Slate has a new article by Farhad Manjoo suggesting that Barack Obama should maybe try lying more. This paragraph I found particularly depressing:
What is profoundly disturbing about this paragraph is what I consider its core truth: that it is now possible to cocoon oneself with newsmedia that already agree with you. It doesn't matter if we're talking about the New York Times or FOX News, both have the same affect --- if either one is the only source you believe.

I have recently tried to balance myself out a bit. I'm reading the Wall Street Journal more in an attempt to ensure that my most conservative source of news isn't the Colbert Report. I've tried to read a few conservative blogs. I find that while I usually find the articles interesting and admit some of the editorials make good points, I cannot stand to read any of the comments. People on the internet are mean, plain and simple, and the "facts" hardly matter at all.

I have found FactCheck.org to be an invaluable reminder of Reality. Everything else I read I take with a grain of salt.

I think our democracy is at stake here, and I don't think I'm an alarmist. If we cannot sustain decent, honorable, and truthful political discourse, we will be left to vote more and more on the basis of lies and emotion. The "truth" will become subservient to power, if it isn't already.

Obviously, we will always have differences of opinion, conflicting dreams for what America could be. But we do not have to have a politics of slander. I know we're sinners, all, but come on. We can hold liars accountable. We can be less cynical ("Oh, that's just politics") and more involved. We can quit believing that lies during a campaign will stop after the election; one who lies to get power will lie to retain it.

I think Christians, especially, should demand better. We are commanded to delight in the truth, and we are warned not to give false witness against our neighbor. I think our Christian witness is at stake, lest we leave ourselves open to the accusation that all we're after is power --- in other words, we should demand truthfulness even when lies might advance our agenda, lest we lose all credibility.

Furthermore, each of us should seek after wisdom at all costs, as the Book of Proverbs encourages us. The wise person, Scripture tells us, is not the person who has it all figured out, who knows all the answers already. The wise person is the one who listens to correction, who goes so far as to even love the one who rebukes her. Which is all to say that if we only listen to those who reinforce our own version of reality, we do so at our peril --- and I believe this to be the case whether we're talking about our view of politics or relationships or our own holiness. If we cannot admit when we are wrong, we are without hope.

Lastly, we should try to aim for truth because otherwise we can easily fall into hate. It's easy to demonize your opponents/their supporters if you don't listen to a word they say. And you have to actually listen to them --- not just listen to a report of what they said. We are told to love our enemies. That includes "commie pinko stuck-up fembots" and "racist war-mongering theocrats." Feel free to check my source on that.

This morning my husband woke me up gently with the news that author David Foster Wallace had been found dead in his home on Friday. He was only 46, and he hung himself.

The sad news has left me with several emotions, not all of which will fit on this page. I am sad that more of his books will not be written, sad a talent like his has been lost, so much wasted. I am sad to lose a moral voice in this country -- a moral voice that sometimes filled with sincerity and seriousness rather than irony and cynicism. I wonder why such genius came with such despair.

I pray that the hints of religious faith I found in his works, which did not prove a protection against this life's torments, may nonetheless usher him into that promised final rest.

*

Earlier this year, I read his essay "Up, Simba," about John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. In it Wallace ruminates on the general state of politics. At some points, his commentary seems stunningly dated, at only eight years removed; take, for instance, the fact that one of the points of debate between Bush and McCain in 2000 was how to spend the federal budget surplus. Or that both Republican candidates were critical of Clinton's "photo-op" foreign policy, which was described as weak and "candy-assed."

At other moments, however, I was amazed at how little has changed, and how much McCain in 2000 felt like Obama in 2008, inasmuch as both drew a lot of young voters, campaigned as underdogs, and appealed to a deep need in Americans to believe.

In honor of David Foster Wallace, and in a spirit of fairness to both political candidates, I would like to quote a bit from "Up, Simba." I would like the mud-slinging to end, as much as anybody, even though I get angry enough to fling some myself from time to time. Here's hoping our nation does not self-destruct. Here's hoping for hope itself:

Here's Obama responding to another line from Palin's speech.

