Author: R J Adams

Have you noticed the inflection in the voice, the lowered tone coupled with a downturn of the eyes? News anchors spend hours in front of the bathroom mirror practicing that somber look, the dirge-like vocal that’s always a precursor to really bad news.

It’s needed frequently in America. Never an NBC Nightly News goes past that some great, catastrophic, news story isn’t preceded by the bathroom mirror look, and a practiced flickering of lashes as ace anchorman Brian Williams swiftly lowers the eyelids.

Tonight it was a re-run. You know the one. Gunmen runs amok, kills many, turns gun on himself. No, it wasn’t a school this time. For a bit of variety the loony with the shooter chose a mall in Nebraska, brimming with Christmas shoppers.

What a juicy story for the media. All those fear-crazed shoppers dashing hither and thither, screaming and shouting, then daring to whine and winge just ’cause it happened.

Don’t come crying to me, dear. When was the last time you voted for gun control?

That’s why the somber look and the elegiacal voice are so important. The American news just wouldn’t be the same without them. After all, if anyone actually did anything about the shooting sprees embarked on by pre-pubescent, weapon-toting morons, who probably were buying guns at the local Wal-Mart long before they were old enough to vote, like – for example – pressuring those somnolent old farts snoozing their lives away in the comfortable leather armchairs on Capital Hill to introduce something loosely called “gun control”, all that contorting and head-bowing in front of the bathroom mirror would be a waste of time, now wouldn’t it?

Americans love to whine. They make an art-form of it. By now, you’d think they’d be used to shopping at malls frequented by psychotic killers; schools regularly carved up by teen students put out by low grades, or gas stations targeted by ex-military snipers suffering depression due to a lack of mother’s breast milk.

But, obviously, they’re not. They still whine and complain everytime it happens, then immediately rush out to vote for their local NRA candidate.

Consequently, nothing ever gets done.

Let’s look at today’s NBC Nightly News in detail. After the Nebraska shooting came the ongoing story of flooding in the American West. Had this excess of water arrived a couple of weeks earlier, it may have helped put out the forest fires that ravaged California through November. But it didn’t. Nature is rarely that obliging, particularly when both fire and flood result from global warming.

Is America doing anything to prevent catastrophic climate change? No.

Child obesity means the next generation won’t live as long as their parents, warns NBC’s resident ‘medical expert’, insisting:

“Brian, something must be done now!” Cue lowered eyelids from the anchor.

Fat kids have been around in America for a generation, in fact, almost as far back as 1940 when Dick and Mac McDonald opened their first restaurant. Of course, you can’t blame old Dick and Mac. They didn’t realize the consequences of their actions would send thousands of American kids to an early grave. That would be akin to blaming Henry Ford for global warming.

Responsible nations can look after their younger generations by legislating against too much fatty, unhealthy food in school diets, and pressuring corporations that run poison parlors on Main Street to provide healthier, more wholesome food. Of course, governments only do that when they in turn are pressured by their citizens. It seems America’s citizens would rather watch their kids die of diabetes and premature heart disease, than upset the corporate boardrooms.

Brian William’s vocal tones sank even lower with the latest report from the Government Accountability Office stating a catastrophic accident was bound to happen soon at an American airport, given the state of the national air traffic control system. One Congressman almost wept as he muttered, “The FAA has let us down….sob…”

What a total load of balderdash! The FAA is a US government department. That’s why the report came from the Government Accountability Office. The US ATC systems have been broken for years, with the full knowledge of Congress and the president. The old farts have done nothing to force the FAA into upgrading and improving the system. They could start by awarding them some money to do it with.

Yet, is it an election issue? Are the people demanding safer air ways?

No. They’re more concerned as to whether Hilary Clinton is religious enough, or if Barack Obama’s truly a Christian, or a cleverly closeted Muslim.

That’s what inflames the American people.

They can be gunned down in droves, incinerated or drowned, fall out of the skies from forty thousand feet, and let their kids stuff themselves till they burst like over-inflated pumpkins, but elect a politician who doesn’t say his prayers every night?

NEVER!

Meanwhile, Brian Williams is cosseting his vocal chords and plucking his eyebrows, ready for tomorrow night’s lugubrious performance.

