Sunday Funnies & Arts

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Twenty-six years after the release of "Born in the USA," Glenn (Mr. Cool) Beck has discovered that the Bruce Springsteen epic is not the patriotic anthem he had supposed it to be for over half of his life. A stunned Beck has awakened to the cold reality that BUSA criticizes the treatment of young men used as cannon fodder and then cast aside when they return home from war. After revealing that "This Land Is Your Land" is also unpatriotic, a dazed and disillusioned Beck robotically recites the lyrics to BUSA, then shakes his head sorrowfully over the solace they must bring to Cuba and the "Soviet bloc."

All of which begs the following questions:

• Mr. Beck, is it untrue that some young men from dead end towns enlisted in the Army and went to Vietnam?
• Mr. Beck, is it also untrue that some young men chose the military as an alternative to jail?
• Mr. Beck, is it untrue that many of them lost buddies in battle, and that said buddies often had Vietnamese girlfriends?
• Mr. Beck, is it untrue that these men returned home to a country that largely turned its back on them?
• Mr. Beck, is it unpatriotic of Mr. Springsteen to point out these realities and lament them? Put another way, is it wrong to say that we can do better by the young people we ask to die for us? If so, why?
• Mr. Beck, why is it unpatriotic of Mr. Springsteen to point out national flaws, but o.k. for you and the teabaggers to do the same?

Texas Board of Education Blues: I read this and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I love Texas. The music is sensational. All of the people are like no one you'll ever meet in your life, and that's true in a positive sense for many of them. I have lifelong friends there. I identify with it more than any place I've lived. But if my kids were in Texas schools, I'd feel obligated to go over every assigned reading with them and point out the errors: "That's wrong. That's wrong. That's misleading. That's sort of right but incomplete. The correct term is 'capitalism,' not 'the free enterprise system.' And God is a matter of faith, not of fact, but don't tell anyone at school that I said so."

Board member David Bradley, who apparently derives his expertise in the Constitution from his work selling insurance and real estate, rides tall in the saddle and bravely asserts that

I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state. I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.

Well, no one has ever said that words "separation of church and state" are in the Constitution. But the establishment clause of the First Amendment states plainly that "Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion." Thomas Jefferson, a reasonably intelligent if not especially religious man, wrote that establishment clause created "a wall of separation between church and State." James Madison also referred to the "total separation between church and state." In 1947, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black used Jefferson's words to argue that the

establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the federal government can set up a church.

In other words, the plain wording of the establishment clause and over 200 years of commentary, scholarship, and court opinions say that the Constitution means exactly what David Bradley says it does not: That there is a wall of separation between church and state.

Meanwhile, board member Don McLeroy insists that textbooks include vote tallies for 1960s civil rights legislation, smugly claiming that "Republicans need a little credit for that. I think it’s going to surprise some students." Now, it's true that many Republicans voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act. It's also true that no southern Republican supported either bill, and that the '64 bill was weakened to attract Republican support. As for the Voting Rights Act, President Lyndon Johnson introduced it within a week after the first Selma march, when few non-southern politicians of any stripe cared to be identified with fire hoses and police dogs loosed on peaceful marchers.

Moreover, inclusion of the vote tallies without interpretation implies that the Republican party of today is the same as it was 45 years ago, when it actually had room for social moderates and even out-and-out liberals. The vote for civil rights legislation legislation fell largely along ideological lines, with liberals and moderates of either party supporting it and conservatives of either party opposing it. Today's conservatives would deride the Republicans who voted for the civil rights bills as RINOs. You think that will make it into the textbooks?...

When you think the night has seen your mind...

Peter Tibbles on Patsy Cline...

Long abandoned...

Danny Westneat discovers that health insurance premiums are skyrocketing more and faster than the MSM has reported. And that's in shadow of health care reform. What do you think would happen if the Republicans were ever to get their way and allow insurance companies to sell from the most poorly regulated states?...

Starbucks, which side are you on?...




Concerned that his bitter critique had been co-opted, Springsteen often performs a slashing, deconstructed acoustic arrangement that stressed the anger of the lyrics: