Author: Hans Eisenbeis

God bless good spellers. We’ve been watching the national spelling bee with some interest, and we’re proud of our two local finalists. But it should be no surprise that we’re somehow able to find something mean to say about it.

Like energy drinks, bike riding, and deep-dish pizza, spelling bees have gone extreme. Just read through the inevitable profiles of the kids who make it to the final rounds today and tomorrow. Most of them are obsessive-compulsive savants who spend most of their free time reading Websters Unabridged. True, the better competitors learn much about linguistic structures and etymology (the better to guess at the spellings of words they have never seen before) and these are noble pursuits. But there is no way around the simple truth that a great speller today is a memorizer of words that never get used except in spelling bees. (Today’s gems, typical obscurities from the sciences: “Narcohypnia,” numbness from walking; and “selenography,” study of the surface of the moon.) Many great spellers grow up to wear bow ties, and that cannot be a good thing.

Also, this: Each day we receive two or three “words of the day” from reputable sources like Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com. We used to try to make a special effort to use these words at some point during the day, but we found the exercise a real strain of credibility.

It would be interesting to interview whoever is responsible for selecting a word of the day. There seems to be a subtle art to it. The perfect word of the day often has a subtle connection to current events (say “casus belli” comes up the day we invade Iran, or “rough trade” arrives in our in-box the day we hear that our president has a thing for gay, bald male escorts), and it is a word that you think you’ve heard before, but didn’t have enough confidence in your understanding of to actually pronounce it yourself.

And we have to say we can totally detect when the editors at these services are coasting–when they give lame, elliptical synonyms that are not in common usage because they sound too much like another, better word that means exactly the same thing. (Say, “pliant” as opposed to “pliable,” or “sough” rather than “sigh.”) These words are for the spelling bees and the wearers of bow-ties, and we generally have no truck with them.

Apropos of last week’s post on this month’s cover story, we received a thoughtful comment from Christian Dude. He took issue with our casting Sen. Dean Johnson as a possible candidate to head up a putative “Christian Left.” He wanted to hear more about what Sen. Johnson has to say about the role of religion in politics. Fair enough, we thought. Johnson more or less dismissed the question, saying there is no serious role for instituional religion in politics.

Here is why: The Christian Left cannot in good conscience legislate morality from any specific denominational or confessional position. It is an earmark of the Left–whether it is Christian, Jewish, secular, or Satan-worshipping–that diversity is a positive value, and specific creeds should hold no sway in the body politic.

True, it may be possible to compile a sort of universal code of conduct that transcends religious differences, but has civic/spiritual overtones. In fact, that’s been done–it’s commonly known as the US Constittion, the Bill of Rights, and the Criminal Code. This is what scholars have long identified as the “civil religion” of the US. Modern efforts to rewrite any facet of these documents along denominational lines is to subvert them in the most fundamental way. And let’s make no mistake here: The Christian Right, as we have called it, operates like an exclusive, self-righteous, lockstep political entity–essentially a denomination that has become active where it is not all that welcome. (It is not welcome for the simple reason that most Americans are not fanatically self-righteous moral prigs who see the world only through the eyes of a conservative evangelist.) The Christian Right perceives itself as judge, jury, and legislature, and it does not tolerate dissent on the most obvious, discrete political issues like abortion and taxes. It sees “diversity,” especially of political opinion and identity, as widespread error, and it sees itself as victimized by this secular affliction. Even though there are significant differences in theologies on the right, these people do not waste much time on rational colloquy, and typically cut straight to the chase of self-service through the bizarre idolization of Jesus Christ as the personal patron saint of conspicuous consumerism. (As a wise man recently said to us, “Who do you think Jesus would associate with if he came back today?”)

