Conspiracy Theories and Dirty Underwear

Many years ago, soon after moving into a new home, a neighbor waved me over. He’d read my newspaper column in that day’s paper and said it made him think of something he wanted to share. But there was no connection whatsoever between what I wrote and what he told me.

He claimed NASA never landed on the moon. “It was all filmed in the desert in Texas,” he said. He claimed that governments of the world were controlled by a triumvirate of Jewish businessmen who adjust world events for profit. You think you’re voting for this person or that, but elections are fixed. The fake moon landing was simple misdirection, devised to distract the world from what was really going on.

As this hallucinogenic riff built up steam, I began to suspect he was nibbling at the edges of Holocaust denial. That’s when I lied that I heard the phone ringing and headed back in the house.

Some years later this neighbor concocted a conspiracy theory about me built on an ironic grain of truth.

“Who do you think you’re fooling?” he sneered. “I know you’re up to something. I’ve seen you sneaking around.”

I actually had been sneaking around.

After that first loony tunes conversation I’d avoided him at all costs. If he walked down the sidewalk while I was doing yard work, I’d walk casually into the garage, as if looking for a tool, then watch from the window until he passed by. I’d do anything to avoid the crazy talk. He apparently caught that vibe and thought it looked sinister rather than what it really was: pathetic.

In December of 2001, just 3 months after 9/11 I arrived at a banquet hall in Indianapolis for 2 days of classes to renew my real estate license. As the room filled with nearly 100 people, I noticed everyone avoided seats near a Middle Eastern-looking man. I felt bad about how Muslim-Americans were being treated in the aftermath of the attacks and decided to conduct a random act of kindness. I right next to him. He looked up with wide, gentle eyes that seemed to say, “thank you.”

During the morning break we chatted about his childhood home in Afghanistan, the cold shoulder he’d gotten from his neighbors since 9/11, and news he was hearing from family back in the Middle East. As we gathered our things to break for lunch he leaned close and whispered to me, “You know, on the morning of September 11^th, the Jews who worked in the Twin Towers didn’t go to work.”

“You gotta be f’in kidding me,” I thought to myself.

I’d heard this little lump of horseshit already. The conspiracy theory that Israel was behind 9/11 – did it so that we’d go ape-shit on the Arab world, doing Israel’s dirty work for them.

I nodded a thoughtful, “Hmmmmm,” in response. Returning after lunch I sat far, far away from the Afghani man.

On one hand I’m embarrassed for conspiracy theorists. But I know that believing the conspiracy satisfies something in the believer. As they say of those cheated by a con man, “You can’t be conned by a con man if you don’t really want what he’s selling.”

I have to admit I have my own proclivities. If I could choose what was true, I’d believe a lot of things I can’t prove. I’d love to believe in ghosts. But I’ve been living in old houses my entire life and still haven’t seen anything remotely passing as proof.

I’d love to believe in UFOs. When I was a kid I laid on the grass in the backyard endless summer nights staring up at the sky with my brother and sisters, looking for proof – “Please, please, please let me see something flying in the sky that’s unexplainable,” I’d plead silently to the great beyond. Never saw a thing.

So if a UFO landed in the street and a ghost appeared nearby, a part of me would be ready to believe. But another part of me would quickly suspect a car crash resulting in smoke from an engine fire.

Wanting to believe something isn’t enough to make it true.

My conspiracy theorist neighbor eventually moved away. Who knows, maybe I scared him off. The new neighbor is a lovable smart ass. He found a pair of the previous owner’s underwear tucked in the old plaster walls around a window for insulation. He knew it was the guy’s underwear because it had his name sewn along the back label (I promise, I’m not making this up). Also knowing of the animosity between myself and the old neighbor (as it is now legendary in our neighborhood), last year the new neighbor gift-wrapped the underwear and left it on my front porch at Christmas as a joke. It was labeled, “To Kurt, from Santa.”

I will gladly take dirty underwear over conspiracy theories whenever given the choice.

The Tiny Kitchen

Of the hundreds of columns and blog entries I’ve written over the past 13 years for various local papers, this is one people still ask me about, so I’m sending it along again this Christmas. It was first published in the old Noblesville Ledger in 1998.

