Author Archives: The Night Writer

Minfidel: Stop the Presses – Even the Strib’s Veterinarian Columnist is a Liberal!

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I admit that pointing out the liberal bias of the Minneapolis StarTribune and its columnists isn’t exactly the scoop of the year. One could even say this news is of the “dog bites man” variety, except the paper’s newest columnist would take the position that the man had it coming and the dog is a higher being that should consider running for public office.



The Strib has started featuring a weekly syndicated column in the Sunday Variety section by Dr. Michael W. Fox called “Ask the Doctor.” (I’ve noticed the column because it’s usually on the way to the Lileks jump page.) It’s a pretty standard looking advice column where each week letter-writers ask questions about pet care. Dr. Fox’s answers start off with a pet-centered response that then often veers off into global commentary. This last Sunday, for example, someone asked whether it’s a good idea to turn a pet into a vegetarian. The answer quickly swerved (to the left) to decry the environmental abuses and animal degradation brought about because humans tend to prefer a juicy steak or nice ham sandwich to a bowl of tofu.



Really, it’s almost as funny as Lileks and I wish I could cite more examples but the Strib doesn’t archive these columns. From what I’ve read in the past few weeks, however, I think some future columns could sound like this:



My dog, Brutus, has flunked out of obedience school three times now. What can I do? First, congratulations on being an involved guardian for your pet. Due to your commitment I’m sure the fault lies with our chronically underfunded obedience schools. Really, how can we expect our dogs to learn how to sit, stay and use a condom when we only commit 60% of our budget to education? We simply have to raise taxes.



My German Shepherd is constantly licking his paw to the point it’s almost raw. What is going on? What you describe is a classic stress reaction. And who wouldn’t be stressed given that we’ve got four more years of George Bush? Iraq’s a quagmire, we aren’t any safer, and I’ve heard that Bush wants to reinstitute drafting German Shepherds into the military police. I suggest giving your pet some herbal tea, trying aromatherapy, and contributing to Moveon.org.



I think my guinea pig is gay. Is there anything I can do? Why do you think you should “do” anything? Animals have been around longer than humans and have evolved to a higher level that doesn’t worry about who you share your pigloo with. It’s only your own ignorance that makes homosexuality appear anti-evolutionary, and you shouldn’t be so judgmental. Unless your guinea pig also has a White House press pass, of course.



While I couldn’t find other “Ask the Doctor” columns in the Strib online archive, I did find the original article introducing Dr. Fox to readers, which included the following:



“Animals are more finished than we are,” Fox wrote in his book “The Boundless Circle,” which is critical of our human-centered world view. “We are the unfinished animal. We are the newest mammal on the planet, and we have an awful lot of growing to do.”



Umm, so let’s see – we’re the youngest and, by inference, the dumbest animals on the planet – yet its fate is in our hands? Cool. But wait, let’s get a second opinion and ask one of the smartest mammals, and the King of Sea, what he thinks. Hey, Flipper – do you think Dr. Fox has it right?



“Eh-eh! Eh-eh! Eh-eh, eh-eh!”



Good boy! Here’s a fish! All of this does, however, give me an idea. See, my pet moonbat has stopped barking lately, and I want to write to the Dr. and see if I should have Mikey put down.

A Big Day for Children of the Night

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On the heels of my “Dad to the Bone” post a few days ago, I now report on events of this day that represent small but significant developments in the lives of Daughter #1 (codename: “Faith”) and Daughter #2 (codename: “Patience”).

Night Visions and I accompanied Patience to a nearby government branch office to request a passport for her and so I could sign a document giving my permission for my wife to take Patience out of the country. Signing this is not a big deal for us, but it did give me pause to consider the heartbreak in other families that lead to this rule.

Anyway, the two of them are planning to go to China this summer to visit a friend of ours who has been managing an orphanage over there for the last couple of years. They will see the Great Wall, help with the infants (almost all girls, I understand) and get a chance to see what it is like to live where your faith must be kept under cover.

