DR. STRANGELOVE AMONG THE BAPTISTS

Head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., Dr. Albert Mohler, has written up his sunny appraisal that once homosexuality is proven to be a biological and/or genetic imposition on human behavior, rather than a life-style option, he would enthusiastically applaud any medical science that allowed the doctors to muck around in the mother's womb pre-birth to make the homosexuality go away. He writes:

If a biological basis [for homosexuality] is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.

The first part of that sentence is loopy enough, bringing a new level of design to boutique babies, but the second part is even loopier when you think about it: "we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation...."

Chastity belts for all!

We predict Dr. Mohler's presidency of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville is going to receive a little uterine tune-up in the very near future.

HEATH SHULER, RISKING HIS BASE


Hanging out with the Blue Dogs, you sometimes pick up a tick. A big one in this case.

Shuler might take a lesson from John Edwards.

A TALE OF TWO JIMS

The Watauga County Republican Party needed to find a new face for itself, and it did last Saturday. It elected Dr. James Goff, a history prof at ASU, as its new chair. Goff is author of "Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel," published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2002. The introductory chapter of the book is on-line here on the UNC website and is all the more interesting for putting the people I grew up among at the very center of U.S. history. These were and are people who never thought they might be important, never suspected that their religious traditions actually defined American democracy, but their music soared. Cotton field sinners and saints alike might have guffawed at the thought that what they thought and how they sang was important, but there they are in Goff's book, and he's done a good job with them.

Dr. Goff's other current distinction is that he co-hosts "The Right Side" with Jim Hastings on WATA on Wednesday mornings, which is not exactly a new face for the Republican Party. Quite the contrary, "The Right Side" is the old face, the angry face, the downright scowling face, the I'm-agin-it-if-I-didn't-think-of-it-first visage, the rich man's frowning mug -- mad about taxes, mad about new schools because they come with taxes, mad about poor people sucking at the rich man's teat all day long and all night long and in between too, mad about guvmint because it runs on taxes and persecutes the successful and even prosecutes the successful for not paying enough taxes, all of which means guvmint and Democrats need to go straight to hell and will go straight to hell, too, and TOGETHER, since guvmint IS Democrats, the godless, communist, socialist, gay, tree-huggin' bunch of 'em!

THAT face of the Republican Party.

Dr. Goff is the quieter, nicer counterpart to the west wind that blows perpetually hot out of Jim Hastings, who was himself both the local Republican Party chair and the state of North Carolina Republican Party chair, until a scandal about unpaid taxes forced his resignation from the latter office.

So the question naturally presents itself about this "new face" of the Republican Party. Does an independent mind come with that face, and Gospel instincts, or is the new face really just a pleasant mask to hide what has not and will not change at all, for if "The Right Side" is any indication of trends in the local Republican Party, it's in fact in the process of contorting itself into something uglier, angrier, and more extreme than we've previously seen.

Some have taken Mr. Hastings' recent attacks on "socialist Boone" and on Mayor Loretta Clawson, along with the revelations of his hand in all that trumped up Templeton tempest (mentioned in Jason Reagan's recent editorial in the Watauga Democrat), as proof positive that the Republican Party, rather than trending toward the sunny side of the street, is prepared rather to root deeper into the dark of the shade.

In between singing gospel songs, my mother liked to warn me that I would be known for the company I kept. Wasn't any way out of that. She would know what I was becoming by the friends I made, by the pack I ran with.

It's my reasonable expectation that that old doctrine still holds true. We shall see who's actually running the Watauga County Republican Party soon enough, and what face it will show us.

ON DEBATES AND NOT LISTENING

I've taken some heat for saying the Dems -- specifically John Edwards -- should debate on Fox News (see "A Domino Theory" below), despite how much I disdain the network for the way it's beat the drum for neoconservative warmongering, etc. (and that "et cetera" covers a LOT of provocation, rest assured). Not all the heat I've taken is apparent in the comments posted below. Some of it is apparent only in the way my wife has eyed me across the dinner table and in an off-hand comment she made yesterday, along the lines of "I think you're freakin' wrong about frickin' Fox News."

Haven't changed my mind.

But am interested to see if the high dudgeon of Fox News commentators, who are currently and loudly calling the Dems netroots the equivalent of Nazis and Soviet-era Stalinists for urging the Fox boycott, will hold in light of Air America's offer to sponsor Republican candidate debates. Consistency might demand the Fox blowhards urge their would-be standard-bearers to appear in debates sponsored by their most liberal rival media outlet.