The grandchildren mentioned in the story are nearly all adults now. Sam teaches school in inner-city Washington D.C., Joe is a Junior at UCon, Rachel has graduated from Miami of Ohio and works in Cincinnati, Laura is a high school senior at an American school in Uruguay, Cal is a college senior who will heading to Japan for his last year, Jack is a flourishing journalism student who spent part of last summer traveling and writing in China, the Sally, who was 4 when this was originally written just danced of the Arabian in the Nutcracker and will get her driver’s license soon.

We no longer have Christmas in the house mentioned in this story. The grandparents are already in Florida.

The Tiny Kitchen

At Christmas each year 18 of us - 11 adults and 7 children, converge on a big old house in Bluffton, Indiana with large rooms, tall ceilings and lots of bedrooms. The kitchen there is hopelessly small - perhaps eight by eight with a 12-foot ceiling, as if it were built for incredibly skinny, tall people. Along with the cabinets, stove, sink and refrigerator are three doorways and a little antique table that sits in the middle, leaving a square, narrow path for cooking and socializing.

We like to complain about that kitchen, but quiet enough so the grandparents don’t hear.

There are rooms in that house with comfortable chairs, places to sit and talk, yet, more times than not, complaints aside, we huddle in that tiny kitchen, drawn by nature like bugs to a back porch light. If you want a Coke or milk, either someone must move or you have to crack the refrigerator door just enough to stretch your arm in. If you want to open a cabinet, microwave, stove or rinse a glass in the sink, somebody . . . or somebodies, must move. Still we stay and gab.

It is most like this in late afternoon. There is a roast packed with spices sizzling in the oven, things steaming on the stove and 8 or 10 of us wedged in there elbow to elbow, nibbling on nuts and chips, each of us with a beer or martini. Children push their way through the legs, looking for a mother or father or cookie or cracker, or they push on to the back room where pies and Christmas cookies sit on the washer and dryer, waiting for desert.

There were years when our babies were breast-fed and burped and cradled to sleep in this crowded, hot, tiny kitchen filled with the smells of pine needles, coffee, leg of lamb and boiling potatoes, where middle-aged brothers and sisters catch up on another intervening year. We always hoped and prayed the babies would sleep through dinner. But I think our “baby” years are behinds us all and a couple of those babies who once fell asleep over their mother’s shoulder beside the warm stove are nearly as tall as the shortest of their aunts.

There is something about that cramped, cozy space, something completely at odds with the modern notion of what a kitchen must be like in a new house. There is little counter space, no dishwasher or trash compactor, no commercial-sized stove or water and ice in the frig door. It is a remarkably impractical kitchen. Thumb through an issue of Martha Stewart magazine or watch a few episodes of This Old House - each make it clear that such a kitchen could be best helped with a stick of dynamite.

We like to complain about that tiny kitchen. My wife even rearranged the space a bit this past Thanksgiving, but there’s not a lot you can do with it without a sledgehammer. Still I wonder, would we be drawn there the same if it were a kitchen worthy of praise from Martha Stewart or Architectural Digest? I doubt it. More space, more burners, better lighting and comfy bar stools could not make us enjoy each other’s company more or make the food taste better. If it were large and spacious, if it were the “entertaining/performance space” that architects go on about on This Old House, would we be drawn there the same? I doubt it.

There’s something about close quarters that can free people’s tongues in the nicest way. You can’t design that into a modern kitchen without breaking all the rules.

Everyone here is successful. All are well-educated college graduates who have traveled abroad. One family has been living abroad for years while another comes from Washington where the father has tried cases before the Supreme Court. From Cleveland another shepherds ads we have all seen on TV. One runs his own advertising agency. One has published a book. Everyone here could or does have a finer kitchen in their own homes. But I would guess none of us have had as many loving, memorable moments in our own kitchens as have been had over the Christmases we’ve tolerated, or perhaps reveled in the cramped space and one another’s company in that tiny kitchen.

It makes me wonder about the things we think we need and work so hard to get, especially in this season so over-inflated with consuming and having. The pleasures of Christmas in that tiny kitchen contradict the rest of the year we spend working so hard to buy comfort for ourselves.

In The Shadow of The Courthouse

On one of the last warm days of autumn I’m at the stop light at 8^th and Logan when I see him coming up the sidewalk from the county parking lot. He’s maybe 25 with freshly cut shaggy blonde hair, a deep indigo tattoo on his arm and a piercing on his lower lip. There’s a chain from his belt to a black leather wallet tucked in his back pocket. His tight, ill-fitting clothes look borrowed or found in the back of the closet, maybe leftover from graduation or a wedding. He enters the cross walk distracted, alternately and warily eyeing a legal-sized document in his hand and the Judicial Center.