Faith and I will be staying behind for this trip as Faith will be working through the summer on earning her cosmetology license. Despite being just 16, she’s enrolled at a local beauty school and, in fact, today was her first day of being “on the floor,” available to work on real live heads of hair. And then tonight she had her first rehearsal as a harmony singer with our church band.

These are relatively small steps for each of them, but as a father I’m all too aware which way the footprints are pointing: away. Each step on their respective paths, however, is consistent with who they are and who they are on their way to being. For Patience, compassion has always overflowed from her. I can remember her as a toddler crying when a cartoon character got hit with a hammer, or if she saw people fighting on television. She has listened raptly when our friend on trips back to the States has visited our home and spoken of the hardships and conditions the children and babies at the orphanage face. When the invitation was extended to her there wasn’t much question in her mind about whether she wanted to go or not. This will be an awesome experience that will undoubtedly shape her life.

For Faith, her request to go to beauty school was a bit surprising but logical. She’s always had a sense of color and style, proclaiming at age four that the mess of her bedroom was “a design” and insisting at age six, “Mom, I know my magentas.” She doesn’t plan a career in this line of work, but had an intense interest for some time in learning about it and clinched her argument by saying it would be a great way for her to work herself through college and toward an as yet unknown field.

These are exciting times for all of us, but especially for my wife and I as we watch with great interest and considerable input (but not necessarily eagerness) each new opportunity. It’s not that hard, but it’s not that easy, either.

Having worked with Faith on composition and creative writing, I’ve invited her to share her talents from time to time on this blog. I even suggested that she could go by the name of “Beauty School Blogger,” a suggestion that earned me the Daughter of All Eye-rollings. Nevertheless, to top off this big day, I’m posting here a short piece she submitted that appeared on a Home Schooling Web site last summer:

A Glamorous Glimpse Into the Life of Faith

Hello; it is I, Faith, of whom you have heard so much.
So, dear readers, here I am in the dungeon (a.k.a. basement), trying to think of things to write about that might even be of the slightest interest to you.

I might tell you about my most recent and horrific trip to the dentist’s office.

There I was, sitting in the car on my way to the office of a dentist whose name I can’t remember how to spell. As you can probably imagine, I was just a teensy bit nervous. We pulled into the parking lot. No sooner had I walked through the door, than through the opposite door appeared a nurse.

“Faith?,” she said looking at me.

“Yes,” I replied miserably.

She would have taken me away right then had not the receptionist whipped out a paper for my mother to sign. While I was waiting for the commencement of my torture to be affirmed, my doctor entered the scene.

“Are you ready?” he said, smiling at me.

(This would probably be a good time to tell you why I was at the dentist’s, for it was no mere check-up. On an earlier visit he had sentenced me to have all four of my wisdom teeth pulled out. The crime: the bottom teeth were impacted, and my mouth was just too small to accommodate them all, top and bottom. I know it might be hard for those who know me well to imagine my mouth as too small, but it was.) Now back to the program:

I guess I was as ready as ever I could be.

“No,” I told him.

He laughed. That made me feel a whole lot better.

He and the nurse took me back to one of the little dentist rooms and I sat down. They then told me to open wide, and then they stuck me. Six times they shot me with Novocain. I had hoped there might be laughing gas, but no such luck. Oh, the humanity!

Anyway, to make a long, painful story mercifully shorter, they cracked both my bottom teeth in half and yanked them one half at a time, then they yanked the top teeth, which wasn’t as hard. Your head might hurt just reading this; but hey, I said mercifully short, not painless.

As for now, I am not too ashamed to say that I look like a chipmunk. After all, who wouldn’t after that ordeal? It is also hard to eat and drink and brush. Painful, too. They kept my teeth, by the way: otherwise I could have scored four bucks from the tooth fairy!

Oh, the humanity!!

Bill Moyers, please call James Ault, Jr.

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Some days on this blog are going to be more about politics or what’s going on in my life, and other days will be more faith related. The last couple of days have gone more that direction, but I didn’t want to finish today without pointing out an article in the Opinion section of today’s Star Tribune about faith and politics.



