The Rev. Pat crazily falls from a cliff

WHEN PAT ROBERTSON asserts that Haiti's tragedy is God's punishment for the stricken country's "pact to the devil," it is not only brutally insensitive but a clear sign that the Rev. Pat is undeniably unbalanced. Sadly, he has a support group that will agree with his gibberish.

UPDATE: THIS MADMAN PREACHER IS NOW SAYING ON THE 700 CLUB THAT THE EARTHQUAKE COULD BE A "BLESSING IN DISGUISE." How's that? Well, he says, it destroyed all of the shanties so that new buildings will now be able to replace them. Why do I stress all of this about this so-called Christian creature? Robertson needs to suffer the wrath and ridicule, not of his Maker, but of the civilized world that must condemn him and his kind. Either that, or send him off to an asylum.

Sherlock Holmes: Identity theft

AS A COMMITTED Sherlock Holmes buff, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to check the latest version of the super sleuth and his companion, Dr. Watson. My time would have been better spent re-reading the Hound of the Baskervilles. The current release is a clear case of identity theft. The title character could easily have been Mike Hammer or even James Bond. Played by Robert Downey Jr., through no fault of his own, Sherlock was often a kooky private eye frequently engaged in bare-fisted encounters with guys who should have taken him out with one punch, but being a movie, lost every time to their smaller combatant. The stunts, special effects and fiery explosions played heavily to rising audience expectations of today's crop of films; that is, if you are looking for a way sell Armageddon and Mt. Vesuvius in one sitting that shatters ears and credibility. Gone were Sherlock's (I'm thinking, Basil Rathbone) stylish exchanges with an admiring Watson (Jude Law), and Conan Doyle's genius in connecting all of the dots that lead to Holmes' success as a superb crime solver through his ability to find meaning in a blank scrap of paper. I know. The picture is running second to Avatar in popularity. But it owes the original character an apology for stomping all over the hero's soul.

Kasich-Taylor. McCain-Palin?

IS OHIO facing a redux of the McCain-Palin ticket? That could be one explanation of the arrival of State Auditor Mary Taylor, a Summit Countian, as John Kasich's running mate on the Republican side of the scrum with Gov. Ted Strickland. Surely there must have been some thought given along GOP Row to the prospects for a shopworn former Wall Streeter and Ohio congressman to make it all the way to the governor's office by himself this year. So Taylor, a photogenic politician who would represent relative youth and vitality to the ticket, would take up the slack. Besides both are the strongest advocates of the party's core values, not the least of which is the cut-taxes thing.

Among those on the GOP side who must be delighted by the tandem is Summit County Republican chairman Alex Arshinkoff, who has been among those nurturing Taylor's political career and is now positioned for a hometown role in a state election. (He has also been working for Kasich.) But a reasonable question persists in all of this: If the party down in Columbus is so high on Taylor, why didn't they persuade her to run at the top of the ticket, instead of seeking reelection as auditor before now?

* * * * * * *

I've been told that a certain ranter on WNIR has been damning the Akron-Summit County Public Library for seeking a 1.4 mill levy, arguing that his taxes shouldn't pay for another's use of computers at the place and that, after all, the library is little more than a hangout for the homeless. As one who just enjoyed the benefits of the bright new facility's special collections department, I would suggest that the schlock show host go down there some time, look around, ask some questions from an always helpful staff and even read a book - or have somebody read it to him.

Sarah Palin: Fox signs a star-spangled diva

IT WAS NEVER "if" but "when". A natural.

I'm referring to Sarah Palin's new contract with Fox News as a political host, analyst and whatever else they find for her to do for all of her star-struck supporters across the land. Neither the network nor Palin could contain their hyperbole in their overripe glee over the hot merger. "I am thrilled to be joining the great talent and management team at Fox News," her prepared statement said. "It's wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news." That left little doubt among the Fox perps that they had made the fail-safe choice. While that disclosure refuting hitherto questions of fairness and balance was making its excited rounds, Bill Shine, a VIP at Fox, was equally ecstatic about adding "her dynamic voice" to Fox.

But even with Palin's celebrated star power, Roger Ailes, the guy who created the cash flowing megaphone at Fox Follies, had to step aside for a still higher deity. Palin , who has referred to her vice presidential candidacy as "God's plan," doubtless attributes her latest job as a continuation of that heavenly course. Humbly, of course.

That was the Pope Urban II's battle cry - "God wills it" - to the motley French knights on the first crusade, many of whom never made it back alive. But how can you deny Palin's attribution of good fortune to her God without engaging in a fruitless debate that has been around since 1095? I would suggest that it was in fact Palin's own plan that has been in the works for several years, one step at a time as beauty contestant, small town mayor, governor, author(?), and now the leading lady on Fox. She still has a way to go to the Oval Office, but for now, Fox News - fair and balanced speaking - will have to do until something better comes along. .

Universities: The death of the humanities?

BACK IN MY small-town high school English class, we were required to absorb long passages from Shakespeare. Hamlet. MacBeth. There was no possibility of escape. Mrs. Haberlin insisted that we leave her classroom each day with a strong taste of the classics. It wasn't pretty, but she was not a person to be denied.

