an individual, you are an American citizen, and you have the freedom to make up your own mind and vote as you choose.

I’ll let you in on a little secret.  My people are from Europe, from Prussia (which no longer exists) and Slovinia (which again exists after being Yugoslavia for a time)  So the pollsters would dump me in the White box with the English, the Germans, the Russians, the Spanish, the French, the Italians, and so on.  But here’s the bigger secret:  Nobody belongs in the White box.  Or in the Black, the Red, the Brown, the Yellow, or any other boxes.  They are illusionary boundaries set out to hem in the herds for this or that reason. 

Now I would be the last to deny cultural differences, linguistic difficulties, or human impatience, greed and ignorance.  But there are no boxes, no rigid walls that separate us, no quick and easy ways to define who and what we are. 

And here is the biggest secret of them all:  those simple DNA tests that you can get will prove the fakery of the Box System of dividing people into alien groups.  I’ll give you a good example.  If you go back a few generations, my wife is a mix of English, Irish, German and Norwegian.  But her DNA reveals that she is descended in historic times to French people, and in pre-historic times through Spain to Africa.  So does that put her in some sort of White-Brown-Black box?  Or does it cause you to suspect the rigid walls of the box may not represent the way things really are?

This November you get to choose

Yes, 47% of Americans are on the government dole.  But you are not a number.  You have been a victim of bad government policy, but you don’t have to put up with it past this November.  You can choose more of a failed economic policy and a disastrous foreign policy…until the handouts run out, which they surely will in the next few years.  Or you can vote for smaller government and a stronger America.   You get to choose.

A BASIC BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY: PANASONIC

In 2006 Matt Klawitter produced a dramatic short film titled "Extinction" with top of the line camera equipment that he got provided free by Panasonic through a 'new filmmakers' program. So every year, when the Directors Guild holds "Digital Day" I stop by at the Panasonic booth to see what's new with them. This summer, I met Doug Leighton, one of their execs who worked on that program. Doug gave me his card, and on the back of it was printed:
Basic Business Philosophy
The Seven Principles
1) Contribution to Society
2) Fairness and Honesty
3) Cooperation and Team Spirit
4) Untiring Effort for Improvement
5) Courtesy and Humility
6) Adaptability
7) Gratitude

And I thought to myself that striving for perfection in an imperfect world isn't a bad way to be.
j.

Lyrics I Wish I'd Written

My blood runs cold

My memories

Have just been sold

My angel is a centerfold
- Shwayze

I AM SCOLDED IN SERIOUS OFFICIAL TERMINOLOGY THAT IT DOESN'T COST ANY MORE

The other day at Albertson's supermarket I was imagining I might get out for under a hundred dollars, but that was so foolish of me.  You see, I'd somehow forgotten it was 2012 and not 2011.  The cheapest house brand cheddar cheese chunk was up $2 dollars over what I paid last year.  The pack of sticks of string cheese was up from $6.99 to $9.99.  The turkey Keilbasa, on sale for $3.99 looked like it was only up about a dollar until I realized it was a little light in the hand--the same 16 ounce package now only weighed 12 ounces.  This new technique, designed to soften the blow of much higher prices, is popular with snacks like Triscuits and Wheat Thins, as well.  Cereals, on the other hand, appear in so many different sizes that they hide their inflated prices in a bewildering flurry of choices.  Rye bread that used to be $2.50 for the half loaf, went up to $3.50 and now is over $4.00.
(I guess that last one deserves an exclamation point, but let's say the rye crop was eaten by pests or outer space aliens, so disregard the abnormal surge in rye bread.
The  mood is, if not jovial, at least calm, and prices on items  are engineered  to seem as they are not:  For instance, at Pavillions, a branch of VONs supermarkets, the savings on the various cuts of beef are astounding.  It is sometimes  possible to buy T-bone steaks, bone in, at 4.99 in the economy pack.  Since they print the "REGULAR PRICE" on the label, it is easy to see that five pounds of steak, regularly priced at $50, can be had for $24.95, not counting tax, which is nearly ten percent in Los Angeles, where I live and buy my food.  Astounding, but confusing at the same time.  If memory serves (and in this case it does) a slim year ago, the econo-pak price was $3.99 per pound.  My salary didn't go up by 25% and my social security (that I contributed into for 40 plus years and am supposed to be ashamed to accept) didn't go up at all. 
I suppose I would shuffle along with the rest of the sheep, but something has been puzzling me, and I find myself out of step, confused, looking for a simple answers to questions that shouldn't be all that difficult:  If the prices on fundamental foodstuffs keep jerking up, up, up month after month after month, then why has the government you and I elected declared there was no inflation in the 2nd quarter of 2012?  And why did they claim inflation was way, way below 10% in all of last year?  And why did they declare there was no increase in the cost of living in the two years before that? 
I think something is wrong, but we both have to admit I am just a sample of one little lamb who has lost his way.  Perhaps my math is wrong, or perhaps I am just buying food on expensive days or shopping at the wrong stores.   Perhaps there are cheaper ways to buy food and the government is adding those into the mix.  Maybe spoiled or tainted food counts in the official tally.  Surely such food would be cheaper.  No, seriously, I heard that for some time now the official federal calculations have been allowing a substitution of cheaper grades and cuts of meat, rather than the old fashioned idea that cuts of meat are defined as this or that because they are different in taste, texture and so on.  For instance, if a pound of hamburger meat has the same calculated amount of nutrition as a pound of filet mignon, our trusty inflation fighters can switch to the cheaper ground meat in their calculations, and hence squeeze the flation formula back down to zero.  I know, 'flation' is not a real word.  But when inflation is not a true figure or a real calculation, I think we the sheeple should try to find other words to describe the process.  After all, in the direction our society is being shepherded, what is the real value  of mutton, anyway?

