The Tomatoman Times

"Duality' - Joao Iglesias - Picassomio.com

Conservative Christian politicians are the new Romans, only they don’t use short swords when imposing their theology on the rest of the world. Instead, today’s meddlesome Christian politicians use the weapons of the boycott, the ban, and network television.

Sarah Palin is one of those holy meddlers, a self-proclaimed Christian conservative who thrives on fear when seeking support:  fear of change, fear of ideas, fear of ideas that accelerate change, especially if those ideas are in print.

Governor Palin’s fear was apparent on NBC’s Dateline Sunday night. She was shown asking the librarian of the Wasilla public library if there were any books on the shelves that could be considered, in her word, “offensive.”

Religious totalitarians use that word when pressuring library boards to have certain books removed from general circulation.  Darwin's Origin Of Species comes to mind, as do certain works of William Shakespeare, all of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and yet the Print Police overlook one of the most offensive books of all time: The Holy Bible.

I mean, right off the bat the Bible has 17 begats, one murder, and a screwball deity who creates a nudist paradise, but who also throws in a talking snake and a tree with poison apples, and that’s just in the very first chapter.

Pretty racy stuff. Worthy of a library board review to avoid polluting young  minds, I’d say.

Some years ago I wrote for a business magazine. I was told to interview a pastor who ran a money-making house of worship and where volunteer ushers passed baskets three times during each of  three services every Sunday. The seating capacity in the chruch sanctuary was  over 1,000, and every service played to a packed house.     

That pastor was quite the go-getter. He increased church rolls from a mailing list of 10,000 semi-active members to 40,000 ardent contributors in five years, a membership that donated a tax exempt $3.5 million the year I wrote the article. The donations also included the pastor's BMW 733i and a paid-for home in Sacramento’s Gold River development, a neighborhood as expensive as its name implies.

He began each service with a prayer for Republican officeholders in government and maintained the concept of church-state separation was to “Keep the state out of the church’s business, not the other way around.”

Turns out that pastor and I were from the same home town.  He had gone to the same high school as my skeptic of a mother and three heathen uncles.  We became pretty good buddies during the interview, and anyway I was not being paid to slander his motives.  I was being paid to weasel trade secrets out of him for a business minded readership. 

Didn't take much weasling. He opened the books and explained everything.  So much for objective journalism, which is as much of a myth as that goofy Creationist theory.  Ain't no such animal, as any decent reporter will attest. 

My equally money-driven Chinese publisher, whose knowledge of religion would not fill a rice bowl, was so impressed with the story that he sought a personal audience with that pastor.  The publisher did not want spiritual guidance. He wanted the church to invest in the magazine. Not adverstise.  Invest. 

I tried to talk the publisher out of the idea: “If that church puts one nickel in this magazine, it will cease to be a business publication and become a four-color Watchtower for tongue babbling Pentecostals, and that church has enough influence among your advertisers and their frustrated holy rolling wives to accomplish just that." 

The publisher didn’t care. He was after money and was not about to be put off the scent by ecclesiastical quibbling from one of his Yankee Dog hirelings, and kept his appointment with the pastor.

To his discredit, the publisher had a the subtlety of a dental drill. He relentlessly persisted in asking the pastor about church finances. The more the publisher pushed, the redder the pastor's face got, until the pastor finally exploded, “I never want to be considered a businessman first and a pastor second!”  End of interview, which was not printed.

I wonder of Sarah Palin wants to be considered a Christian first and a politician second, or the other way around?   

I guess the answer is yes.

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Comments:

I swear I'm going to stop doing what Karl Rove wants me to do, which is talk endlessly about Palin. I think of him smirking in his chair,so delighted that we are frothing at the mouth instead of kicking McDaddy-dearest to the curb.
-Vi

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I don't go for political emails; they aren't subject to the rules and professionalism of actual journalists, bad as they are.

I don't often come back for second bites of the tomato, but this is an unusual situation.  More than 400,000 teens are pregnant and we get one paraded before us from a "family values" type without a word on how this fits "family values." So I take it being 17, unmarried and pregnant is fine and dandy with the right wing so long as a) you keep the baby and 2) you find the boy and get him to marry her.  The girl is praised by her mother because she made the right "choice."  This from an anti-choice person.  It is just nuts.  