Filed under: Apathy

Is America a democracy, or has it secretly metamorphosed into a closet theocracy?

For a country once so proud of its traditions – the land where freedom of religion was always hailed as sacrosanct and the separation of church and state set in Constitutional concrete – there is a awful lot of emphasis these days on a politician’s religious belief systems.

This is really nothing new, of course. When JFK was campaigning for the presidency in the sixties, his Catholic affiliations led many to question his suitability for the highest office. This week Mitt Romney, a Mormon, is taking a leaf out of Kennedy’s book by making a speech to Republicans clarifying his religious position in the hope it’ll gain him additional support.

Giuliani has slid backwards down the polls due to an unacceptably irreligious lifestyle, and Barack Obama has gone to great lengths emphasizing his Christian, rather than Muslim, beliefs.

Why are these factors relevant in today’s United States? If freedom of religion is truly sacrosanct, should it matter if Obama were a Muslim, or if Giuliani is, in reality, a closet atheist? Do a person’s religious beliefs effect their ability to carry out the duties of the Office of President of the United States, given the Constitutional separation laid down by the Founding Fathers?

Or, has the concrete begun to crack?

Much has been said and written about the present incumbent’s beliefs and his reliance on divine inspiration in the business of decision making. Given his record over the last eight years, it hardly seems a dependable way to run a kid’s tea party, let alone a nation, yet millions of Americans find any other method unacceptable.

What about the millions of non-Christians living in this country? It would appear they have no political voice at all. As one who happens to consider orthodox religious belief a serious handicap to life, I don’t particularly relish having someone with that sort of impediment running the affairs of state. Yet it would seem I have no choice.

In a true democracy a politician’s religion, if he has one, should have no bearing, either on his ability to secure sufficient votes, or to do the job he was elected for.

Recently, ex-British prime minister Tony Blair disclosed to the world that he kept his religious faith under wraps for the years he was in office, for fear it would cost him votes. The British people knew he was a Christian, but they couldn’t care less. He could have been a Buddhist or a Hindu, or even a Muslim, and it wouldn’t have been a problem just so long as he didn’t demand the whole British Parliament bowed five times to Mecca every day.

You see, that’s what a democracy is all about; not caring how people are, or what they believe, just so long as they keep it to themselves and don’t interfere in the lives of others.

Some insist there was once a time when America was like that?

Webster’s dictionary defines a theocracy thus:

“government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided”

Everyone of the front runners, both Democrat and Republican, in the present race for their party’s nomination has stated categorically that their Christian religious belief is the prime guiding factor in their lives and work.

Is America still a democracy, or has it secretly metamorphosed into a closet theocracy?

Filed under: Whose country?

Sparrow Chat originally birthed as a Blogger site way back in 2003. Most of the old posts were lost when the site moved to a WordPress format last year, but a few are still on my hard-drive, and I’ve recently been perusing them. Some cause a flinch, but a few are, perhaps, worthy of re-issue. See what you think. I’ve decided to throw the odd one into the pot of literary stew for you to sample and offer your comments.

Here’s one from January 29th, 2005. I don’t remember its original title, but it’s an old British hobby, so I’ll call it simply:

“HAVING A GO AT THE GERMANS”

“My grandmother swore by Irish linen. She wouldn’t have any other bed linen in her house. She used to say, “You only ever have to buy your Irish linen once, it’ll last you a lifetime.” She was right. My mother is eighty-two, but she still has some of Grandma’s Irish linen bed sheets in her closet to this day.

When I was younger, I lusted after an Audi motor car. The German Audi saloon looked so sleek and elegant. Every time one passed by I would stare hypnotically and drool with envy. Years later, I had the opportunity to own an Audi. Grinning with eager anticipation, I slid into plush seats ready for the thrill of the test drive. On returning to the showroom, I said, “Sorry, no thanks” to the salesman and walked disappointedly away. I know German industry took a bashing after WW2, but that was no reason, as I saw, to build their suspensions out of old, cast-iron, railway tracks. Maybe they didn’t – but that’s what it felt like.