CHICAGO AND THE WORLD'S UNIQUE ARTIST/REPORTER

The great Chicago Artist Franklin McMahon Sr leaves behind a legacy that is both lasting and one-of-a-kind.   How do you evaluate the importance of this uniquely talented man whose artistic triumphs cross from illustration to fine art to motion pictures?  It is easy to see Franklin’s genius in any of the thousands of sketches, drawings and paintings he created over his long career.  More difficult, perhaps, to understand the scope of his influence not only in the fine art world, but the effect he has had on us all through his thought-provoking magazine illustrations and prize winning documentaries that leave us with a living record of the way we were as a society and as a people, not only here in the U.S, but as his visual interpretation of how societies and peoples globally have been adapting to changing times over the last half century, a body of work that goes beyond mere recording into imagery that is always illuminating and even magical. 

From the time when he set out to create his first documentary, “The Artist as a Reporter”, Franklin himself was aware of the marvelous power motion pictures possess to convey social and political ideas.  A creative innovator, he pioneered the use of camera moves on artwork to present ideas about the world around us.  Not only social changes came under his keen eye; he could create memorable nostalgic portraits, as beautifully illustrated in his documentary on the wonder of a Chicago Christmas, a show of his that became a perennial television classic.

 Franklin McMahon Sr.  perfected “The Ken Burns Effect” of bringing still pictures to life through carefully designed camera moves well before Burns, a highly skilled documentary maker  in his own right, used such techniques in his popular films.  The first of Franklin’s first great series of political documentaries, a 90 minute television special outlining the events of the U.S. Presidential campaign in 1968, won him an EMMY award, the first of three EMMYs he would earn for his work recording and preserving the details and the flavor of national political campaigns over the generations from the 1960s through the end of the millennium.    Other documentaries include his special on the Chicago Seven, and “The World of Vatican II” and  “World Cities” which recorded for future generations the worldwide movement of people from rural areas to the cities in every region of the globe in the latter half of the 20^th century. 

In the haut world of fine art, Franklin is recognized as having similarities with French artist Honore Daumier (1808-1879).  Both were painters and sketch artists of consummate skill, both produced not only fine paintings but sketches and lithos capturing the mood and shape of their societies, and each produced a prolific body of irrefutably the finest artistic work. 

As a pioneer in the filmmaking art, Franklin was experimenting in areas where few artists before him had gone, and only with limited success.  One is reminded of Walt Disney’s attempt to bring life to Salvador Dali’s work in the seven minute limited animation film short Destino or some of the artistic qualities of Walt’s full length feature Fantasia.  But more than an experimental filmmaker, Franklin surpassed the Disney efforts in his own direction, with his own unique filmic techniques and artistic style—The McMahon Way—as he became a master at the storytelling art of blending his work into smoothly moving pictures.  This was a time-consuming process in those pre-computer generation days, and yet the outcome provides today’s viewers with vivid images of the places and times of his life—as well as a decades-long record of the major events of his era. 

Franklin’s film projects often provided rewarding moments for him, as when a camera pan or a zoom in or pullback would highlight or reveal some area of his work that he came to realize some viewers might not otherwise experience ‘what he was trying to get at’, as he would say.  But they could be painful to the artistic side of him, as well.  There were times when, upon seeing a painting he’d spent a great deal of time to create, that entire painting would slide by on the screen in perhaps ten seconds, and he would say something regretful like, “That took me a lot of work, you know…”, his voice trailing off as if maybe a bit more lingering on the scene was in order. 