Bob

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That is only the tip of the iceberg, Mike.

Lynda

Lynda is a former Alaskan.

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The smear campaign against Palin only serves to showcase the crushing fallibilities of those who fear her honesty and integrity.  They would do well to examine  why it is they have the need and desire to attack a human being displays fearlessness, devotion and grace when she says she loves her husband and her children, and her unborn grandchild. This is her choice. She has a right to it.

Jan

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I find it very interesting that the same people who keep considering Islam as a religion for retarded people are able to elect a creationist right-winger after almost nominating a Mormon.

Cigarettes did for my friend Wayne what the army, diabetes, alcoholism and the Mafia had failed to do. They killed him. His death occurred years ago, but he’s been on my mind a lot today, mostly because I’ve just quit smoking. Again.

Wayne had also quit smoking several months before he died, but hedged his bet. He carried an unopened pack of non-filtered Camels around in his shirt pocket just in case he wanted to start smoking again. He didn’t, but the cancerous damage to lungs had taken root by that time, then spread.

A newly reformed smoker keeping a pack of cigarettes on hand would not make much sense to a non-addict. But it makes perfect sense to another addict. I know. Personally.

I started smoking at age 13, over five decades ago. Some people remember that era as the Tailfin Age Of Gilded Complacency: Detroit’s big cars ruled the road. Elvis ruled the radio. But me, I was ruled by vending machines that dispensed smokes for 25 cents a pack.

I don’t know how old Wayne was when he started smoking. Maybe not until he was drafted into the army in the 50s, just after the Korean stalemate and before America's buildup in Vietnam, so he dodged those bullets.

The army was reluctant to take him in the first place. Wayne was not yet a diabetic, but he did have a lifelong skin condition that gave him the appearance of a harlequin; big brown patches of mottled brown skin interspersed with the usual palette of Anglo pinks. But the army medicos knew that Wayne’s condition was not contagious, nor a hindrance to carrying a rifle or peeling potatoes. Hell, he might even save the army some money by having his own camouflage.

Wayne entered law school after his stint in the military. His first legal act  occurred just prior to graduation. The school’s homosexual dean hinted that Wayne’s diploma hung by the zipper of his pants. Wayne’s response was a promise to file a very public lawsuit against the dean for sexual harassment. Such suits were rare at the time, especially when filed by a male plaintiff, and that dean was a well known community pillar. This combination guaranteed an explosion of national news coverage if Wayne carried out his promise. Upshot: Wayne got to graduate with his maidenhood intact. The dean got to keep his community pillardom with his good reputation equally intact.

Wayne’s legal career culminated in the 1970s when he was the general counsel for the largest government employees‘ association in the state. The governor had caved in to pressure from organized labor and signed a bill requiring all state employees to either join a union, or to pay a so-called “fair share” equivalent of dues to a union if they did not. The little bastard signed that bill just prior to midnight on his last night as governor.

The ink of the governor’s signature was barely dry when labor unions mobilized for raids on this cash bonanza,. Wayne’s government employees’ association was the primary target. So was Wayne. A union known for kneecapping unwilling recruits sent some muscle after Wayne. Not to beat him. To escort him.

Wayne found himself in the constant company of Guido and No Neck, two enforcers who accompanied Wayne everywhere when the union flew him to Las Vegas in a private jet for friendly little chats. Guido and No Neck even went drinking with him, but that came to a halt when Wayne’s alcohol powered belligerence made even those two hard rocks nervous. Wayne had a habit of picking fights with the biggest guy in the bar after having a tiddly or two. “Wayne,” Guido said. “We’re professionals. We know what we’re doing at all times. But you! You’re just nuts! We quit!”