He’s just one in the cast of characters on the courthouse square on any given day. As people head to offices or courtrooms, you never get more than a glimpse at their story or mission.

There is an array of lawyers passing on the sidewalk, some familiar, some unknown. I see two of Noblesville’s well-established attorneys on the same day. Jack Hittle ambles along beneath the shadow of the courthouse, bolt upright wearing a tweed driving cap. He sees my red van and offers a stiff wave as I pass. Steve Holt turns the corner of 10^th and Conner in a navy blue suite with a clutch of files under his arm.

At lunchtime a scrum of B-team attorneys wait at the crosswalk. I’ve seen this group in the Hamilton or Asian Grill. A couple dominate the conversation while a young one sits with arms crossed at the edge of the action scanning the room and the faces at his table, looking lost.

You normally don’t see judges. They park underground beneath the Judicial Center. But during the lunch hour Judge Pflegging might round a corner plodding down the sidewalk in running shoes and shorts, jogging his lunch hour away. Sitting with my lunchtime gang at the coffee shop, I’ll often see a magistrate and a judge pass the window headed to Subway.

And the county employees: these are the people popping out of the alleyways at 7:50 each morning waiting for traffic that won’t stop to let them pass, the ones who get chased out of crosswalks by drivers talking on their cell phones, the ones being brow-beaten right now to cut spending, the ones trying to manage your child support payments, your property tax payments, your court date, your farm’s drainage issues, your child’s vaccinations and a thousand other things too numerous to mention.

I know scores of these folks by site, not name. I see them in the coffee shop in the morning, in restaurants at lunch, and passing under the Conner Street Bridge at the end of the day. Some hapless souls stand in the snow, smoking at break time, hugging themselves with a cigarette between two fingers beneath the granite overhang of the Judicial Center. Two of them power walk through Old Town neighborhoods during their lunch hour. And I note the mysterious habit of female workers: they carry multiple bags to and from work – some carrying as many of three shoulder or tote bags.

Comedy relief in this chaotic production comes in the form of the gorilla-marketing dude on the corner of 8^th and Conner dancing in his dollar bill costume, carrying a sign that says, “We Buy Gold,” and the elderly man who sometimes sits on a bench with a sign that reads, “Jesus Saved Me From Cigarettes.”

Of all that I see on the courthouse square there’s one thing that sends a cold shadow across my heart: the television news trucks. Their arrival usually signals a moment of warped human perspective. If a hardworking, low-income mother isn’t getting child support payments from her child’s father, the news trucks will not arrive. If a deceased billionaire’s first wife sues his 2^nd wife, they will be there with their satellite dishes extended skyward. If a Carmel High School student was being recognized by the County Commissioners for winning the National Science Fair, they won’t be there. If a Carmel High School athlete gives another student an “atomic goose” on the back of a team bus, the cameras will be there for the assault hearing, capturing the earnest words of a reporter’s dispatch from the courthouse lawn.

Look about next time you’re caught at a stoplight downtown. On any given workday you can witness suggested tragedies, hints of law enforcement, glimpses of criminal justice, and the beginning of half-told stories.

In Search of A Downtown Theater

It’s summer, 1993. Downtown Noblesville’s last theater, The Diana, has been demolished at the corner of 9^th and Clinton. From her family business across the street, then Mayor, Mary Sue Rowland could view the rubble. No one did more to keep the building standing than Rowland. She understood it was a valuable economic asset, but her city council and the local business community didn’t back her up.

If community leaders could go back and undo that event, they would. In fact some folks are trying right now.

The groups trying to reestablish a theater downtown are as far flung as The Belfry Theatre, Noblesville Cultural Arts Commission, the Hamilton County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, and the City of Noblesville. Proposed locations are varied as well. But it’s agreed a live theater as part of a larger civic center is the vital missing element needed to help downtown realize its full potential.

According to Mark Tumey, board president of Noblesville’s Belfry Theatre, "A part of the Belfry's long range planning is the possibility of relocating to downtown Noblesville.” Tumey says that surveys of both their board and their patrons support such a move.

Tumey sees more than Belfry patrons benefiting. “The possibility of a theater with the heritage of the Belfry's located in the historic downtown area, coupled with local retailers and restaurantswould certainly present a pleasant experience to all,” Tumey says.

The Belfry’s plan is just the first of many stars that will have to align if a theater is to be built.