As a slightly related aside, we strongly recommend last week’s article in the New Yorker about “intelligent design,” the beguiling pseudo-scientific effort to debunk Darwinism. It speaks to the deep neurosis so many Christians have that reality is not sufficient unto itself, that despite all overwhelming evidence to the contrary, there is a God the takes a personal interest in my affairs, the state of my soul, and the intricate mechanism of all life. That life itself is not sufficiently miraculous without some Prime Mover in a toga somewhere beyond the stars. More to the point, these people are pushing intelligent design not to do what science normally does–limn the working laws of physical nature without respect to the existence of an unseen deity–but to support a political and social agenda. As writer H. Allen Orr so eloquently points out, intelligent design has never actually succeeded in any meaningful way in the laboratory, which is generally where legitimate science is practiced under the arcane conceits of experimentation, repetition, and peer review.

On a recent episode of TV’s best series, House, the good doctor suffered through a near-death experience himself. He saw the white light, he saw the future. His colleagues were galled that Dr. House would dismiss these visions as “physical, chemical reactions” occuring in a decommissioned brain. “That’s it? Is that all there is? Why?” they demanded to know. Dr. House had the best, most succint answer we have ever heard, in all our years of dabbling in theology, religion, politics, and culture. He said, “Because I prefer to believe that this [life] is not a test.”

I’m out the rest of the week, but encourage you to check out the new issue of the magazine, which rocks pretty good, I think.

If you’re especially nuts for silly gossip and local crazy-talk, and you want to know why we’ve been getting so many dirty looks from our so-called competitors lately, look at this and try to imagine how much fun we had putting it together.

Why can’t we use our powers for good? Because there’s so much evil in the world…

It took us three days to get through Michael Sokolove’s provocative piece in the New York Times magazine about Sen. Rick Santorum—partly because we couldn’t stop talking about it before reading to the end. (A long, loud discussion over beers at Pizza Luce on Sunday night was especially energetic.) Of course, we can’t plan these things, but we’ve had a remarkable run of good luck in our timing lately. We call it “planned serendipity.”

Sokolove’s piece on the rise of religion in national politics compliments our new cover story nicely. But where he keeps the frame tightly on Sen. Santorum, and does not wander off to compare him to any larger trends of increasingly noisy Christians in national politics, our story looked at a possible Democratic alternative, at least as it presents itself in the Minnesota state legislature—a Christian Left, as it were.

Is there an equivalent counterpart on the left, an equal and opposite religious impulse coming from the DFL? Not really, and here’s why: The left is not comfortable dealing in high moral or religious language for one simple reason—Democrats value diversity, and recognize that statements of confessional faith are inherently exclusionary and judgmental. It is not possible to speak of simple Christian morality without alienating non-christians, whether they are Jews, Muslims, atheists, or free-thinkers. Plenty of Christians are not comfortable with Christianity’s ascendency in American politics because they understand this. This country was founded in religious dissent, not religious consensus. Sen. Santorum and his many colleagues have made it pretty clear just how they feel about dissent of any kind, but they are particularly blind to the possibility that a person can be moral without being pretentious or self-righteous or even Christian about it.

As our cover story makes clear, a person like Sen. Dean Johnson recognizes as a key value the understanding that there are intractable differences when it comes to certain moral issues and positions. You can not legislate faith-based morality for the simple reason that there are hundreds of differenct faiths that cannot, should not, and will not agree.

It is time to put this literalist approach to scripture and religion out of its misery. We will no longer argue with anyone about what the Bible says or means (even when it simply “means what it says”) until our petitioner can read in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek—the languages in which most of the books of the present-day “bible” were actually composed. (Come to think of it, we’ll spot you the English translation, and you tell us which bible is it that ought to be interpreted literally? The Catholic or Protestant bible? KJ, NIV, RSV, INIV? Vulgate or Pentateuch as source document? Answers! We want answers!)

More to the point, we feel good about one thing, especially for our friends who are obsessed with Google: Finally, Rick Santorum’s search engine results will reflect something other than Dan Savage’s definition, which has slowly been inching its way toward Webster’s, and is one of the most euphonious coinages we’ve ever heard.

On Friday, Timothy Noah published the results of his online survey which asked the question, “If you had to pay to read each New York Times columnist, how much would you pay?” Apropos of the Times announcing that they were going to place their columnists in a premium subscription-only area of the Times website, Noah was asking readers to rank the Times columnists according to relative value. Krugman won, Friedman came in a close second, Dowd finished middle of the pack, Brooks and Tierney finished dead last.