I don’t know if the editors were feeling repentant after printing the borderline bizarre (especially since it was presented so seriously) column by Bill Moyers a couple of weeks ago, but today’s Q&A – conducted by editorial writer Dave Hage – with James Ault, Jr. was a refreshing change. Whereas Moyers claimed that Christians in politics have set out to destroy the environment and stir up war in the hopes of hastening the Rapture, Ault actually took the time (3 years) to study a fundamentalist congregation and get to know what shaped their philosophy and led them into political activism.



The article merely scratches the surface of the topic, but shows a sensitive and open-minded perspective. Ault has used his experiences to produce a documentary, “Born Again,” and a book entitled “Spirit and Flesh.”


Filings: Of Migraines and the Fear of Man

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Sunday service was just coming to a close when a migraine headache jabbed a greasy thumb into my eyes. Over the years I’ve come to know this partial blindness, and its accompanying light show when I close my eyes, as the precursor to the main event and the warning that I’ve got about 20 minutes to get to my prescription medication.



That’s not hard to do since I usually keep my pills in my briefcase and keep my briefcase in close proximity in much the same way as the president keeps the nuclear “football” nearby. In a way, my pills are kind of a nuclear option themselves since, while they’re very effective in returning my eyesight and blocking pain, I know the tradeoff is going to be about six hours of feeling comfy but completely wiped out and listless.



This time I stopped as I fished the bottle out. We had sung that day of God’s faithfulness, His desire and ability to heal. The teaching had included 2 Corinthians 4:7 about our treasure being in earthen vessels (ourselves) so that the excellency of God’s power can be seen to be of him and not us. I believed those words, or did I? I turned to see our pastor still collecting himself on the podium. I told him what was happening and without hesitation he took hold of me and began to pray. I don’t remember much of the words he used as I focused on the sensation I felt in my stomach and the light show on my eyelids. As he prayed, the lights – as usual a pretty blue and yellow Aztec pattern – began to diminish, then flare, then diminish to a short thin line. When I opened my eyes after “Amen” the blind spots had moved to the periphery of my vision. By the time I got out to the parking lot they were completely gone. No headache, no nausea, no pills.



This was great, I was elated, but now I had a new problem. Driving home it occurred to me that I should post what had happened on my blog. I don’t use the word “Ack!” a lot, but I’m pretty sure that was the first thing that came into my head after the blogging thought. After all, I thought, I’m trying to establish my voice and credibility in a fledgling blog scarcely two weeks old. While a good blog shouldn’t be afraid to rattle people’s doctrines or challenge their perspective (in fact, that might be the whole point) did I really want to go so far “out there” so soon? I mean, if I wrote about a healing I’d experienced today, some might think I’d write about handling snakes tomorrow. At the same time, this was something very meaningful to me, and if you can’t blog on what’s meaningful in your life then the rest of your posts become meaningless.



I tussled with the idea a bit and set it aside. It gradually began to seep into me, however, that my reaction was more about me and my fear of what others would think of me. As a blogger, that kind of thinking is crippling; as a Christian it is deadly. Before I started this blog I went back and forth for a long time over whether or not to begin. My concern was that I would be giving in to a desire to glorify myself (even if I got just half a dozen readers a day). Early on I even wrote out a question to myself asking how I would judge whether this blog was a success or not. I thought I had nobly come up with the answer that this would be a success if I could show not how clever I am (ok, not just how clever I am), but how God and Jesus Christ could be part of a normal life and influence the way I looked at myself and interacted with my family, my church and the world around me. And here was my first test. Don’t you just hate pop quizzes?



Well, the lepers Jesus healed didn’t just say “thank you” and walk off in a dignified manner worried about what people were going to say about them. So here it is. I don’t know what I’m going to write about tomorrow, but I can assure you that it won’t be about handling snakes.

Filings: Dad to the Bone

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(About “Filings”)



Every parent either knows – or feels – by heart the words to the “Sunrise, Sunset” song in “Fiddler on the Roof”:



Is this the little girl I carried,

is this the little boy at play?



