Bold, Persistent Obfuscation!

Last night as I was despairing over the long list of unfinished drafts in my queue for this blog, it finally dawned on me why I haven't finished so many of them. By the time I take a day or three to mull over the subject and try to find time to actually write something coherent, a whole 'nother outrage has been foisted upon this weary nation by the indefatigable Obama regime. And my previous topic is now passé.

"Obama as FDR" © Gateway Pundit

Here's the list of towering canards I've begun to write about, but haven't yet published. 

1. U.S. Support for Israel 
2. Net Neutrality
3. Banning Bullets
4. Prez Raises Taxes w/Pen 
5. Income Inequality 
6. Out of the Shadows
7. 'Get Off Our High Horse'
8. Our 'Broken' Immigration System
9. The Press 'Speaking Truth to Power'
10. Bipartisanship
11. Obamacare
12. The 'Just-Us' Department
13. Etcetera...

I've long wondered about the quip that "nations get the governments they deserve." But the 2012 re-election of a failing President, largely enabled by Republican voters who trust Mormons less than Radical Socialist Thugs, has at last persuaded me that we asked for it. 

America has elected a man of low character—duplicitous, argumentative, arrogant, and without shame—to the highest office in the land. As a disciple of both the Cloward-Piven Strategy (named for two professors at Columbia University, from which BHO graduated), and Chicagoan Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals," this President aims to keep opponents off-balance. Thus does he unleash a new offense almost every week. The intent is to overwhelm America; her opposition party, the several states, their county and municipal governments—not to mention entire industries and The People—keeping us all in a perpetual state of flummox.
And yet America is a nation of laws, and not of men. So when a Canadian friend asked on Facebook why we're not impeaching Obama for his many un-constitutional over-reaches, it became obvious to me that America has been traumatized. The antithesis of George H.W. Bush's thousand points of light is Barack Hussein Obama's assault by a thousand cuts. The political act of impeachment is simply beyond our present capability. We are so busy fighting all the fires he has started, that the long, uphill slog to impeach would only take us away from preventing the whole edifice from burning.

The best we could do in the 2014 mid-term elections was take the U.S. Senate away from the Democrats and their corrupt leader Harry Reid. And less than two months into the new congress, feckless Republicans have given it back to them. 

But we-the-people must not give up. Next year we have an opportunity to elect a man to stand in the gap (yes, unless Carly Fiorina does a whole lot better than I expect, it will be a man). I have met Ben Carson, and I like him a lot. I have long been impressed with Scott Walker...and his fellow governor Bobby Jindal could be a good choice. Former Texas governor Rick Perry might be ready for primetime this time. Or not. I don't think Senators make particularly good Presidents, though I am a Ted Cruz fan. If Marco Rubio runs, he could end up as Veep. I admire Rand Paul, but he makes me nervous on foreign policy. In any event, absent a leader in the White House, our republic will continue its decline.

So let us pray God has mercy on America.

Two Religious Companies: Firefox and Hobby Lobby

I have removed the Firefox browser from all five of my computers and smart devices. No great loss; it wasn't my default browser on any one of the machines, and I replaced it as my third-string browser with Opera. I did this because I oppose the hypocritical intolerance of the Progressive/Left elitists wherever I encounter it. I usually have no connection to these Liberal Fascists (see Jonah Goldberg's book of that title here), but in the case of Firefox owner Mozilla, I did have a connection. So I can act, and publicly encourage others to do so.

Firefox parent Mozilla, a non-profit, fired their CEO for heresy.

Much has been made of Hobby Lobby not being a church, notably by Attorney General Eric Holder and other Obama Regime acolytes. While showing mastery of the "bleeding obvious" in regards to the Christian-owned crafts retailer, I'm not so sure  Mozilla isn't a church. These tech companies often say they want to change the world (Apple most famously), pronouncements I'd always thought were harmless corporate gobbledegook. I don't think that anymore.

In this most recent dust-up, the first place I noticed signs of religious fanaticism was the Mozilla press-release announcing Brendan Eich's "resignation." If you didn't already know the CEO had resigned under pressure from the Mozilla board for supporting California's Proposition 8 endorsing traditional marriage, you would think the statement by Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker was a defense of why the company had decided to keep him. It was confessional in tone, included a recitation of Progressive Dogma du jour (it is always changing), and these two paragraphs of Magical Thinking:

Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. 

We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, 

culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, 

sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. 

Mozilla supports equality for all.

