The Secrets on C-Street

"And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men...But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly." - Matthew 6:5-6

There's an interesting confluence of news, all centered around this house on C Street in DC. It belongs to a publicity-shy Christian group called The Family, or The Foundation.

A secretive group, The Family has been shoved into the sunlight lately by a series of sexual hijinks by some of its more prominent adherents, all good Christians who were caught offering a bit more than fellowship to women who were not their wives.

I was going to make snarky comments about John Ensign, Mark Sanford and now Chip Pickering (R-Unpleasantville). But then I thought, why bother. They're men who were led astray by the little demon in their pants, and if they weren't on record proclaiming that their Jesus love was better than your love or my love, it wouldn't be worth a mention even on cable news.

But The Family, now there's an interesting group.

For tax purposes, the house on C-Street is considered a church. It rents out rooms to Christian politicians, and holds prayer breakfasts for the powerful. The Family was the force behind the National Prayer Breakfast, an event that presidents attend. To say they have reach in Washington is like saying Michael Jordan could jump, Ted Williams could hit, and Fred Astaire could dance.

The Family was founded by a Methodist evangelist who detested FDR and the New Deal. He was an Ayn Rander before Ayn Rand, a free-market conservative who believed God's invisible hand controlled everything from the buying of bananas to the selling of Tijuana Bibles.

According to a 2006 article in The Atlantic, regular participants in weekly prayer confabs have included conservative GOPers like Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, Don Nickles, Mike Enzi, Jim Inhofe, Tom Coburn and the aforementioned Pickering, Sanford and Ensign.

But in 2001, a new senator showed up, someone who was no stranger to men who stray. That was Hillary Clinton, detested by almost every right wing politico who has ever bent a knee on C Street.

The meetings begin with a personal testimony. When it was Brownback’s turn, he spotted Clinton and said, “I came here today prepared to share about this experience in my life that has caused great suffering...But I’m overcome now with only one thought.” He said he'd hated Clinton and had said horrible things about her, hardly a starting confession, but then he asked if she would forgive him. She said she would.

And the room went, "Awww."

Talk about meet-cute.

Landing in the middle of all this publicity gold is Jeff Sharlet, who by a lucky stroke has a book out titled, "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power"

Interviewed on Fresh Air, Sharlet told us that The Family's approach to religion is based on "a sort of trickle-down fundamentalism," which holds that the wealthy and powerful, if they "can get their hearts right with God ... will dispense blessings to those underneath them."

The wealthy and powerful, according to The Family, have been personally chosen by God (even Newt Gingrich, which shows very little discrimination on God's part, if you ask me).

What's worse, according to Sharlet, the Family supported the Indonesia dictator Suharto (like Oprah and Madonna rocking that one-name thing), and the man behind a purge that reportedly killed more than a million people. Suharto, in the eyes of The Family, was a leader and therefore, ipso facto, he was chosen by God.

That Indonesia sits on a great deal of oil may, or may not have, influenced the Family's support. Only God knows and he's not talking.

Not to little people like us, He isn't.

All this belief that God chooses leaders like Dick Cheney brings to mind the Tom Waits line: "There ain't no devil, it's just God when he's drunk."

Because religion, particularly secretive religion, tugging on the hidden levers of power makes me a little nervous.

And on that encouraging note, enjoy your weekend.

What a putz.

This is Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Jerkburg) who, during the Sotomayor grilling, had the WTF moment of the day. He told Sotomayor that if she shot him with a gun, "You'd have a lot of 'splainin' to do."

Coburn pulled the Ricky Ricardo moment because her background is Puerto Rican and Ricky Ricardo had a funny Cuban accent.

Get it?

And here I thought Jeff Sessions, the racist dick from Alafuckingbama, would be the winner of the WTF moment. Nope, it was our pal from OK, Senator Tom Coburn.

What a putz.

This should make my next client meeting more interesting.

This just in, fucking scientists tell us to swear like motherfucking sailors and all that fucking shit you have to wade through every goddamn day will actually feel fucking better.

One of the science fuckers said, "It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain. Our research shows one potential reason why swearing developed and why it persists."

Fuck yeah.

Writer in the rain.