When I hear this the memory that flashes in my mind is not that of carrying either of my two daughters up to bed, or of piggyback rides. Instead I think of a family photo a few years ago. In it my girls – then about 10 and 5 – and I have been wrestling. I am standing and in each hand I’ve got an ankle of one of the girls and I’m holding them both upside down and off the ground, not unlike a proud poulterer holding up a couple of prizewinners at the State Fair. Imagining the picture now I can still hear the shrieks and giggles.

At this point in their lives – and for this moment now permanently frozen on film – I am Dad the Undefeated and, in their eyes, larger than life. Meanwhile, in the moments that I write this, the next line from that song is passing through my mind: “I don’t remember getting older, when did they?” If asked to reenact the scene today my response would have to be, “One at a time.”

As I flip through my mental photo album the girls seem to grow suddenly in a series of jerks and jumps. Of course I know they are really changing everyday, judging by the continuous trips to the shoe store and cries of, “But I just bought you those pants!” I also can’t help noticing in this album that as they are getting bigger, I seem to be getting – perhaps ever-so-slightly – smaller.

Once when my oldest was very little and concerned that we might be imminently attacked by bears in our own front yard, she was greatly comforted when I assured her that if any bears came near her I’d grab them and twist their noses. Today the same promise still stands regarding boys, not bears, but it’s clear that my powers are coming more into perspective. While there are times when it may seem, in my daughters’ eyes, that I can still rise up and blot out the sun, I cannot stop it from moving across the sky. I am shade, however, standing between them and the heat of the world. I will continue to do so as long as I can stand.

Of course, brute force has always been of limited application. To be a proper protector my defenses have had to be – and must remain – more subtle. Jesus once told his disciples that it was better for them that he go away. His meaning was that his power both in their lives and in the world would ultimately be much greater by his living in them rather than with them. I don’t construe this to mean my girls are better off without me, but rather that I must devote my time with them to preparing them to live on fruitfully, just as Jesus did in his three years with the disciples. The time together already seems all too short.

When they were little, their well-being depended on instant obedience to my authority and that of their mother. It was not expected or accepted of them to ponder whether or not we meant what we said or whether our instructions supported their personhood or hurt their self-esteem. “No,” “stop” and “don’t” could keep them from a boiling pot, a busy street or a strange dog. As they get older they are still at risk from natural forces, careless strangers and unpredictable human animals interested only in their own gratification. “No,” “stop” and “don’t” might still have an effect, but it’s better to teach them the underlying reasons and standards for moral conduct so they can also work out the “Yeses,” “do’s” and “go-for-its.” In that way my influence can carry on a lot further than my authority will ever be able to.

For my influence to be effective, however, I have to keep learning and examining myself both for my own benefit as well as theirs. Like it or not, my life will be a standard that my daughters will use to judge men on in the future and I want to set the bar pretty high with no apologies to the young fellas coming along. Perfect or not, it is mine to carry. On one level my girls may see me as “Dad of Dads, Keeper of the Remote and King of Rude Noises,” but they should also know at a deeper level that I have laid and will lay down my life for them. As they grow older I hope that they will not settle for any man who will not do the same, even though the kind interested only in the “lay down” part may be all too common.

If you have daughters I think you know what I mean, and I hope you, too, are preparing yourself and them to live by your influence and that of Jesus while submitting to the authority of God. If you have sons, I pray that you are preparing them to a similar standard and helping them grow into their own responsibilities.

And if you have sons that may be hanging around my daughters, you might want to warn them about that nose thing.

Saving something…but I don’t think it’s Social Security

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I find the resistance of Democratic Party leaders to privatizing a portion of our Social Security accounts puzzling. Not that I’m shocked by partisanship or politics – that’s expected. Nor am I surprised by a sense of vision that can’t see farther than one step ahead – that’s plain human nature and not the exclusive province of Democrats or Republicans.



