Journal

Things for which I am grateful (in no particular order)

Angel – for keeping me going day after day.

D, who is my identical twin from a different womb.

All my DS family and friends - for making life less intolerable.

My sobriety – Although I never was an alcoholic or drug abuser, I had several opportunities to become one. With parents who drank and a brother who doped and drank I knew that booze and drugs would never take me anywhere I wanted to go. That's why I sometimes cherish my sobriety; it would have been so easy to become one. Excluding a pseudo-sip at ceremonial occasions, I haven’t drank since ’83.

Mom, my brother, and two cousins.

A little dog who thinks I can protect him from thunder and lightning.

A roof over my head.

My laptop computer.

DS.

A disability check that keeps me in milk.

Marie, my ex-wife, my beloved, who convinced me I was worthy of being loved (a prospect I had always doubted until I met and married her).

During yesterday's trip to the supermarket, I was shocked to discover that President Obama is dying of lung cancer, that he has AIDS from a male lover, and that he picked up some fatal disease from a terrorist training camp in the middle east that he attended prior to the election.

The check-out line is soooooooo educational with all that reading material (gag, vomit).

Now I am all for a free press, and I oppose any form of censorship, but shouldn't publishers be required to either print verifiable, truthful articles or else clearly label them as fiction?

You know, my problem with this - on top of blatant lies about anybody - is that the President was attacked. Now I'm the first one to say that if the Emperor has no clothes, someone should speak up (people like Jay Leno or David Letterman do a good job of this). Likewise if a sitting president is caught inflagrante delicto in some malfeasance, it's news. But we have pundits who cover the political beat. I don't have a problem with a joke or two at the President's expense. We all tell them, even on the ones we like.

I do oppose having a sitting president lampooned on Saturday Night Live week after week. I also feel that scurrilous stories of marital discord, drug use, family ancestry, mental illness, etc, in the tabloids take away from a president's ability to lead and carry out his duties. It's hard to enough to push a legislative agenda without controversy over silliness or stick to a message calendar without constantly needing to go off-message to fight some innuendo.

What I'm getting at is that presidents have a hard time satisfying the electorate, but the electorate makes it even harder sometimes.

Vice-President Dan Quayle was made into the poster boy for dumbness. How much of that was real and how much was hype? For the sake of argument, let's say it was 98% hype. Had circumstances required VP Quayle needed to assume the presidency, all that hype would have kept him governing and might have produced a total collapse.  Would the laughter and the punch lines have been worth it?

President Bush (43) was accused of unethical behavior, criminal behavior, deviant behavior, and assorted mopery and dopery. How much came from the Washington Post and how much from Saturday Night Live? Both were readily accepted because few people take the time to consider the source; instead they just repeat the words.

Here is my question: Should there be a line to not be crossed? Some line that says "on this side, it's just in jest, but on the other side it's disrespect"?

I'm not saying we should place the sitting President on a pedestal - far from it - but maybe we shouldn't be throwing eggs and rotten tomatoes either.

This was a reply to a discussion about religion posted elsewhere.

Okay, I'm a Pagan (polytheist) ordained minister. In my experience, no two people who believe the same thing believe in it quite the same way. Twins born of the same womb and brought up side by side in the same religion by the same ministers will still have diverging opinions on some points.  I truly believe that there are as many Gods and Heavens as there are people to conceive of them - and that all you need to get to heaven is the belief that you will. Think about it: Would the deity you worship come to you at the gates of heaven and say, “There were only five cars in your funeral procession and one of them wasn’t washed. One of the male mourners wasn’t wearing a suit and one of the females had on flip flops and was texting to a friend during the eulogy. On top of that, I heard someone bad mouth you after you died. Sorry, you can’t come in.”   Of course not!

So, today's sermon from Rev. Bear is this: Live well, try to be good and to do what is right. Love your Deity as you are loved, and respect the beliefs of others. Beyond that, don't worry, be happy!