How many times have you painted the scene with streetlights reflected on rain-slicked asphalt as a killer stalks a young couple who walk ahead, close beneath an umbrella, completely unaware that death is near.

Well, as it turns out, the chances of our couple actually making it home are pretty good. Why? Because killers, strangely enough, like to stay home where it's warm and dry, too. Who knew?

According to this story in the New York Times, when it rains, fewer people drop.

(For a totally cool interactive map of homicides in NYC, check this out.)

Back to the cold, stiff, numbers: When the weather's dry, there's an average of 17 people every 10 days who will miss the next episode of So You Think You Can Dance. When it rains an inch or more, 3 of those people get to go home without getting stuck or shot.

As that noted hard guy Elton John tells us, Saturday night's alright for fighting. And it shows in the numbers. In the summer, over the average 10 dry Saturdays, 24 people won't be singing in the Baptist choir the next day. But when it rains, the number of those who go toes up before dawn drops to 18.


Of course, there's always somebody at the party who thinks they know better. In this case, it's Ellen G. Cohn, a professor at Florida International University. Apparently she's studied the effects of weather on crime for more than two decades, suggesting where she spends her Saturday nights.

She told the Times that rainfall was not a good predictor of someone busting a cap in another person's ass, or words to that effect. But then she lives in Florida where it rains all the damn time so, if you want to get your homicide on, you have to adapt.

Back to the Apple. Vernon J. Geberth, a former homicide cop in the Bronx said, “In good weather, there are more people out on the stoops. Somebody bad-eyeing somebody else, and the next thing you know, you have been dissed.”

“It doesn’t take much to get ‘deaded’ in certain neighborhoods," he said. "All you got to do is look sideways at the wrong people, and bingo, something gets set off and it’s crazy.”

But, said our buzz-killer Cohn, murders are rarely between strangers and rain isn't likely to deter that housewife testing the edge of a blade while eyeing her husband's neck. Those homicides usually happens indoors, away from the neighbors.

Steven Messner, a criminology professor at the State University of New York at Albany, agreed with our Florida contrarian. He said, “People adjust to climate. They get umbrellas, they go out. Humans are adaptable.”

Which pretty much proves my point about Florida.

Still want to stage your homicide in the rain? Think about this: Rain washes away evidence, making your murder harder to solve.

“I remember standing out in the middle of a rainstorm with a body in the middle of the street, trying to work out what happened,” Geberth said. “Depending on how hard it is raining, we are losing stuff. We are losing bodily fluids. We are losing shell casings. That exchange of material from touch DNA to hair fibers is dissipated by the elements.”

Something to think about when you're writing a crime novel.

As interesting as this story is, my favorite part is the dialogue from the cops.

“It doesn’t take much to get ‘deaded’ in certain neighborhoods."

Here's another that if I read it in a novel I'd say, "Oh, yeah, now that's a great line."

“Everybody’s out partying, people start drinking, old beefs pop up, and people get their beer muscles out and start fighting.”

Beer muscles. Goddamn, I am so going to steal that.

United Breaks Guitars.

Goddamn.

A musician traveled with his guitar and United Airlines busted it. Bad. When he requested they fix it, they requested he fuck off.

He wrote this song, released it on Monday and today it's a YouTube hit. United is paying attention, if still not paying for his guitar.

Let's hope for a happy ending to this. If you're a guitar player you know how much your instrument means to you. It's more than just wood and wire, a good guitar has heart. I know my old Martin does. I'd be near homicidal if I saw tarmac jockeys tossing it around like a sackful of dirty laundry.

So fuck United. I'll think twice before I book a flight with this airline again.

Thoughts on the passing of a man.

Overshadowed by the nonstop coverage of a pop star's death, the more significant passing of Robert McNamara was almost a postscript. McNamara was the architect of the Vietnam War. He became convinced as early as 1965 that the war was a mistake and yet continued to send young men to die by the thousands.

It's enough to make me believe in an afterlife just so I can trust that McNamara will get the justice he deserves.

For those of you too young to have been selected by your friends and neighbors, it was a time that forced you to define where you stood, both politically and as a man.