That was not Wayne’s only encounter with such people. He made frequent trips to Chicago and got all akimbo with a woman whose husband could have been a technical consultant for the Sopranos. The wife confessed to her husband. The husband and some colleagues went looking for Wayne in the bars Wayne was known to disrupt. The few bartenders still speaking to Wayne tipped him off that he was now a person of interest to the mob, and to stay the hell out of their bars forever.

Panicked, Wayne sought refuge in his favorite coffee shop. The waitress had gotten to know him in a friendly way and noticed his agitation. She asked him what was wrong, He told her. The waitress asked where he was staying. He gave her the name of his hotel. She asked for the room number. He gave her that too. She disappeared into the small office by the kitchen and made a telephone call. She re-emerged a few minutes later and told Wayne to go back to his hotel room and wait by the phone. He did. The phone rang. Wayne answered. The voice on the other end was colder than dry ice. “The hit is off,” the voice said. “Now get out of Chicago and never come back.” Click.

Wayne connected the voice to his savior of a waitress and went back to the coffee shop to thank her. “Who called me?” he asked.

“My uncle,” the waitress said.

“Your uncle? Who’s your uncle?”

“Sam Giancana.”

But then the dumb bastard had an affair with her, then dumped her. As far I know, he never went back to Chicago.

Wayne’s diabetes showed about this time, and was ignored in a fog of alcohol. That resulted in recurring trips to the hospital and amputations of fingers and toes. This shedding of appendages continued until, in Wayne’s words, “I got tried of losing parts.”

In a few short years Wayne also lost his position, his family, his home, his car and anything else of value. A woman who saw a dim little spark of something redeemable in his besotted soul took him in and helped sober him up. She even bought him a MoPed so he would have transportation when looking for work.

Wayne did dry out enough to look as presentable as he could to a potential employer, considering his only wardrobe was a pair of ratty jeans and a torn t-shirt. One day he was on his way home on the MoPed after an unsuccessful day of seeking employment when he noticed a construction site. He stopped to look around. There he found an old man with dark glasses sitting on a nail keg with a guide dog beside him. “Are you a lawyer?” the old man asked as Wayne approached. Wayne said he was, but was not practicing law just now, glossing over the reasons why.

“Well,” the old man said, “this building is going to be a law office. I own it and I am going to need tenants. You will go back to practicing law and you will practice law here.”

Wayne could no more argue with the finality in the old man’s voice than he could argue with Guido, No Neck, or Sam Giancana’s niece.

Within five years Wayne had a thriving practice, an unhappy marriage and beautiful home which he opened to male alcoholics in recovery after his marriage went kaput. I was one of them. We would have huge Sunday brunches with platters of eggs, sausages, slabs of bacon, piles of waffles and rich black coffee by the gallon. I’m surprised this non-diabetic fare let Wayne live as long as he did.

And that wasn’t long. His one-to-two pack a day habit of smoking unfiltered cigarettes finally nailed him to a hospital bed. My last sight of him was his unconscious form with an agonized expression and an oxygen mask on his face, obviously in great pain despite the IV dripping painkillers into his arm.

Several hundred people attended his memorial service. When his daughter by his first marriage, by then a grown woman and a professional singer, sang a tribute in a heartbreaking contralto, I fought back tears. The tears won anyway. My pal Meredith was sitting in front of me, crying. She turned around and showed me her own tear streaked face. That made matters worse. Another pal named Tracy was sitting beside me. She put a consoling hand on my shuddering back. That didn’t help either.

“Tracy, don’t. I’ll lose it if you do.”

I thought I had already lost enough for one day. But I had not. I had not lost the habit of smoking cigarettes, until now.

After many a resolute start and backsliding finishes over the years, my lungs make noises and I can barely breathe on a safari to the laundry, so now seems like a good time to quit.

The memory of Wayne on the hospital bed is helping.

And that is Wayne’s gift.

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Some friends write:

Mike - you write so beautifully. And I'm choking back nicotine-laced tears for your friend Wayne.

Maureen

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Had to comment as I've just quit smoking after about 6 or 7 yrs of hiding the habit from Husband, son and most of my friends. But Husband did finally get  hip to what I was doing and confronted me and now I can't do it anymore. Just want to say, NEVER EVER take that first puff, thinking you can handle it. You CANNOT. I could not after stopping for more than 12 years. Try to forget how much fun it is to smoke (we sure don't do it cause it ain't fun) and remember how awful it is in every other way.
Sorry for the verbosity. Love your writing.