No, the thing I can’t figure out is which typical Democratic constituency is being served by their opposition. Is it the young, energized base? Not hardly – I can’t imagine that anyone under age 30 has much hope they’ll ever see a dime from Social Security in its present form. Is it the unions? Don’t think so – union memberships are used to having their pension funds managed for a healthy return (do you think CALPERS management would last long investing for a 3% return?). The Hollywood Set? Perhaps – these people are used to saying lines written for them by others and are capable of projecting impressive outrage or heart-rending grief, but I don’t think many of them are spending a lot of time trying to decide whether the direct deposit option is right for them. The Northeastern elites? Again unlikely – though isn’t it fun to think what our political culture would be like today if Papa Joe Kennedy had thrown all his money into T-bills?



I guess that leaves those people dependent upon government checks for their living expenses. In which case, holding the course and steering Social Security into an obvious crash and burn scenario clearly indicates that it’s really about power and not the general welfare.



I haven’t seen enough of President Bush’s proposals to determine if it’s the right course – and I’m not even convinced that, constitutionally, this is the government’s responsibility in the first place, but I do know that a formula of fewer workers, more retired people with longer lifespans, and ever increasing costs is about as stable as, oh, Howard Dean.



The scope of the problem is especially well laid out in the latest The American Enterprise magazine. Editor Karl Zinsmeister in his Bird’s Eye column cites what Democrat Bob Kerrey and Republican Warren Rudman said a couple years ago:




“Suppose a member of Congress introduced legislation called the Social Security Do Nothing Act. Under this bill, promised retirement benefits would be cut…by 35 percent for today’s newborns. Alternatively, payroll taxes would go up by roughly 40 percent…. These are the choices under the Do Nothing Plan.”





Zinsmeister also provides a detailed description of everything that was happening, politically or otherwise, the year Social Security was passed. There was an exciting new entertainment media called radio, and hot inventions like the electric typewriter and the ballpoint pen. 68% of the U.S. had electricity and 32% had telephones. Life expectancy was 59 years and a few months. Against that backdrop he asks:




So: Do you want to base your security in old age on a program engineered at the same time as the Model A and the vacuum-tube radio? Has work changed much since the era when slopping pigs for Auntie Em was a typical job? Does the boundary between state and individual look different now that the USSR has gone from progressive polestar to oppressive flop? Has American finance advanced from the decades when the only choices for ordinary savers were the passbook, the mason jar, or the mattress? Are the retirement goals of Americans still the same as in the days when the Bambino retired? Or is it time for Social Security to enjoy a major-league update?



The answer, I think, is obvious. Nothing but a government welfare program could ever last this long in unimproved form. Our transportation networks, our medical services, our economy are all light-years better than they were in 1935. So why are we still stuck with a gramophone/Hupmobile/fountain pen system of public pensions?





Aside from this common sense observation, his article also notes that our already mind-boggling, acknowledged, national debt does not even mention future Social Security and Medicare benefits:




…The unfunded entitlements of the New Deal and Great Society are collapsing on themselves. For perspective, start with the fact that our officially acknowledged national debt, source of much caterwauling, currently totals $7.6 trillion. Unfortunately, the government’s promises of future Social Security checks and Medicare reimbursements are not counted in our official debt. Those obligations pile up off the books, out of sight, and out of mind. But they are real obligations that will have to be paid. And when economists sit down and do the math on those commitments, the totals are staggering: The retirement checks promised to today’s population add up to $10 trillion more than the payroll-tax revenues slated to flow in over the next generation.



That dwarfs our on-budget debt. Put together our official debt and our unfunded Social Security obligations and you have a sum larger than the entire value of all the companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges. Our Social Security deficits are real, scary, and unsustainable, no matter what Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid may say.





I encourage you to use the link and read the entire article on-line (heck, I encourage you to buy a subscription to the magazine for that matter). I think you’ll find that whoever the Democratic leadership thinks they’re looking out for, it’s probably not you – unless you happen to be in Congress, that is.