A friend of some of the most influential creative people of the time, on his travels to the West Coast Franklin liked to drop in on architect and designer Charles Eames and Charles’ wife Ray at their famous 901 studio office in Santa Monica, a place that was a popular hangout for famous post-World War II artists and musicians like Elmer Bernstein.  The deal was, Franklin would screen one of his documentaries and Charles and Ray in turn would run one of their film shorts like “Powers of Ten” or “Toy Trains”.  By that time, the Eames had made waves in the multi-media area for their exhibits at the 1959 Moscow and the 1964 New York World’s Fairs and were working on inter-active exhibits, and they were intensely interested in and enthusiastic about Franklin’s ability to fuse fine art and social commentary in his documentaries.

Today, Franklin McMahon Sr’s legacy lives on not only in his art and films, but in the work of his children, talented artists, sculptors and photographers all, perhaps most particularly in the work of his son Mark, who seems to have captured the essence of his father’s genius but with his own unique flavor.  And this is as it should be, for didn’t Mozart have a talented father as well?

John Klawitter is a writer and film director living in Los Angeles.  He co-produced and directed several of Franklin McMahon Sr’s documentary films, including “McMahon’s Politicians” and “World Cities”.  His fond memories of Franklin include their trips together to screen their films for Charles & Ray Eames and the work Franklin did for his documentary “The Navajos Water the Desert”.  John Klawitter’s recent writing includes TINSEL WILDERNESS, 2009 Epic Author Award winner for Best Non-Fiction Book, which contains a chapter titled “Tenacity In Art” the story their adventures in Manhattan pitching the first hour of “McMahon’s Politicians” to the networks.

DARK LANDING #9 is now live

A murderous park rangerette, the defects in divine communications, and disenfranchised dumpster ducks. Were I you, I should not wish to miss any of that.

http://johnklawitter.podomatic.com/entry/2012-02-26T08_44_28-08_00

Should God Let Women Drive Cars?

A BIT OF BACKGROUND:  I wrote this brief rant in response to a troubled woman's rights website.  Apparently in Saudi Arabia there is some serious sentiment backed by religious arguments (!) against women driving cars.  Now I've from time to time teased my wife about this subject, ever since she backed into that tree (she claims it maliciously jumped over a few feet and smacked our car).  Still, it is no joking matter in Saudi Arabia, and though I don't live there, I felt compelled to side with these women, who can never experience the thrill of zipping along with the convertible top down and the wind in their hair, much less the ordinary convenience of driving to the market rather than walking, which, in my own personal value system, certainly should be their right.

Looking around me, from what I see, the 'will of God' appears to be everywhere and in every case subject to human interpretation. To my mind this raises the probability that it is not the actual, undiluted will of Almighty God but rather, at least in part, the subjective (even if at times well-meaning) will of the less-than-almighty interpreters.

A belief system that mandates that "all things are by the will of God" is a good one for maintaining the positions of those who are in the perhaps relatively comfortable positions to interpret the Eternal Will; to cite an analogy, their situation is a bit like that of a small select bunch of happy minnows who have somehow convinced the rest of the minnows that they alone have interpreted the will of the great whale.

Laying 'the way things are' on 'the will of God' is one way to set aside the challenges of human growth. If one judges that all good will always be good and all evil will always be evil and there is nothing a person can do, then of course the next leap is to presume the will of God is to have it so. I personally do not think like that. That is not humility. That is supreme vanity far beyond what is allowed a human being, to presume to have absolute knowledge of the will of God in all things.

Now if it is the interpretation of some 'official interpreters' that God has mandated women should not be the lawful equals of men, then of course they should not drive cars. But I am suspicious of this interpretation. And further, in a world where the will of God once was that there were no cars, and now there are cars, how can it be that God willed that only men, the possibly fallible interpreters of God's will, men only may have the privilege to drive them? Forgive my suspicious nature, but this sounds terribly self-serving. Next, are we to believe males only can gather together at will to drink wine and gamble and lust and do other happy things that God has supposedly dictated that only men may do? Are we to believe men, no matter how individually stupid, are to be the masters of women? Why, minnows, why?

I don't think that we are straying from the question of everywoman's right to get behind the wheel of a Ford or a Ferrari, but rather that we are inquiring as to the heart of why things are as they are, half the world living in societies where women are treated less than as equals to men, subject to unspeakable atrocities, and even where some women are forced to seek justifying doctrines for why this must be so.

As for me posting here, I do not think you should put too much faith in my thinking. I am just a simple person, a moderately educated man, true, but just a simple person who looks for common sense solutions to everyday problems. This world we share is not as confusing as it seems, but it is a very difficult time made dangerous by the shrinking globe and the clash of cultures. We are all on a journey of exploration into the unknown. I say to you all, as I do at the end of my radio show, Be thoughtful, be kind, be patient, be true...and be safe comrade travelers...