Heaven and Hell in Orlando

I spent this morning in an Orlando megachurch listening to a preacher talk about heaven on earth.  As if someone felt I should be shown the alternative, I am spending the evening in the Orlando airport. If there is a place more like hell on earth, I’m having a hard time imagining it.

The terminal where I am waiting is like an overcrowded bus station. Since Orlando is home to Disneyland, it seems roughly half the people waiting for their delayed flights are under the age of 12. I usually don’t mind traveling with children, but being stuck in a waiting area with what amounts to 18 elementary school field trips so close to a child’s bed time is next to unbearable. There are children wrestling, dancing, jumping on and off the rows of torn  vinyl chairs, and, above all, whining in about 20 different languages. It is a small world, after all.

Huckabee Changes Faith & Politics Webpage

Mike Huckabee, and ordained Southern Baptist minister who is now the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, has raised concerns about blurring the separation of church and state. In an apparent response to address these concerns, the Huckabee campaign has added new text to a webpage devoted to “Faith and Politics.” It begins with new language that states that “The First Ammendment requires that expressions of faith be neither prohibited nor preferred,” along with a checklist of other  principles meant to encapsulate the preacher-politicians beliefs. The page used to begin at paragraph 2, which begins “Faith is my life–it defines me.”

Building the Choir to Preach to

“I even have a choir,” said former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee while marveling at the turnout at a 7:30 AM event at the Best Western Hotel in Marshalltown, Iowa. The crowd of mostly seniors and middle-aged white folks sat on all sides of a small stage.

“Looks familiar,” Huckabee said of the layout. “For a long time I was a pastor, I’d get up, the congregation would be here [in front of me], the choir would be here [behind me].” He enjoys playfully riffing on an off-hand joke in his speeches. He turned to his ersatz choir: “You ready?” Turning back to the chuckling crowd, he added, “The only thing we need now are ushers and we’ll be ready to receive the offering!”

These opening comments from the new front runner for the GOP presidential nomination may feed the caricature that Huckabee is a Christian fundamentalist who’s grown too big for his pulpit. Indeed, his Christmas ad now airing in Iowa—in which he describes “what really matters” during the holiday “is the celebration of the birth of Christ” along with being with friends and family—has been reported as evidence of his bible-thumping ways. And his surge among Iowa Republican caucus goers, 40% of whom self-identify as evangelical Christians, may give the impression that the GOP base is still looking for the second coming of Pat Robertson, the preacher embraced by Iowans in 1988 for his political crusade for Christian values.

But this perception doesn’t account for his appeal to every room of Iowa voters.

The United State’s View of New York

Inverting the mindset captured by the iconic New Yorker cover, “A New Yorker’s View of the United States,” Des Moines has christened a newly revitalized neighborhood in the shadow of the state capitol the “East Village.” I’m sitting in a coffee shop in the “Soho” building, which houses a sprinkling of small stores. The form part of a few-block island of attempted cuteness in what looks like an area that’s still pretty industrial.

Des Moines commitment to the New York theme is limited, however–the Machine Shed is a farm-themed restaurant, not the leather bar a New Yorker might expect. (They do, however, serve a yummy apple-stuffed pork chop.)

Red Iowaves

My rental car knew why I was in Iowa–to talk to evangelical Christians about the environment. When I turned the key in the ignition, the radio turned on to a Christian station, Family Radio (91.3 FM), playing a segment called “Creation Moment,” dedicated to explicating how the natural world “proves” the truth of biblical creation. This episode claimed that animals in any given place communicate in different pitch levels, keeping out of each others’ frequencies in the same way radio stations do not broadcast on the same bandwith as their competitors. If radio stations need the FCC to get along, the host’s reasoning seemed to go, then animals must need God to work out such an orderly arrangement.

When Family Radio switched to irritating, organ-backed classical devotional music, I searched for Christian radio in its usual haunts on the AM dial. Rush Limbaugh was coming out of my speakers as soon as I switched bands. The next station my seek button landed on had Bill O’Reilly and his “Radio Factor.” I finally found a Christian station–a broadcast by Endtime Ministries–but could only listen for a few minutes of the host’s interpretation of the Israel-Palestinian peace talks as a prelude to the coming of the Anti-Christ for only a few minutes before I retreated to the comfort of National Public Radio.

This tour through the far right of Christian conservatism was jarringly different from what I’d been reading on the plane, Joel Hunter’s Right Wing, Wrong Bird.

Bicycle Graveyard?

I think I’ve found the spot where bicycles come to die. Inspired by the legend of the Elephant Graveyard, it appears bicycles slink off to the East Village to take their final resting place alongside the rusted remains of their predecessors.

These photos are from yesterday:

SCHIPping Away at the Bush Legacy

It’s hard to imagine a worse PR move for a politician than to keep children from seeing the doctor. But President Bush seems to relish playing the role of the Grinch who Stole Health Care, promising to veto bipartisan legislation passed this week to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). SCHIP is a 10-year old system jointly funded by the states and the federal government that provides health insurance to 6 million middle-class children, mostly those living in families between 200% and 300% of the Federal Poverty Level. In partnership with the program for the poorest of the poor, Medicaid, the federal government currently assists one in four American children with the cost of health insurance.

But there are an estimated 9 million more uninsured children, many of whom are eligible for these programs but not enrolled because the federal government caps SCHIP spending. A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House and Senate passed legislation this week to allocate an additional $60 billion over the next 5 years. The President is trying to block this expansion. In addition to his oft-repeated veto threat, his administration went on the offensive earlier this month, using its existing authority to kill a New York plan to enroll an additional 70,000 children.

Ah, madinejad.

I biked straight into a circus when I arrived at school yesterday. Columbia’s main gate was thick with protesters denouncing the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There were journalists (and journalism students) blocking the sidewalk and police demanding school IDs before letting people onto campus. As I struggled to fish out my wallet, all sweaty from my ride from my home in Washington Heights, I was sure someone was going to panic that my duffel bag contained a bomb. Once inside the Big Top–I mean campus–there was a crowd gathered on the steps of the domed Lowe Library, listening to an orderly lineup of students on either side of the controversy taking turns to voice their opinions.

I just wanted to go to the gym. As the hoopla surrounding Ahmadinejad’s speech built last week, I couldn’t help but tune it out. I could see both sides of the argument, and I found the absolutism on either side hard to take. On the one hand, giving a platform to an antisemitic hatemonger who is likely pursuing nuclear weapons is questionable. On the other, dialog is the best antidote to war in the long run, and listening to a country with which we disagree so strongly means hearing a lot of things we don’t like to hear. I walked over to the athletic center blocking out the signs that littered the walk. When I walked to the journalism school after my workout, there was a group of Jewish students singing and dancing in a circle beneath the campus’ Greek-revival buildings.

Bush Consultant No Longer Anti-Humanity

From HotlineBlog:

Bush-Cheney ‘04 adman Fred Davis has joined the Bono-endorsed anti-poverty non-profit ONE campaign as its sole media consultant.

“It’s nice to be on the side of all of humanity this time,” said Davis.

Quiet Passage

I can’t be the only person wondering what Marcelle Marceau’s last words were.

The mime passed away in Paris at the age of 84.