We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture 

of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to 

share their beliefs and opinions in public. This is meant to 

distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a 

higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, 

and to be guided by our community.

That ain't verbal gymnastics, clever wordsmithing or advanced Bureaucratese: it's a reality-defying mantra. It's Progressive Glossolalia, uttered in a state of altered consciousness. If those paragraphs are true, Eich should have been celebrated and held up as a shining example of Mozilla's culture. But they're not true. When the mob (in Mozillaspeak, "community") howled for blood, the tech Sanhedrin convened and decided it was "expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish.” Diversity, my auntie.

But that was only the beginning. The braying Leftists had to be mollified, and several would-be high priests came forth to lead the Eich Inquisition. The best example is from the sub-literate "Managing Editor" of ValleyWag.com, Owen Thomas, who, prior to the resignation, called on Eich to publicly recant, and make a propitiatory payment (indulgence?) to earn absolution. Evidently Eich refused to renounce his views or his actions, so he was put on the rack for all to see.

I don't at all agree that Eich's First Amendment rights were violated. The government didn't shut him up, and he still has a right to speak his mind. Nobody has a constitutional right to work at Mozilla, and their board can (presumably) fire the CEO for any reason or no reason. And hence the connection to Hobby Lobby. Just as the government can't force hair-on-fire Progressives to keep employees who disagree with their Corporate Values, the Feds must not be able to force Conservative companies to violate their Corporate Values, or pay a fine for doing so. I hope at least five Supreme Court Justices agree with me.

UPDATE: five justices did, in fact agree.

Darren Aronofsky's NOAH

When the guys in my Men's Sunday School class go around the table taking turns reading from Genesis 6-9, each of us is "picturing" the Noah narrative in our own mind. The fellas can't see what I'm seeing and vice-versa. But when a Hollywood director makes a movie based on those chapters, we will all see what he sees, which will inevitably differ from the movie in our heads. When that writer/director is a Jewish Atheist, his picture could be a LOT different from ours.



Russell Crowe as Noah . . . tryin' to figure it all out.

And yet we've been seeing trailers and clips for months now, with images that actually look quite familiar to us: there's a man named Noah, with a wife, and sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth. There are cities filled with violence, an ark, a bunch of animals lining up to enter, a lot of rain, waters bursting up from the ground, and a planet-wide flood. Yep, he's telling the same story.

The first thing Aronofsky's movie is about is a ruined world. There are striking images reminiscent of some recent post-apocalyptic movies (Book of Eli, Oblivion). Then we meet Noah's idyllic family living off the land. He witnesses a small miracle, and starts having these dreams . . . which are not pretty. He is confused and decides to take his family on a pilgrimage to consult with his grandfather Methuselah. Enroute they attempt to avoid humans, but those efforts result in a narrow escape into a nether-zone filled with Nephilim—whom Aronofsky calls Watchers. The Watchers first kidnap, then assist Noah and his family.

In rapid succession the plans for the ark become clear to Noah, trees for construction miraculously appear. Soon humans notice the project and come a-calling. Conflict rises to a crescendo as storm clouds gather. And yet the central drama of the film turns out to be Noah's unexpected conclusion about why all this is happening. He thinks it's only about saving the plants and animals, reasoning that his family is no less evil than those who are about to drown. He believes they ought not reproduce, and the earth must be kept pristine for all living things except humans. This turn of events actually feels authentic, thanks to Crowe's soulful performance, but it forces Aronofsky to change the Genesis narrative involving wives for Noah's sons. Interestingly, the film brings along Methuselah with a surprise up his sleeve, which provides gut-wrenching suspense during the months onboard the ark.

This dramatic mainspring keeps the story tightly wound. While miracles were happening to facilitate building and filling up the ark, Noah was confident and serene. But after the door closes and the screams of dying humans are heard outside, his dreams stop. Now he fabricates a grand finale that sounds almost logical, but is horrific to his family. He autocratically contends that his new notion was always a part of God's intention. By this time even a life-affirming miracle can't take him off his tangent.

Noah's internal struggle, which divides him from his own family, is a fascinating study in religious conviction versus self-delusion. It is a theological rumination on the nature of good and evil, complete with vivid, detailed, and recurring flashbacks to the Garden of Eden. This movie contains many references to the Mark of Cain, and shows that even the wicked city-dwellers understood their descent from intimacy with the Creator to their current depravity. In short, this film is no spin-off allegory, but an earnest, layered retelling of the earthy, ugly, tragic story of a world destroyed by God.