(At right: The old Diana Theater once stood at the corner of 9^th and Clinton. Its demolition by Society Bank in 1993 was opposed by then Mayor Mary Sue Rowland, and the Noblesville Preservation Alliance. Pictured here are a group of newspaper boys standing beneath its marquee,circa 1925. The gentleman in the back, far right is John Wise, Noblesville's main newspaper delivery man from the 1890s until the Great Depression.)

Brenda Myers, Executive Director of Hamilton County Convention and Visitors Bureau also sees economic benefit for other players downtown. “Anything that can drive evening activity to downtown is a plus. And a theater is a good way to do it.”

In fact, merchants and restaurant owners get a little giddy when they imagine several hundred Belfry Theatre goers converging on downtown for Friday and Saturday night shows and weekend afternoon matinees.

Myers’s Visitors Bureau, like an increasing number of such organizations has stepped beyond traditional tourism promotion, expanding into the realm of economic development that can bolster tourism. Partnering in the construction of a theater would be a prime example.

But the goal coalescing around a future theater isn’t simply to house the Belfry and enhance retail sales downtown. It’s hoped such a facility could solve other problems as well.

Christy Langley of City of Noblesville’s Economic Development Department notes that the annual Mayor’s Ball, and the recent Chamber of Commerce 75^th Anniversary celebration had to be held in Carmel. “Noblesville needs a place for public functions like that,” Langley says.

Brenda Myers agrees, “Noblesville doesn’t have adequate banquet space. A civic center with a theater could do that.”

(below: the Wild Opera House, which once stood a half block south of the courthouse on 9th.)

Mary Sue Rowland’s interest in a downtown theater didn’t end in ‘93 with the demolition of the Diana. Now, as a member of Noblesville’s Common Council and the Cultural Arts Commission, she’s been pushing to keep a proposed theater on the City’s front burner. Working with the Arts Commission, she asked Darren Peterson of Peterson Architecture to re-imagine another Noblesville theater that was demolished decades ago; The Wild Opera House. (see photo at top of entry)

Peterson’s resulting design shows a new civic center theater in the same 9^th Street location that once held the Victorian-era opera house, now a city parking lot.

Rowland has presented the plan to various city committees and it was discussed at the common council’s most recent planning retreat, making the final list of projects the council wants to pursue.

Rowland says, “The vision of the Cultural Arts Commission is a facility that could be a meeting space for 400-500 people for events like banquets and the Mayor’s Ball. And the theater might be a convertible space that could also be used as a dance floor, or winter Parks Department classes.”

Christy Langley summed up what most stakeholders in a potential theater agree upon, “We need to avoid a Palladium-styled project,” (referring to Carmel’s opulent and staggeringly expensive new facility), “and do something that’s more appropriate for Noblesville.”

But a simple reality remains; today the former locations of Noblesville’s old theaters are barren asphalt. Rebuilding a theater on one of those sites will require the commitment of many organizations all working toward the same goal.

(below: Another view of the Wild Opera House. Photo thanks to Dave Heighway.)

Lives In A Baseket - 2003

A vintage Contrarian from 2003:

Last winter a soot-covered bushel basket appeared on my desk. Its contents were found in the attic of a home being renovated on South 10^th Street. The folks doing their work are regular readers of The Contrarian. Because I write a lot about local history, they figured I'd know what to do with them.

The rickety basket was crammed with letters, programs, invitations, and wallpaper samples. They provided a glimpse into the life of the Alexander family of Noblesville, brother Harry and Fred, and their mother, Lou, between 1888 and 1900.

Fred Alexander wrote the earliest letters home from California. In those days young men dreamed of testing themselves in the untamed West, to “grow up with the land,” as they called it. Fred wrote home to the local paper describing his 1888 train trip across the plains and through the mountains. He then often wrote home from Pasadena where he struggled to make something of himself.

Throughout last winter I read these letters late at night. I’d spread a towel across my lap and open a few of the filthy envelopes, blackened from a century of attic dry-rot and roofing debris. Time after time I’d tell my wife, Greta, “I’m going to stop with this and give it all to a proper historian like Dave Heighway.” But then, greedily, each night, I’d open a few more letters and read. It was like snooping in someone’s diary - a guilty pleasure.