Several interesting things to say about this. First, Noah dismisses the polarized partisan results as a liberal bias among Slate’s readers, but we’d bet dollars to donuts that Slate’s demographic profile is virtually the same as the Times (especially the Times online). Now that the Washington Post owns Slate, in fact, it will be interesting to see whether the Times continues to be allowed to poach Slate staffers, no matter what Jack Shafer may say about it.

Second, Noah admits that he was floored by the response he got to his little poll. (Again, what did he expect? That no one who reads the Times reads Slate?) Idiotically, he conducted the poll by email, and was therefore unprepared for the one thousand ballots he received in the four hours of voting. He threw in the towel, and decided to hand count only the last half-hour of votes.

Finally, we see a clear and crucial difference in the way the Post will run Slate, versus how Microsoft would have done it. It’s the programming, dummy!

It will be interesting to watch the gauges at NYTimes.com after the premium subscription goes into effect. Doubtless the columnists will suddenly disappear forever from the “most emailed” or “most read” queues or whatever it is that tells you who is winning the daily popularity contest at the Times. But maybe not. Anyone who has ever tried to hide premium content from the masses has not succeeded, at least not 100 percent. We continue to think of it as a reward for those with the time, energy, and perseverance to find it free at any cost.

FOLLOWUPS: As we predicted here, this has come to pass. How do you think she did? We are conducting an anonymous email poll as to who our readers like better as a Strib ombud, Lou Gelfand or Kate Parry, each with a letter grade, please. Although we are not a Microsoft property, we are confident in our ability to do simple math, and we will report the results tomorrow.

We’ve mentioned before the many, many awards that are minted each year for every little print publication under the sun. Some forms of industrial recognition are more credible than others, of course, but mostly they are an exercise in narcissism. We’re not sure anyone outside the industry cares that much, given that any publication that has been around for more than ten years has, at some point, with or without its own knowledge or participation, become a bonafide “award-winning” publication.

Last week, the City and Regional Magazine Awards were announced, and in our view this is a middling to negligable honor. Usually, it’s a good sign when a third party conducts the judging process, and the CRMAs are peddled along by the University of Missouri School of Journalism, using a full-to-bursting masthead of credible magazine professionals.

The problem with the CRMAs, though, is that the City and Regional Magazine Association itself limits who can enter the competition. As a point of policy, anyone can enter. As a point of practice, the people at the offices of the CRMA get to decide who is allowed into the competition, and they are happy to reject the applications of anyone they might feel threatened by.

We’re strictly observers of it all, not participants, but we find it interesting that bloom is off the rose when it comes to perennial favorite Texas Monthly. Anecdotally, everyone agrees that it’s one of the best magazines in the nation (we think so too), but TM has been getting shut out in the CRMAs and the ASMEs in the past two or three years. (Well, bronze and silver awards are not exactly getting shut-out. But a magazine that regularly receives national notice against Big Leaguers like The New Yorker and The Atlantic should easily dominate the somewhat silly CRMAs. It’s a little like having a Pulitzer winner come in second at the local library’s “what I did for my summer vacation” competition.) Probably the judges are eager to give others a chance, and wish to let TM lie fallow for a few years. Be that as it may, we think it’s about time Chicago magazine got some recognition, even at Texas Monthly’s cost.

When I login at home, I use the equvialent of the old wooden, crank-up party line—my dial-up America Online account. I have to admit that I always wait enthusiastically for the slow emergence of today’s headlines, like tea leaves swirling in the digital kettle. There are usually three main “news” headlines that rotate in a rudimentary server push on AOL’s homepage. These are the most distilled, highest-proof example you’ll ever find of Time-Warner’s idea of what captures the most eyeballs in the least amount of time. (Technically speaking, they are normally breathtaking in their brevity. I doubt whether AOL editors ever waste more than twenty-five characters on a story head; anyone who has ever tried to fit headlines to space knows what a special talent this requires.)