Happy Tuesday. I promise to post again about non-political topics, but as of right now I am borderline-obsessed.

In her debut speech at the Republican National Convention last night, Gov. Sarah Palin mocked Senator Obama's early work as a community organizer, saying, " I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

While I am glad we have a woman on the ticket for Vice President and admit she gave a powerful speech, I could not let this moment slip by without one clarification. Just what exactly is "community organizing" anyway?

Most people have never met a community organizer, or at least didn't know it if they did. It's easy to dismiss it as some "citified" job, something distant and amorphous and out-of-touch with reality. However, if people knew what community organizing was about, they might sing a different tune.

Community organizing is just that: the endeavor to organize a group or groups of people around a common goal, for their own good, to gain a voice in the halls of power. It involves meeting with people, listening to their concerns, helping them to join forces together and advocating for their interests. It's not as foreign as it might seem; anybody who has seen the movie "Norma Rae" could recall the union organizer who inspired Norma Rae to stand up to her bosses at the textile mill. "Norma Rae" was based a on true story, and the courage and persistence of the real Norma Rae is nothing to mock at.

We have a proud history of "community organization" in this country. That's what Dr. Martin Luther King was doing when he organized the members of the black community in Montgomery, Alabama, to walk to work instead of taking the bus. That's what Susan B. Anthony was doing when she organized the suffragettes to rally for woman's right to vote. I daresay that's what the Founding Fathers were doing when they organized the various immigrant groups against the British power that demanded taxes without representation, emboldening people to believe that a new country may be born and out of many people, one.

Gov. Palin, do you mock the work of Dr. King? Do you mock the work of Susan B. Anthony, your foremother, without whom you would not be voting let alone running for office? Do you mock the foundational belief of this nation that we, the people, own our government and therefore have a voice in it?

No, Gov. Palin, I am sure you do not mock any of those proud men and women in our history. But why, then, do you mock Senator Obama for believing in their principles and their dreams?

It's true, Obama did not accomplish anything so grand as racial equality or women's suffrage or founding a new nation. That much is obvious. His two main victories were "the expansion of a city summer-job program for South Side teenagers and the removal of asbestos from one of the area’s oldest housing projects" (and that's according to the National Review). Even so, you're going to knock him for trying?

You can criticize Obama in a lot of ways, several of them legitimate. You can argue against his policy proposals, and I would listen to what you have to say. You can call him a liberal, and I would offer no defense. But mock his work in Chicago as a community organizer and I will publicly denounce you: Either you are ignorant about what community organizing entails, or you are deliberately twisting the truth.

Readers, please take the time to investigate for yourself what exactly community organizing is and what Obama did for those years on the South Side of Chicago. Below are links to more information.

"Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City," chapter by Barack Obama in After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois, published in 1990.
"On the Streets of Chicago, A Candidate Comes of Age," U.S. News & World Report (August 2007)
"How Community Organizing Shaped Obama's Politics," Wall Street Journal (March 2007)
"Obama's Community Roots," The Nation (April 2007)
"The Organizer," National Review (June 2008) - not full article unless you subscribe to the NR

My friend Kendra has written about our privilege as the children of God to bring good news to all creation - to the trees and sky and oceans. She says this better than I say it here, but I have to point out with pride that she was inspired by a sermon my husband gave - his first one! - just a couple Fridays ago.

Be encouraged.

John Campbell, whose Goodbye, Foom comic blog is linked to the left and whose Pictures for Sad Children actually as its own Wikipedia page, and with whom also I still claim friendship, has spread his coolness far and wide enough to catch the attention of The New Yorker.

Here is the interview with The New Yorker's Cartoon Lounge.

Congratulations! Boy are we proud.

P.S. Good luck on the job search, John.

P.P.S. I just realized, maybe you have already found a job? If so, then hopefully it is an okay one!

I have a friend who promised, drunk, that he could never walk away from the faith. But he could be a bad Christian, he said with a smile. He could be a bad Christian for a while.