 Brix.

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This was really, really good.  The Mafia bits alone are priceless, and I have such a completepicture of Wayne's character that, were he still around, I'm sure I'd recognize him on the street.Looking forward to the memoir when it's done - it's going to be great.

Dather (Deborah)

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 Mike,

As usual, Mike jumps right in, wheels hitting the pavement. At last, I get to meet Guido and No Neck in action on the streets of Chicago. Cigarettes, huh, is there life after smoking? I'd better light up and ponder this. I did quit once, after 35 years of smoking, lasted 7 years, and am back to square one. Self annihilation is no easy task, especially while body surfing in this Sea Of Mental Garbage.

Ig Bear

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Wonderful, Mike! I smoked my last one on August 9, 1983--at an autopsy--which is a story for another time. If my adoration could only keep you smoke-free!

LGV

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Toolbelt Willie struck again. This time he hit my place, and my professional life came to a virtual standstill for three days.

Guess it was my turn, and if Toolbelt Willie hasn’t hit your place yet, he will. Guaranteed. Yes, sooner or later, Toolbelt Willie’s sausage fingers and uncluttered mind will personally show you just how dangerously dependent your life has become on the complications of telecommunications technology.

In my case, Toolbelt Willie is a telephone technician with AT&T, the Always Trouble & Trauma Company, an American institution founded by that spawn of Satan, Alexander Graham Bell.

Toolbelt Willie did not spiritually inherit any of Bell’s devious genius beyond an ability to tamper with pretty little wires and screw up the lines and lives of AT&T customers, especially the lame, the halt and the blind for whom the telephone is a critical necessity, and give the rest of us cases of the Teeth Gnashing Fantods, or TGFs.

I got my TGFs after a newly hatched tenant in my apartment complex requested telephone service from AT&T. Toolbelt Willie showed up for the installation and promptly disabled every telephone within three square blocks, then left. Mission accomplished.

His angry victims are probably still calling AT&T customer service via cell phones, as I did, squawking and sputtering about paying sixty cents a minute trying to reach a live body through a maddening series of voice prompts. Twelve bucks of voice prompts later, I’m connected with someone whose name was something like Labamba whose English is a distant second language at best. 

Labamba slowly repeats all the same goddamn questions posed by the recorded voice prompt, and does so in a tone which bespeaks the bored, tired manner of a customs official on a Thorazine diet. Maybe she needs depressants to keep from buying a deer rifle and finding a rooftop after dealing with frothing mad customers eight hours a day.

I’m told by Labamba, and then by her supervisor, Laraspa, that I can  expect to have my phone line restored by 7 p.m. Friday, and that my bill will reflect what AT&T considers a fair rebate for 4 days of interrupted service. What AT&T considers a fair rebate and what I consider a fair rebate will not be the basis for a happy accord, but I’m more concerned about being a tele-orphan until some vaguely cited time later in the week.

“Look, your tech disabled my line in under 2 minutes. Why the wait?”

“We have other customers, sir,” Labamba said with all the icy, officious courtesy of an airline flight attendant apologizing for an 8 hour delay and for running out of those blanched rabbit pellets the airlines claim are dry roasted peanuts.

I bet those other customers have had enough of the Teeth Gnashing Fantods and are seeking options to dealing with Labamba, Laraspa and Toolbelt Willie, and the institutional indifference of AT&T.

No wonder a federal court busted up the AT&T empire into regional segments in the 80s. But the effect was not to limit a monopoly. It was to spread the misery.

Then again, maybe AT&T is the secular incarnation of a laughing Providence who believes His human creations need divinely given humility now and then, rendered in the form of telephone companies, garage mechanics, airline reservations agents, and people who make voice mail recordings --and, of course, Toolbelt Willie, a technical archangel flying in tight formation alongside Labamba and Laraspa, a Holy Trinity of Trial By Patience. May they deliver me from the sins of my Teeth Gnashing Fantods.