Summers in the early 1890s, Fred’s brother Harry wrote to his girlfriend, a young schoolteacher named Clara. During the school year she rented a room in the Alexanders’ 10^th Street house, but spent each summer with her family in Clinton, Indiana. Harry’s letters give tiny glimpses into life in Noblesville in the 1890s. He describes the flowers planted in the yard, vegetables tended in the garden, the town’s gossip, the newfangled concrete paving of a sidewalk in front of his law office downtown, and the political goings-on in the Methodist Church choir. The letters mention once significant figures in Noblesville – Meade Vestal, leader of the town’s brass band, and Thomas Boyd, then Noblesville’s big man on campus, a state senator who would stand trial in a scandalous paternity suit in 1893.

In these letters Harry can been seen carefully cultivating a relationship with Clara. Delicate hints of affection – but not too much, suggest Harry was uncertain if his interest was returned. In each letter, he calls the Alexanders’ little 10^th Street house, “The Rest Cottage.”

In 1892 Fred returned from California to the little house on 10^th Street, called Anderson Street in those days. He falls in love with a girl from Frankton, named Gertrude. Letters over the next year tell a tragic story.

In spring of 1893 Fred finds work in Chicago during the opening of the World’s Fair, writing faithfully to Gertrude, expressing his undying love. He finds an apartment for them and describes the people and the places in Chicago that he dreams will make up their world after they marry. He writes home before the wedding giving instructions to his brother Harry to, “rent a horse and carriage,” and “buy me a new shirt.” In autumn he comes home to ride in that carriage and wear that new shirt. But Gertrude is sick from a disease the letters never define. After the wedding they stay with her family in Frankton. Then, in early 1894, Harry, who had gone to Frankton to help Fred through the impending tragedy, writes to Clara, boarding again at the Alexanders’ house in Noblesville, opening his letter with the stark phrase, “Gertrude is gone.” Just months after the wedding, Fred’s wife had died. Amid the jumbled debris in the bushel basket I found a stack of printed flyers, announcing Gertrude’s death. In his misery, Fred returned to California, then wandered to Florida.

There were many happy things in that bushel basket – hand made invitations to the club parties that filled peoples lives before television, like Shakespeare Club meetings in which members took turns reading the works of the bard. There were colorful, intricately printed invitations to recitals where local children would sing, play piano, or recite famous speeches. There was a program from the dedication of the First Presbyterian Church, a ribbon from “Bromo-Seltzer Day” at the World’s Fair in 1893, a program from a play at famed English’s Opera House in Indianapolis, graduation announcements and calling cards left at New Year’s Day receptions.

As my winter of letter reading wore on I followed Harry’s Alexander’s summer letters to Clara. By 1896 his affections were out in the open. I followed their wedding plans and his work to make the “Rest Cottage” just right for her. That summer he traveled regularly by train between Noblesville and Clinton, staying with her family there, missing her terribly when back in Noblesville.

The last letters come from Fred, fighting in the Spanish-American war, still trying to make something of himself – this time in the military. From a small island near the Philippines, he tells of deprivations, military ineptitude, and personal disappointments.

I don’t know what became of the Alexander family. Don’t know how many children Harry and Clara had, whether Fred ever married again, or when they all said their last goodbye to the “Rest Cottage.” But I think of them every time I pass that little house on 10^th Street.

Blind Rage

A lot of angry Americans are heading to the polls this November. Problem is, a lot of what their anger is based upon is utterly false. Below are some of the things voters believe – and are mad as hell over, that aren’t actually true. Because The Contrarian hates the political smear emails that fill our inboxes masquerading as fact, I have footnoted this post using a wide variety of respected sources.

Claim #1: Taxes are out of control. Truth is, taxes are lower now than they’ve been in decades. In 2009 nearly half of all Americans owed no federal income tax(a). In 2008, 36% of Hoosiers paid no federal income taxes(b). In fact, federal taxes collected this year will represent the smallest portion of our overall economy since 1950. Only four developed nations collect less from their taxpayers than the U.S. They are Japan, Turkey, Mexico, and South Korea(c). And amazingly, according to a recent CBS/NY Times Poll, only 12% of Americans are aware that last year’s stimulus bill actually lowered taxes for 95% of Americans. 24% of respondents believed their taxes went up, while 53% thought they’d stayed the same.

Claim #2: I’m Mad As Hell About Health Care Reform. Let’s take these one at a time.

-“It’s a complete takeover of our healthcare system.” Not true. That would be a British or Canadian-style system, something that was never seriously considered in Congress. The government will not show up to nationalize your doctor’s office, hospital or pharmacy(a).