Fast forward to college, where the professor assigned us a novel (Return of the Native) to read during the semester break. It would prepare us, she asserted, to hit the ground running when we returned for the second part of the course in English lit. By then, we were beginning to take it seriously.

Comes now, from an academic friend, an article that tells of life at the darker end of the spectrum. It appeared in the autumn issue of The American Scholar and reports the erosion of the humanities in today's college classrooms. It was written by William M. Chace, whose long academic career included the presidencies of Emory and Wesleyan Universities. Here are a few figures that disturb Chace as well as this writer:

From 1970 through 2004, the latest available figures, English majors dropped from 7.6 pct. to 3.9 pct. of total enrollment; foreign language and literature, 2.5 pct. to 1.3 pct.; history, 18.5 pct. to 10. 7 pct.; business majors, rising from 13.7 pct. to 21.9 pct. while the humanities as a whole dropped from 30 pct. to below 16 pct.

In short, for better and probably for worse, we are turning out a whole generation of business students. Chace concludes there are several reasons for this, not the least of which is the lure of richer economic returns and the failure of faculties to cry out for more attention to their disciplines (although I'm not sure how much of that would be useful these days).

"It's probably irreversible," Chace writes gloomily, observing that education should not be "all about getting a job. " He allows that the study of the humanities teaches us "how to read and think better." Considering how the national dialogue on critical public issues are being strung out these days with loony utterances from congressmen and their enablers, I see no reason to argue with that.

There is some validity to his concern that the rising cost of higher education is forcing people to rethink what's best for an investment in a student, whose campus days would not be wasted on subjects with less earning power. Purely pragmatic, of course, and it will have legions of defenders.

Speaking of his own experience in academia, Chace had some strong words about the drift of current public universities, where enrollment growth as well as tuition costs have soared in recent years:

"Off campus, the consumer's point of view about future earnings and economic security was a mirror image of on-campus thinking in the offices of deans, provosts and presidents. I was in those offices day in and day out for 20 years and can report that such officials are forever considering how to exploit available resources against ever-growing operating costs. As those costs grow, they create a paradox: the only way to bring in more money, over and above tuition income, is to employ more and more people to attract philanthropic donors and to assure the continuing flow of research dollars from governmental and other sources. Every administrator is complicit in the expanding number of non-faculty employees - development officers, technical support staff, research assistants, lawyers attuned to federal regulations - and human resources personnel to handle the every-growing numbers of just such new employes. "

The trajectory for that continues to rise quickly and it may someday consume itself with the law of diminishing returns. Until then, I have a strange feeling that term papers will be graded with dollar signs. Like Chace, I don't think you can change it. The odds are overwhelming. But with the dispatch of the humanities we will be losing a dimension that has long served to assure us of a civilized society. Mrs. Haberlin knew what she was talking about.

The more things change, the more they...

TODAY'S CRITICAL PIECEWORK:

After a holiday respite, Jack Morrison made it back into the Beacon Journal with a report he will continue to be retained as Munroe Falls law director by his political buddy, Mayor Frank Larson. When we last left Morrison, the Republican lawyer had been dismissed from the University of Akron Board of Trustees and as a member of the Summit County Board of Elections after a couple of ethics convictions. So he's batting one for three and can't complain about that, particularly after his base pay plus legal fees for his Munroe Falls work in 2008 paid $94,422. Nice work if you can get it. And he did. (Full disclosure: Sour grapes on my part since I rejected my father's advice either to become a lawyer or sell cars for his agency. In desperation, I finally landed a post-Air Force job with a small newspaper in Indiana for...um....less than $3,700 a year.)

By the close of 2009, the Republicans on Capitol Hill, their conservative Democratic friends and their noisy camp followers on the air waves had convinced me that they have evolved into the modern version of the commedia dell'arte. The likeness is all-too persuasive. The commedia was the theatrical outfit born in 16th century Italy to entertain with rather loose lips. The cast arrived on stage with the plot line well understood but went about their amusing business by improvising all of their lines. You get a sense of that from guys like Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican running for governor, with his brain-jerk comments that Obama's response to the near plane disaster was simply to "impress the Blame America First" crowd. In humorous fashion (although they didn't think so) the Hoekstra litany was repeated with improvised variations by others in a "Blame Obama First" crowd.

Who is editing Rush Limbaugh's stuff these days? Obviously euphoric after his brief stay in Queens Medical Center, Rushbo effused: "The treatment I received there was the best that the world has to offer!" Well, yes. As one who has been critical of every comma in the health care reform bill, Limbaugh may have been befuddled by his meds and didn't realize that Hawaii's health-care system is widely known as the nearest thing to socialized medicine in the 50 states. For more than three decades, employers there have been required to provide health-care benefits to part-time employes. And that state's nurses are unionized in the Hawaii Nurses Association. The best? Rush? The best?

Finally, should Glenn Beck really be ranting about alcoholics in the Democratic Party? Obviously he's never covered either party's presidential conventions. Glenn, my boy, I can assure you that excessive imbibing is non-partisan.