And fix my damn phone while they’re at it.

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Some friends write:

Finally got through, Mike - I hope your phone is working now - but at least out of that telephone disaster, you got good copy - you ARE funny, and I like what you write.

The BFAC comment wasn't from me - who is that? I added a comment of my own, and called myself BFAC-1 - can it be there really and truly are two of us? Weird.

Thanksfor sending!!! and for writing.

Bunny

I pulled the other BFAC entry.  Too bad, I need all the encouragement I can get.  MB

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Very Funny Uncle Mike

Jim

While there are only a few months difference in our ages, and Jim has been about ten feet taller than me since childhood, perhaps I should explain why he really is my nephew.

 On second thought....naaaah.  Any explanation would be more baffling than a telephone tech's reasoning. And no, we're not from Arkansas. MB

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Haaaaaaaaaaaaa....oh I loved this one. So  on the mark. I love all of em, these columns of yers!!!

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Dear Mike:

Once when a friend of mine lived over the Orange Julius across from the Fullerton J.C, he had another buddy friend who claimed that God lived in the refrig and He was incarnate as Rainier beer! He also maintained that the light going on in the refrig was Rainier getting a really good idea or a rather bad idea concerning Fate and Mankind! So your A.T.and T piece could be closer to the truth then you can ever guess! Of course, this same guy, said that most of the time, once God got out of the refrig, He was out in the garage. (The only place he felt safe from Mrs. God) Since Godwas not "getting any" He felt pretty frustrated so He set about making man and woman so he could at least someone get lucky! Of course, as the fates would have it, God was busy in the garage with this rather entertaining endeavor when Mrs God called him in to ask why he had come out of the refrig, not to mention why he was spending a whole lot of time in the garage! After a lengthy disagreement, fraught with menacing frustration, he realized that all hell was running amok out there, little humans screwing, little humans getting born, little humans escaping from under the garage door! The rest is history! Since the flood he has been trying to wipe us out! Just look, for example at Tool Belt Guy wouldn't you feel the same way?

Well, keep up the great work and you are in my head more then I would wish.

Yours

Kate Veneroso

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Most everyone around here has Verizon.  However, our office kept getting bills from AT&T for long distance .  It wasn't for every long distance call, but it was for enough, and it appeared every call had a $3.50 access charge on it as well.  2 minutes, add $3.50 for access charge.  I called AT&T and maybe 'cause it's a business, the VERY FIRST PERSON WHO ANSWERED THE PHONE SOLVED THE PROBLEM!!!    No menu to scream my way through after dutifully and nicely answering each and everyone of Verizon's questions, the Verizon menu "lady" says after I answer every question very clear ..."

WishLadya

Uh oh. AOL seems to be taking message protocol lessons from AT&T.

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AT & Tisn't just out to get us, it's out to get cities which spend thousands for their service. No kidding. I have linebacker.. yes I pay for it. And yes if I didn't have it when they crossed my line with someone else’s I would have had to pay for their screw up. Great to see you writing more, I've missed it.

ShadowsMst

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AT&T worked much more efficiently before the breakup. This current service is probably an ongoing retaliation started with the hopes of getting customers to kick up such a fuss that the government would be forced to reevaluate their insistence on diversification. Since that time, of course everyone has forgotten what all the fuss was about.
I'm old enough to remember the good old trusty phone company. But then I'm old enough to remember someone else pumping gas for me, carrying my groceries to the car, and calling the bank so they'd hold a check before my account got overdrawn.

Barbara

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I'll up you one with my stepdad's experience. About six months ago, he got called on a sewer line problem to an apartment complex. So he brings in the equipment and starts digging toward the "clearly marked" sewer line. Only instead of hitting pipe first, he hits the complex's cable line and completely took out the complex's major mode of entertainment. Apparently, our local government has allowed the cable company to wire over pre-existing lines dug for other purposes. It's supposed to be illegal (there would then be no way of getting to the sewer pipe without hitting the cable line), but it's not.

Madi

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