Not that I have anything against the Germans, you understand. Well, ok, – tales of Major Pete “Hun-Hunter” Madison single-handedly casting dread into the Third Reich and seeing off half the German army with much “Achtung –ing” and “Donner und Blitzen-ing” to accompany their downfall, was prevalent in British comics when I was a boy, and I guess such indoctrinal nonsense may have penetrated my psyche just a little, but overall I have no axe to grind with the German people.

Neither did I totally believe the rumor, circulated around Spanish seaside resorts in the mid-seventies by the British, that German tourists, still in their night attire, sneaked from their hotel rooms before dawn to lay beach towels on the sand nearest to the bathing areas, with the sole intention of keeping us Brits from acquiring the best spots. Though I have to admit, finding the only vacant bit of sand on three miles of beach to be only feet away from the main Barcelona highway, where getting a tan meant risking asphyxiation from diesel fumes, didn’t do much for Anglo-Gallic entente cordiale.

Trekking half a mile to the sea, across a beach packed with guttural-sounding, sweaty German bodies toasting in the hot, Mediterranean sun was not normally my idea of heaven, but the consolation for me, as a young man on holiday and vainly seeking sexual adventure, was the glorious views of young German womanhood basking on the sand about me. Trends on certain Spanish beaches in the seventies allowed for woman to discard their bikini tops without fear of arrest. Even where laws didn’t permit such activities, the smaller villages usually sported only one policeman; an archetypical, bloated, heavily mustached, macho cop married to a middle-aged and overweight Spanish matron with half a dozen kids at home, who happily spent official duty time sat in his car on the edge of the sand, binoculars raised, and scanning the mammary-littered beach with obvious sexual relish.

The German female is typically big and blonde, with breasts to match. Stepping lightly between and around such a boob-fest often resulted in stumbling onto the bodies of German males, as eyes on stalks riveted on their girl-friend’s anatomy failed to gauge where I was walking. Causing discomfort to the glorious female’s mate was simply an additional bonus, so long as he wasn’t too big of course, in which case a hasty apology and rapid retreat were the order of the day.

A few months ago my ten year old, British electric razor groaned its last. Not wishing to return to those primitive times when we sloshed lather over our faces and scraped, I took a trip to Wal-Mart intent on researching the latest in razor technology. The home brands looked a bit cheap and nasty, and while the Japanese are renowned for their electronics I somehow didn’t fancy my electric shaver having ‘Panasonic’ stamped on it – for reasons even I couldn’t quite determine – so I eventually selected an expensive, sleek, and powerful-looking model manufactured by Braun.

Once home with my new acquisition, I eagerly unpacked the gleaming monster from its preformed plastic housing, determined on a test drive without delay. Alas – it was the Audi motor car all over again. I knew Braun was a German company even before I bought the razor – but hey! – how long are these people going to continue using old, cast-iron, railway tracks to build their products? This is the 21st century for goodness sake!

Just like the motor car, their shaver looks good, but doesn’t feel good. The ride it gave my face was as hard and uncomfortable as the jolting their motor car delivered to my backside. And the razor doesn’t shave properly. It is heavy, causing my hand to ache long before I am finished shaving, and leaves an unacceptable stubble. I even spent further money replacing the foil and cutters, in a vain attempt to make it work.

I have pleasant memories of an Irish folk group – the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem – who, back in the seventies, entertained audiences throughout the world with their songs and comic banter. One of my favorites was a song simply called, “William Bloat”*. It tells the tale of a Protestant Irishman who suffers from a nagging wife. One day William determines to do away with her. He takes his razor and slits her throat, but then, in a fit of remorse decides to “hang himself from the pantry shelf”, using the bed sheets as a rope. After soundly cursing the Pope he leaps to his death, and the eternal fires of Hell, never realizing that his wife survives. The last line of the song finishes thus:

“He went to Hell for his wife as well – but she’s still alive and sinnin’
For the razor blade was German made – but the rope was Belfast linen”

* Sadly the original Clancy Bros YouTube video has been removed for copyright reasons, so this link is to, in my opinion, a much inferior version by a group called the “Jolly Rogers”.

Filed under: Sparrow archives