BANISH CELL PHONES TO THE OUTER REACHES OF THE UNIVERSE!

The cranky old man to the left is a self-portrait made immediately after encountering my ten thousandth four hundred & fifty-sixth automobile driver talking on a cell phone while allegedly driving their cars.

I get treated to other people's cell phone conversations in the grocery store, standing in line for coffee, even once during a prayer in church. Never was Maxwell Smart's "Cone of Silence" more needed.

But people driving while talking on cell phones are a threat to life and limb, unlike the jerks in line to pay for popcorn, who are merely rude and self-involved.

"Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. surveyed 1,200 drivers and reported in January that 73 percent of them phone while they drive. More than 40 countries from Australia to Zimbabwe have banned the use of hand-held phones while driving. So have the District of Columbia and four states including California."

The North Carolina legislature decided last year to deny the right to phone while driving to those under 18, but what a crock! A 45-year-old with a cell phone is every bit as distracted as a 17-year-old with a hot date on Friday night.

Rep. Paul Luebke of Durham is trying to change that. We wish him good luck but predict he'll have approximately zero success. Even members of the legislature love their cell phones.

EVANGELICALS BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING; DOBSON'S PANTIES, IN A WAD

The showdown between Mullah James Dobson, whose moral indignation runs the gamut from gay marriage to lesbian adoption, and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), who have decided that global warming just might be a "moral issue," came to a (pardon the expression) head this weekend. The NAE reaffirmed "creation care" as a new part of its Christian agenda.

Meanwhile, the gnashing of teeth among Dobson, Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, and other Christian Right tools of the conservative movement threatened to drown out the heavenly choir.

A DOMINO THEORY

First, it was Markos at dKos calling on Democratic presidential candidates to refuse to participate in a Fox News-sponsored debate in Nevada in August.

Sen. John Edwards toppled first. He announced he would boycott said debate.

Then in a speech Roger Ailes, Fox News chief, told a series of jokes, riffing on Osama bin Laden, ending with this:

And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don't know if it's true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, "Why can't we catch this guy?"

To be perfectly technical, Ailes' joke was at the dim-witted president's expense, not Barak's, but the Nevada Democratic Party, which had agreed to accept Fox News as a sponsor of the presidential debate that John Edwards was making hay on boycotting, immediately seized on the Ailes joke as a pretext for canceling the debate altogether. Ailes "went too far," said Nevada State Democratic Party Chairman Tom Collins and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, speaking in unison as quickly as possible.

We're no fan of Fox News. But this approach to dealing with its "fauxness" is just dumb. Staging boycotts does not debilitate the enemy. Boycotts do exactly the opposite, puff the enemy up into a huge bogeyman. Holding up Fox's "fair & balanced" coverage to ridicule, a la Jon Stewart, is a far more productive approach.

So we find ourselves in some agreement with the jowly gnome who runs Fox. Thursday night Roger Ailes said:

Any candidate for high office from either party who believes he can blacklist any news organization is making a terrible mistake about journalists .... Recently, pressure groups are forcing candidates to conclude that the best strategy for journalists is divide and conquer, to only appear on those networks and venues that give them favorable coverage.

The course John Edwards has set out on, and which other Democrats are copying, will become increasingly difficult to maintain, and counter-productive, to boot.

Take a lesson from Jon Stewart, boys!

HELP VIRGINIA FIND A SUITABLE JOB

"In politics, when the folks at home -- who know you best -- start voting for someone else it's time to find a new occupation."

Carter Wrenn wrote the above sentence with John Edwards in mind -- since Edwards, according to new polls, is struggling to stay even in North Carolina with Hillary and Barak -- but how appropriate is that line for Carter's fellow arch-conservative Virginia Foxx?

Perhaps we should start a contest: "Other Occupations Virginia Foxx Is Cut Out For."

Samples:
paint stripper
fight club promoter
immigrant relocation services
rubberstamp supplies
prestidigitation
seamless guttering
clear cutting
massage therapist

DICK BURR ENDORSES McCAIN

Sen. Burr took time off yesterday from defending Big Tobacco's right to hook yet another generation on death to endorse a fading horse in the Republican presidential sweepstakes.

John McCain ain't looking all that hot at the moment.

Some formerly high-powered fellow N.C. Republicans have also endorsed McCain, viz. perennial also-ran Richard Vinroot and "get-me-off-this-sinking-ship" Ferrell Blount, the former NC Republican Party chair who resigned on Election Day last November.

With support like that in N.C., McCain seems like a tired idea indeed.