Shocking the Monkey: Noted Anthropologist Exposed as Fraud

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Facts and proof can be sticky things for academics – especially when they prove you’re a liar. This article in the February 19th Guardian reports that German anthropologist and professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten – who in his 30 year career had claimed to have found the missing link between Neanderthals and modern humans – has been shown to have falsified dates, fabricated evidence and plagiarized other researchers.

His “finds” such as the supposedly 36,000-year-old “Hahnhöfersand Man”, “Binshof-Speyer Woman” and “Paderborn-Sande Man” were all misdated by tens of thousands of years (the latter, in fact, was determined to have died in the 1700s – A.D., that is).

“Anthropology is going to have to completely revise its picture of modern man between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago,” said Thomas Terberger, the archaeologist who discovered the hoax. “Prof Protsch’s work appeared to prove that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals had co-existed, and perhaps even had children together. This now appears to be rubbish.”

Protsch’s earthshaking – and textbook rewriting – discoveries had lead to a prominent and rather lavish lifestyle, suggesting that if his ethics and motives had themselves been submitted for carbon dating they would have proven to be among the oldest known to man.

Be sure to check out Scrappleface for its funny take on the story.

Fear, loathing and the first “new” media

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1. Got home. 2. Unloaded the car. 3. Flipped on the computer and started checking my favorite blogs after two days without internet access. Step 3 always used to be to check the headlines from the accumulated newspapers, but it’s a new era. Couldn’t have missed much, it’s only two days, right?

Whoa – Hunter S. Thompson shot himself to death! I was surprised, but not shocked, I guess. (And why isn’t there a punctuation mark that indicates suprise but not shock? I mean if we can have a colon and a semi-colon, can’t we have a semi-exclamation?) Not that I’d ever given it a lot of thought, but I just figured that when he died he’d go out like a kamikaze moth, wings flaming, spiraling down into the fire – and filing one last report. Or that maybe he’d just disappear. Mysterious circumstances would be cited.

I turned to my bookcases, looking for my well-thumbed paperback collection of Thompson’s best, The Great Shark Hunt. Gone, dammit, when did that happen? I’d picked up the book shortly after I got out of college, a journalism degree stuffed in the bottom of my luggage while I wondered why I’d ever pursued such a thing. By that time Thompson had already created his “brand” (a novel concept at that time) and was well on his way to becoming a caricature of himself. But when I read him I again felt the surge and the spark to wield words to bring a reader into a different light, especially such classics as his early reporting on the Hell’s Angels and the L.A. “Brown Power” movement. It was so energizing after dealing with all the Woodward and Bernstein wannabees (or “Woodsteins” as one of my profs called them). I’d return to the book often over the years when I had trouble remembering what good writing looked like.

Thompson brought a subjective, experiential voice to stories that was brand new. I suppose there had always been a “you are there” aspect to the best reporting up until that time, but he took it to the “I am here, you are here, and man, what a rush!” level. He was referred to by some as “the new media” and credited with creating “gonzo” journalism, though in my mind the term came to be associated more with a way of living than a way of writing. Nevertheless, I think he put the first emphatic boot into the door that eventually opened the way to the blogosphere. Some may see that as a reach, or as trivializing his talent, but his voice – or at least the space his voice carved out – is very much a part of many of the best “citizen journalist” efforts. Of course, the subjectiveness he offered also lead to many of the abuses in the now mainstream media that also helped lead to the blogosphere.

Not all will agree, of course (Mitch Berg), and I certainly don’t hold up Thompson’s excesses and decline as models. In his latter years he became, perhaps inescapably, a parody of himself, but I’d check in from time to time with his “Hey, Rube” columns for ESPN.com. But I couldn’t read him, however, without picturing Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury character, Duke (I suppose Thompson’s death means Trudeau gets to keep his lungs in his chest after all). And as much as I think he contributed to our current communications culture I acknowledge that his example has unfortunately also spawned those who think that attitude and over-medication alone are sufficient to pass for genius.

They miss the point. And I miss my copy of “The Great Shark Hunt.”