Probably earlier in my life I would have been more concerned by this pronouncement, back when maybe I was a better Christian myself. I would have written down his name in my prayer journal, and lifted his situation up to the Lord. But now I'm less worried about people like him than I used to be. As my husband said, "He's not searching; he's figuring." I believe my friend will figure out his life with God. I believe him when he says he will not leave.

I have many friends who were raised Christian; in fact, nearly all of my friends were. It makes us funny sometimes. We grew up listening to obscure music that tried to make abstinence cool. We hotly debated whether to court or date, a complete non-issue to the rest of our peers. We were familiar with King James English long before we were assigned Romeo and Juliet in the ninth grade.

Then we turned twenty-one and woke up lost.

When you grow up a good Christian, you don't have to make many decisions for yourself. Most decisions --- down to what music you listen to, what movies you watch, what clothes you wear, and what friends you keep --- are dictated by the standards of your faith community. This fact is supposed to keep you safe. Which it does, sort of, until you get older and are supposed to make decisions for yourself. You have not had practice deciding things. You don't know what you want.

And what is worse, you are burdened with the belief that all your decisions are incredibly meaningful. You believe that each decision could be a life-changer, that one small misstep could lead you down the wrong path...for life. You worry about what your parents think and about what your church friends think and after you've worn those worries out you crash into the scariest question, that is, what does the Almighty think?

I have seen this pressure make people paralyzed. I have seen this pressure make people despair. I have watched as they shake their heads and go on to do everything they have been told they should not do. And why not? It's hard to tell which shoulds to keep and which to throw away. And it only takes one should to break your heart. One day, God asks for one thing too much, and instead of laying it down at His feet, you fling it at Him.

I can hear the good Christians now, defending religion or, at least, defending God. I am not about to debate here what good Christians should or should not do; I am only noting what I have observed. From my limited perspective, I have come to believe that most of the shoulds taught to church kids do more to inculcate self-righteousness and to cover simple fear than to form children who know the One who loves them. It is a paltry Christian upbringing that produces adults who testify to nothing more than the guilt they used to be afraid to feel.

And where do you go after you've hit that place of paralysis, of depair? What do you do then?

Well, you might try lying in bed for a few days. Maybe on the couch. Or try failing a few times: you'll surprise yourself and survive. In addition to those tactics, I also read a lot of intellectual stuff --- nothing without nuance and shades of gray and scores of footnotes. I read dark novels, full of doubts. Then again, I'm a reader. Maybe you would be helped by the open-ended world of Final Fantasy, what do I know? Any way you do it, you begin seeing the world as less unforgiving of trial and error and more amenable to experimentation.

This is not because you have succumbed to a relativistic liberal agenda. This is because you are learning how to live. You don't have to take my word for it, though. You can see for yourself.

At a recent party I overheard a man saying, "I can't say anything true without making mistakes." I felt sure that earlier in time he believed he could make absolute statements: words that fit on the thin edge of a knife, straight and sharp. I noted that he continued on to answer the question that made him pause to give this disclaimer, "I can't say anything true without making mistakes." He seemed to still believe that he could say true things. He had only lost the belief that he could say them perfectly.

I admired him for answering the question, for going ahead and making mistakes. I thought of Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Church and poster boy for the anxiety-ridden cradle Christian. "Sin boldly," Luther said, because God is a God of forgiveness and redemption. Even if you conclude that you can't avoid making mistakes, tell the truth the best you can anyway. Even if you find some failure unavoidable, live according to the truth the best you can anyway.

So after you've really sinned well, after you've long gone too far, see if you have any memories of a merciful God. See if you can think of a time when you were small when Jesus held your hand, or played in the yard with you chasing fireflies, or came into your heart. Try to remember that God, for that God will run to meet you where you are.

We may find we are much different than the younger versions of ourselves. We might have become bad Christians, rather than the people we meant to become. That's okay because when we strove to emulate our idea of who we thought good Christians should be, we about drove ourselves crazy. We had not yet learned that we cannot say anything true without making mistakes. We had forgotten that Jesus chased fireflies with us in the dark, for no good reason.