Those Christians with checklists will find some boxes to mark in the column labeled "Diverges from Genesis." The Nephilim play a bigger role here than in the text. Aronofsky doesn't play out 120 years of ark-building, making Japheth still a teen when the deluge comes . . . leaving the human headcount aboard the ark a few short of the Biblical passenger manifest. Genesis compacts Noah's 950 year lifespan into four short chapters that can be read in about fifteen minutes. Aronofsky has spent $115 million making a two-and-a-half hour movie, whose investors demand will conform to cinematic structure (ie: 3-Act Drama). It is a truism that the book is better than the movie . . . except that a novel is over 40,000 words, while Genesis 6-9 barely adds up to 2,000 words (a short story is supposed to be 4,000 - 7,500). Two thousand words? That's an article or an outline. Filmmakers always take liberties with the text of their source material, and couldn't make a good movie doing otherwise.

Darren Aronofsky's NOAH may not be a great movie, but it is an important movie. It is an ambitious movie that takes scripture and God and sin and morality seriously. It is a visually and aurally impressive film that will give your home theatre system a real workout. It is a well-written, directed, and acted motion picture that does what it must do: transport us into another world for over two hours. But only if we are willing to suspend our disbelief. 

The Day I Met Billy Graham

On Thursday May 2, 1996 I flew to New York City to participate in the Point Of Purchase Advertising Institute's Day of Design Conference. The label I ran for Word Records, Everland Entertainment, had won POPAI's 1995 Display of the Year award for our touch-screen enabled KidCity Kiosk...made famous as the retail display system that launched Veggie Tales.


The Marriott Marquis NYC "street lobby" is mostly vacant, guests check-in on the 7th floor.

Every spring the winner of the previous year's award is invited to make a presentation at the day-long convention. Early in the afternoon I met up and checked-in to the Times Square Marriott with my Bronx-born pal, Patrick Manna, VP with Chesapeake Display & Packaging, who flew in from Winston-Salem. Despite the distraction of a dozen Victoria's Secret models checking in right ahead of us, and Evander Holyfield walking past us with his bejeweled entourage (he'd be fighting Bobby Czyz at Madison Square Garden Sunday night), Pat sighted Billy Graham at the elevators. We recalled that the legendary preacher had accepted the Congressional Gold Medal in Washington, DC that morning, and figured he must be in town to do some network TV interviews. That afternoon Pat and I enjoyed playing billiards up on the 15th floor lounge, and that night we dined at a mid-town steak house with Word Records' Dave Alderfer, who worked at Sony/Epic in Manhattan.

The next morning, Friday, May 3rd, we made our presentation in a conference room and I said goodbye to Pat, who had POPAI obligations all afternoon. I checked out of my room, left my bags with the concierge and grabbed a late lunch. My ride to LaGuardia was set for 3:30pm, so I had a couple of hours to kill. Plenty of time to stroll over to Nat Sherman's on fifth avenue.

Ninety minutes later I was back at the hotel with thirty more minutes to kill. As soon as I entered the cavernous lobby, I was struck by how empty and quiet it was. Odd. From the front revolving doors to the concierge room at the back is about half a city block. As I began walking in that direction, a tall man wearing a UNC ball-cap rounded the corner from the escalators and walked toward me. Half a step behind him was a short, stocky fella wearing a salmon-colored blazer. I knew instantly Billy Graham was beneath that UNC hat.

While still twenty feet away, I called out to him: "Doctor Graham, Wayne Zeitner with Word Records, my colleagues Joey Paul and Kip Jordan are your editors." Billy Graham looked up at me from under his cap, turned to his associate with a nod, then back to me and shook my hand. I thanked him for never straying from his message, even that very morning to a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress. I told Billy Graham I had grown up hearing my grandfather, Arthur Zeitner in Medicine Hat, Alberta, pray for him in German with every table grace. I told him about the tribute to his ministry I'd seen a week earlier at the 1996 Dove Awards.

Billy Graham was gracious and patient, he told me a little bit about his schedule on the network shows that evening, discussed a recent unauthorized biography of him and spoke highly of my colleagues at Word. I don't think I kept him longer than he wanted to chat, but when I checked my watch I realized almost five minutes had passed. And as I watched him head out with his bodyguard to take a walk, another thing struck me: during our whole conversation, not another soul came thru the lobby of the Marriott Marquis hotel at Times Square in New York, New York.