The breakdown of the rotation goes something like this: First, the hard news story, preferably with heavy overtones of partisan positioning. (That way, you can salt in two or three reader surveys as an additional enticement.) Second, there is usually a celebrity story of one kind or another, most often having to do with a current scandal or A&E release. Third comes the highly solicitious reader service—Are you too fat? Having enough sex? Working too hard? Is your spouse having an affair? How much would you spend to save your dog’s life? Where will you vacation this summer? Is there a cocktail in your near future? (AOL’s homepage on the web expands this formula to five items—two celebrity bits and two service bits.)

Anyway, this morning’s hard news bit was this: “Should Women Serve?” (Paired with a photo of a female GI in fatigues with an M-16, it did not function quite like the double or triple entendre it does here.) This struck me as provocative, although I resisted the urge to click through to the story. Clicking through is usually a disappointment—AOL’s news stories are almost always stripped down wire items with no teeth or boots. The brevity and concision of that smart headline is most often linked to a story that would barely pass muster in almost any high-school newspaper in the land.

But it did get me thinking. I’ve been saying for months that Democrats would be insane to propose Hillary Clinton for prez in 2008—largely because of entrenched, genteel misogyny. You think Americans are uncomfortable with the idea of gay marriage? Wait until you start push-polling them on whether the US can withstand a woman as commander in chief. That’s why we say only under ONE condition should the Dems put Billary on the ticket: They must also get a referendum on as many ballots as possible to eliminate the vote for women. It would totally work.

We were a little pressed for time yesterday, since our presence was requested at Minnesota Magazine Day. This is an annual to-do over at the Hyatt, hosted graciously by the Minnesota Ad Federation. It consists of a “magazine grab”—basically a shopping spree for most major titles from Hearst, Fairchild, Conde Nast, and the other big nationals. (Also any locals you haven’t already seen.) If you’ve paid the admission fee, you grab as many magazines as you can manage to carry—which is great for doing research, we’ve found.

Then there is lunch and a little motivational speech or two. Yesterday’s speakers included an executive from the Magazine Publishers of America, and the keynote came from People Magazine publisher Paul Caine. The usual bromides were uncapped. The song was upbeat, in the key of heavy flattery. National magazine professionals love to come to Minneapolis to compliment us on our terrific advertising climate. Indeed, this is a great town for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the presence of some of the nation’s best advertising houses, some of the nation’s most solvent ad-buyers, and not a few enthusiastic readers of magazines. We’re getting a little tired of hearing how great we are, actually. While the local publishing scene gets some respect—smart people here not only read magazines and buy ads in them, they also happen to make a few good titles, too—we think it’s not quite sufficient to our desserts.

Each year, the pep talk rarely diverges from the same script. It’s almost comical to hear about how healthy and vital and beloved magazines are, coming from the mouths of people who sell national advertising in them. And yet, the rule doesn’t usually apply in the opposite direction. You should buy an ad in an Advance Publications property, but Advance Publications isn’t all that interested in returning the favor.

What we mean by this is that the national publishing and advertising communities basically syphon off our money and our creativity without a lot of direct local inputs. Anecdotally and scientifically, it has been proven many times over that good local publications have emotional value to local readers that a national cannot touch. Despite the brilliant local print environment, national advertisers count the Twin Cities outside the top-ten advertising markets in the nation, and therefore do not buy ads in magazines or newspapers here. (Virtually none. They may occasionally make a buy in a title that is part of larger national pool, like Village Voice Media.) Take a look at Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, even Seattle—there are numerous terrible publications in those cities that sell national advertising like it’s going out of style.

It is frustrating that so many ad-buyers still make their decisions on the most artificial bases—a periodical’s reach in terms of raw circulation numbers. The magazine industry is allegedly trying to gather its eggs into one basket in order to promote all magazines—rather like the Milk Board pushing milk. But these sorts of campaigns will disproportionately benefit the largest publishers as long as ad-buyers look no further than the top line of the ABC Audit.

Yesterday, we took note—but not advantage—of the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s traditional donation to the festivities. It is a cash bar. They are happy to offer all the usual medicines, for a nominal fee of course. You’ll forgive us for saying that this begins to look like the equivalent of a “kick me” sign pasted on the ass of an entire industry, but maybe especially the local yokels.