-Maybe you got the email titled, “Another Obama Nightmare,” claiming the reform bill included a 3% tax on all real estate transactions. No true(b).

-“Health Care Reform will raise my taxes this year.” Again, not true(c).

-“Health Care Reform will create panels to decide how much care patients get.” Not true(d). We can credit Sarah Palin in part for this mistaken belief thanks to her famous claim the bill would create “Death Panels,” which would decide who lives and dies. I received another mass email claiming that senior citizens would be forced to get euthanasia counseling every 5 years, presumably to encourage them not to request aggressive medical procedures, thereby saving the government a lot of money. Also not true (e).

-“Why should I have to pay for health care for people too lazy to get it themselves?” I received a number of anti-health reform emails painting unflattering pictures of the stereotypical “Welfare Queens” wanting free health care. So, let’s start by dispelling some myths about poverty. The majority of welfare recipients are white and either suburban or rural, not black and inner-city(f), and the average family living below the poverty line has at least one adult working full time(g). And in 2009, 60% of the 1.5 million bankruptcy’s filed in the U.S. were caused by medical bills. The majority of those filers were educated, middle class homeowners and 75% of them HAD! health insurance but reached policy payout limits(h).

Claim #3: The Federal Government Won’t Do Anything To Control Illegal Immigration. I spoke with a Tea Party activist this summer who insisted Obama and the Democrats were refusing to do anything to control illegal immigration and that crime was out of control in Arizona border towns. This echoes the sort of thing you might hear on Fox News (a). Truth is, crime in Southwestern border counties has dropped more than 30% in the past 20 years and F.B.I. statistics show the safest 4 cities in the U.S. – San Diego, El Paso, Phoenix and Austin are all in border states (b). And while the number of those trying to cross our southern border has dramatically declined due to the weak economy, the U.S. broke its record last year for the most deportations of illegals: 392,000(c), well up over G. W. Bush’s last year in office. The Department of Homeland Security also has begun auditing employers suspected of knowingly hiring Illegals,(approximately 3,200 employers) and as a result imposed more than $50 million in fines. There are also more border patrol agents currently working on the border than at any time in U.S. history (d). And the President recently sent 532 National Guard Troops to the border to help out.

I could go on, present the truth about the bailouts (polls show most Americans believe the bank bail outs happened under Obama, though they actually happened under G. W. Bush and the previous Congress(a)) the deficit, gun control, but you get the point. We’ve got a country filled with angry voters who don’t know very much about what they’re angry about.

Why do so many people believe so many things that are just plain false? I figure there are a number of reasons – and no footnotes here, this is just my opinion.

First, the quality of TV news in this nation has truly suffered as networks focus more on quarterly profits and less on meaningful reporting. And petty conflict sells. If you’re outraged about something and show up at your congressman’s town hall meeting and scream at him, the camera will be in place to follow every moment. Stand up at the same meeting and politely share thoughtful concerns, and it will not appear on the 6:00 o’clock news. Calm debate is just not interesting.

Secondly, there is a cottage industry that creates politically-charged emails that are filled with – well, there’s no other word for it; lies. This is something forces on the right have become very fond of. I say on the right because at least twice a week I get an email that attacks President Obama or the Democrats in Congress and 9 times out of 10 they turn out to be absolute lies. During the 8 years President Bush was in office, I got exactly 2 emails attacking him, and those were obvious jokes, not intended to trick anyone with a false claim.

Considering that every one of those smear campaign emails ends with a comment like, “Send this to all the people you know who are true patriots.” I’ll do the same thing to my readers for the first time.

If you know someone who loves America and wants it to be a better place but is so blind with rage they can’t tell the truth from political propaganda, please forward this to them.

Taxes 1: (a) Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research organization. (c) The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization. (c) Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development.

Health Care 2: (a) CBS News Healthwatch (b) 3% Real Estate Tax: http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/realestate.asp (c) Fox News, The Associated Press. (d) Associated Press. (e) http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/euthanasia.asp (f) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_n21_v90/ai_18744024/?tag=rbxcra.2.a.33, (g) Bureau of Labor Statistics, (h) CNN Health: http://articles.cnn.com/2009-06-05/health/bankruptcy.medical.bills_1_medical-bills-bankruptcies-health-insurance?_s=PM:HEALTH

Immigration 3: (a) http://mediamatters.org/research/201010130005 (b) FBI Statistics , The New Yorker. (c) Department of Homeland Security, KETKnbc.com. (d) The Arizona Republic

Bank Bailouts: (a) http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1766512.ece

Desperately Seeking Atticus Finch

If Americans ever needed Atticus Finch, we need him now.