In those days, you had 4 choices (or so I thought):

1. Believe in the war and serve. An honorable decision.

2. Don't believe in the war and serve out of an obligation to your country. An honorable decision.

3. Don't believe and don't serve. Those who went to jail or Canada sacrificed for what they believed and that was also an honorable decision.

4. Believe in the war but find a way not to serve. There are a lot of men like Dick Cheney who had other priorities, men who let other mothers' sons take their place in the line. These men are not honorable and should be shunned by society. Sadly, they are not.

In April of 1969, I was in Basic Training at Fort Bragg. The great majority of my platoon was made up of young white kids from the sticks and young black kids from the streets. In the unapologetic, GI parlance of the time, the only people in the Army were "niggers, hicks and spics." There were very few like me, a middle class white kid.

I was a political naif, having supported Goldwater in '64 and Nixon in '68. I had hinky feelings about the war, and no desire to die face down in the mud and shit of a rice paddy, but I also came from a family that stressed military service as an obligation for living in a free country.

Now, thanks to a column by Joe Galloway, co-author of We Were Soldiers Once and Young, I've learned there was a 5th category of men, those who couldn't have an opinion of the war and weren't fit to serve. And yet they did. They were the men of McNamara's Project 100,000.

Here's an excerpt from Galloway's column and I hope he forgives me for lifting so much of it:

Beginning in 1965 and for nearly three years McNamara each year drafted into the military 100,000 young boys whose scores in the mental qualification and aptitude tests were in the lowest quarter — so-called Category IV's. Men with IQ's of 65 or even lower.

They were, to put it bluntly, mentally deficient. Illiterate. Mostly black and redneck whites, hailing from the mean big city ghettos and the remote Appalachian valleys.

By drafting them the Pentagon would not have to draft an equal number of middle class and elite college boys whose mothers could and would raise Hell with their representatives in Washington.

The young men of Project 100,000 couldn't read, so training manual comic books were created for them. They had to be taught to tie their boots. They often failed in boot camp, and were recycled over and over until they finally reached some low standard and were declared trained and ready.

They could not be taught any more demanding job than trigger-pulling and, so, all of them were shipped to Vietnam and most went straight into combat where the learning curve is steep and deadly. The cold, hard statistics say that these almost helpless young men died in action in the jungles at a rate three times higher than the average draftee.

McNamara's military even assigned the Project 100,000 men special serial numbers so that anyone could identify them and deal with them accordingly.

The Good Book says we must forgive those who trespass against us — but what about those who trespass against the most helpless among us; those willing to conscript the mentally handicapped, the most innocent, and turn them into cannon fodder?

Read these columns by Joe Galloway. They're a good way to get your heart moving without the aid of caffeine.

Then go buy Joe's book.

Damn, this is good.

First, my apologies to Mr. Banks for taking so long to read this. Life gets in the way.

I've been a fan of Mr. Banks since I read a short of his 4 or 5 years ago. At the time, based on that one story, I knew Ray was a major talent.

The Callum Innes series runs from Saturday's Child, No More Heroes, Donkey Punch (called Sucker Punch by his nancy boy American editors), and now Beast of Burden.

As in the past, Callum is Callum's worst enemy. Forget Mo Tiernan, the son of a mob boss. Even Detective Sergeant "Donkey" Donkin comes in second to Callum's own self-destructive streak.

One of the things I love about Ray is his commitment to doing what's honest, which means Callum doesn't get the benefit of a reset button, one that will make him healed and whole in the beginning of each book. No, as Cal absorbs the punishments of being run over, shot, beaten, kicked, stomped on and a stroke, he's not quite the man we met in Saturday's Child. He's now 29, with a gimp and a half smile he uses to give people the creeps, and it's a rare chance he'll see 30.

As always, the language is the real star. Even Ray's least worthy characters have a flicker of humanity and his best have a streak of the devil. The people are complicated, the situations swimming in shades of gray. Throughout, Ray writes dialogue that stings like a Manchester rain. And he's funny.

I loved this book. I think you'll love this book.

But that's enough of this schoolgirl giddy fan gush. Go buy the damn thing and let me get back to work.

Because, as Callum might say, what I think means fuck all.