The birth of America's first Thee Party

WITH JANUARY weather so confining, I've been devoting some extra time indoors to creating a new (and exciting!!!) pop phenom to show the Tea Partiers a thing or two. It will be called the Thee Party to give it the sort of religious sheen so in vogue in certain quarters today. Actually the title was my second choice. I had decided to go secular with Tee Party but that was already appropriated by the national media that, in the post-Tiger world, never seem to leave bad enough alone.

It's also true that Fox's Brit Hume's insistence that Woods must convert to Christianity for the rebirth of his all-American sportsman's image made the transition from tee to thee a natural. And when the Mega-Rev. Rick Warren can issue a fund-raising plea that immediately rakes in more than $2.5 million, you have to admit that pure secularism has its limits. So Thee Party it will be with a resigned acceptance that I'm hardly in the good preacher's league for a steady cash flow.

Where to begin? With so much fearful talk of socialism by the tea baggers and their enablers on Capitol Hill, I would begin by calling for the total rejection of Medicare by every last U.S. citizen. (Non-citizens don't count because, as we have been told, they are likely to lie about everything. Besides, immigrants don't die from American diseases.) There would be no paperwork to fill out, no arguing with your insurance companies that you do indeed qualify for drug benefits and no threats of filibusters by the Back 40 Republican senators who would insist on being exempt from even minor tinkering with their health coverage.

With Medicare abolished, where would the health insurers turn for their profits, and where would the Back 40 turn for their daily bread? Certainly not to socialistic unemployment benefits and government pensions. Trust me: these would be abolished, too. So would lobbies, girl friends and congressional payrollers who make life so much more livable for their bosses. The cable networks, which thrive on the latest sulking statements from losers like Dick Cheney and John McCain, would have to go, too. (Come to think of it, Grumpy Abe would have to shut down in a Thee Party world.)

Well, you can see there would never be a day off for Thee Partiers. It would begin a new era in which socialism would be replaced.... I'll have to get back to you for more details as they come to mind. Duly inspired by Brit Hume and Rick Warren, I can only humbly tell you that operators are standing by.

Holidays: It's back to a safer coffee break

(Note: This is a continuation of the column that somehow found its way onto the blog without notice. Such is technology and clueless users.)

WELL, THE holiday rush is finally over and the Christmas wrappings have found their way into the trash. With varying degrees of enthusiasm everybody said they really liked their presents. For all too brief moments we were able to escape into holiday fantasy from the outside workaday world of war, the economy and the incomprehensible sideshows of the U.S. Congress.

Now we must look ahead to another election in November that is likely to make 2009 appear as a harmless prologue. Oh, my!

Living near a big shopping mall, I was able to enjoy an afternoon coffee break or two and the pleasure of witnessing the revered American Shopper - the nation's' rescuer of first and last resort - in scary acts of desperation. On several occasions I was nearly maimed by mothers using their strollers as battering rams to part the human knots ahead of them. Nearly everyone has a cell phone these days and they are never unused. It has been a right of passage into a cult in which you really have nothing to say but it's socially correct to say it anyway. Some people can even chew gum and talk endlessly on their thumb-powered gadgets. (As primates, we owe our thanks to prehistoric apes for such benefits that didn't occur to us until we learned that small talk could be exchanged while nibbling on pizza.)

Overheard:

"I got a new wristband for my watch. The one I had was too tight. Does that ever happen to you?"

"The mall is really busy today."

"Do you think red is a better color than blue?"

"'I think my minutes are over the top, ya know. I'll call you when I get home."

"The pizza was good, but I asked them to put it back in the oven to warm it up>"

Etc. Etc. Etc.

There were sales posted everywhere. But one needed a calculator to figure out the price of a shirt that was reduced by 50 pct on top of the earlier discount of 3o pct. from an original price that was somewhere in a computer in another city.

My unofficial survey of the economy's seasonal recovery at the mall showed that the two best sellers were popcorn and stiff coffee. It will take a few months, however, for these numbers to show up on the next economic report. Meantime, I hope to enjoy continued success in evading the strollers.

Dr. Hume to Tiger: Rise to Christianity!

THE HIGH PRIEST of Fox News, Brit Hume, has a word for Tiger Woods to rehab him from his marital troubles: Christianity. Hume, who is turning from news hawking to spiritual guidance in his lofty role as a Fox analyst, urged Woods on Sunday to find salvation by converting from Buddhism to the Christian faith. Of Buddhism, Hume opined:

"The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger would be,'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.'"

I think Tiger should at least be guaranteed that he would rise to the heights of such faithful Christian pols as John Ensign, Mark Sanford, David Vitter, Rudy Giuliani and Karl Rove, the latter being an ardent preacher of family values who is trudging through a divorce. Still, we should forgive Hume. He knows not of what he speaks.

GOP's field announcer "in good hands"

NEW YEAR'S NOTE: Are those 40 Republican "No" senators now relieved that

Rush Limbaugh's Cadillac health care coverage provided him the best possible chance for full recovery? As Limbaugh's back-up, Walter Williams , told his audience: Rush is resting comfortably and "in good hands".