My favorite novel is To Kill a Mockingbird, in large part because of the main character, Atticus Finch. Amid the racially charged populism in his small fictional town of Maycomb, he remained a stoic reminder of the values we claim to believe in. As his friends and neighbors struggled with their religious and secular predjudices, Atticus stood firm for both Christian and American values, eventually becoming the subject of scorn.

I search for that kind of quiet wisdom in our nation’s most contentious debates, and seldom find it. We live in an era when chest-beating demmogogues get all the attention and quiet voices of reason are ignored. Scream and pound your fist at a town hall meeting and the cameras will capture every moment. Quietly stand for what’s right, and you’re invisible.

Still, I can’t help but wonder what Atticus Finch would make of the debate over a proposed mosque 2 blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks.

In the novel, Atticus didn’t lecture much, but in contentious moments offered soft-spoken lessons in human decency to his two young children. What would he tell his children if they expressed sympathy for the recent protest signs against the mosque that read, “All I need to know about Islam I learned on September 11^th”?

He might sit that little boy and little girl down and tell them that you can’t judge the world’s 1 billion Muslims by the actions of a handful of men. Judging all people of a particular religion, color, or ethnicity by the actions of a few is the definition of bigotry.

If Atticus were around to watch a recent discussion on FOX News, what would he think of Newt Gingrich’s comments?

"Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the holocaust museum in Washington," Gingrich pronounced, adding, “[and] we would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor."

I suspect Atticus would calmly shake his head in dismay at the ways demagogues manipulate history. It was the organized national policies of the Japanese when they attacked Pear Harbor and the German Nazis when they persecuted the European Jews, not rogue elements within those countries. He would recognize that the only way the analogy works is to first believe that an entire religion and everyone who follows it attacked us.

What of the frequently heard observation, “Well, a Muslim country like Saudi Arabia would never allow the construction of a Christian Church?” Atticus would likely tell his children, “America doesn’t measure itself against a repressive, religious monarchy.”

And what would he make of the claim that a mosque 2 blocks from ground zero would be disrespectful to the families who lost a loved one on 9/11? My guess is he’d ask, “Then why are new mosques being opposed in cities and towns across America from Sheboygan, Wisconson to Murfreesburo, Tennessee? Are they also too close to ground zero?”

He’d probably also consider the innocent 60 America Muslims who were killed in the twin towers. What would mosque opponents say to the families of those victims? Do they grieve less than Christian or Jewish families who lost loved ones? Who is ready to tell them that a Christian Church or Jewish Synagogue nearby is fine, but a place of worship for their murdered loved ones can’t be allowed?

And what of the sex shops and strip joints just as close to ground zero as the proposed Mosque? No one is protesting those? Are we saying it’s okay to bump and grind nude for dollars near ground zero – okay to buy sex toys there, but not okay for Muslims to worship there?

And what a lost opportunity. We’ve asked the Muslim world, “When will the moderates stand up to the extremists?” Muslim moderates showed up in New York to build a peaceful place of worship and we kicked them in the teeth

Atticus would no doubt wonder all this. He understood what mob mentality, coupled with a fear of “those who are different” can do to people.

The final realization that might make Atticus sigh heavily and rub the back of his neck in worry: the same political forces opposing the mosques in Manhattan, Sheboygan, and Murfreesboro also support Arizona’s new racial profiling law, oppose affirmative action and gay rights, and routinely vote-in national leaders who upon taking office cut the Justice Department’s civil rights enforcement budget.

But who am I kidding? If a modern-day Atticus Finch appeared on the streets of Manhattan to stand up to mosque opponents in defense of racial equality, religious freedom and tolerance he would be vilified just as he was in the novel. Members of the mob would concoct smear campaign mass emails linking Atticus with all that’s evil and wrong in the world. Angry talk show pundits and political opportunists would question his patriotism and religion

They would practice upon Atticus what former Clinton Administration aid Vince Foster described in his suicide note as “The politics of personal destruction.” Something that’s already been practiced upon those Americans planning the mosque

In reality, Atticus Finch was a product of fiction. That’s fitting. The voices of reason in the mosque debate seem as illusive as fiction.