Why Haiti is Poor

A must-read.

(Photo: malnourished children sit outside their homes in Deschapelles, Haiti.  Courtesy Cullios/AP.)

Resuscitation

I’m trying to get myself back into the blogging habit, but it takes a surprising amount of energy sometimes.  But, lest I let my faithful readers down, here’s some things I’ve been reading:

Richard Beck is writing a series of notes on The Deliverance of God, a hefty theological work by Douglas Campbell which basically undermines all of the major presuppositions you and I bring to our reading of St. Paul.

Harper’s Magazine put out an article last week indicating that three innocent men being held without charges at Guantanamo Bay were tortured to death—you might say, murdered.  In related news, you haven’t heard about this on TV.

In the middle of all this talk about Haiti, one thing that might be good, in addition to donating some money to the Mennonite Central Committee, would be to read Juan Cole’s gentle reminder that this disaster wouldn’t have been nearly as horrific were it not for the West’s long history of exploitative practices toward the nation.

Yeah, the news sucks lately . . . kind of makes blogging depressing.

Christus est Natus

May the King of the Jews, born in a barn, grant us all His peace on this, the day of His birth.

VERY upset I forgot about this until now.

More, please!

English, to Italians

Ever wonder what English sounds like to people who don’t speak it?  Wonder no more.

Oral Roberts: A Eulogy

Granville Oral Roberts, the famous Pentecostal televangelist, died in the hospital on Tuesday from complications of pneumonia.  He was 91.

What are we to make of this man?  He was more than a little crazy, perhaps.  In 1977, Roberts claimed that a 900-foot-tall Jesus had commanded him in a vision to build the “City of Faith Medical Research Center”, a hospital which was to integrate prayer with traditional medicine in the healing process.  Four years and millions of dollars later, the center opened, and eight years after that, it closed due to lack of funds.  Jesus also, according to Roberts, had commanded the preacher to found Oral Roberts University (he did), as well as find a cure for cancer (he didn’t).  He predicted, in the middle of a fundraising drive that unless he raised 8 million dollars, God would “call him home” (many took this as a veiled suicide threat), but dodged the bullet when he exceeded the goal by 1.1 million.

He was also a man who made massive amounts of money by preaching about Jesus, the same Lord who commanded more than one rich man to “sell all you have and give to the poor”.  Roberts was one of the pioneers of the prosperity gospel and the inventor of “seed faith”: the promise that a congregant’s donation to Roberts’ ministry was a “seed” which, once planted, would return to the congregant sevenfold (it often didn’t).  If you ever dare to flip to the Trinity Bible Network today, you can still hear the doctrine as expounded by televangelists today.  It is a doctrine transparently designed to profit the preacher at the expense of the preached.  In 1980 his salary exceeded 88 million dollars.

More than a little disgusting.

Roberts also managed to get himself in hot water over the way he managed his (and other people’s) money, and on more than one occasion.  The Board of Regents of Oral Roberts University spent valuable endowment money to buy Roberts and his family a home in Beverly Hills, complete with membership at the local country club.  His son, Richard, is currently under investigation for the “improper use of university funds” for “personal and political uses”.

Troubling.

Given all of that, you’d think that a young Christian emerging from the evangelical world, like myself, would be quick to disown Oral Roberts.  Hell, I’m self-admittedly the least Pentecostal person I know.  And I find Roberts’ greed upsetting, his knee-jerk conservatism laughable, and his antics annoying.

But more than that, more than all of that, there is this:

Quote for the Day

My friends. It’s impossible to maintain the current situation. It will lead to the destruction of human life. However, the question is that what is the solution? Based on what has been said, it’s clear that the main and key solution is to return to divine and humane values. God has created man as a dear creature. He has desired mankind’s integrity, growth and prosperity. He has granted man rights and invited mankind to monotheism, justice and righteousness. He didn’t allow discrimination and injustice to exist. God has asked humans to respect each other’s rights, to be compassionate toward one another, to help each other’s progress and development, to share their happiness and sadness, to sacrifice what they have for the sake of the prosperity and welfare of others, to make justice and fairness the basis of their behavior toward nature and each other, and to avoid gluttony and seeking supremacy over each other.

That’s–you guessed it–oh wait, no you didn’t–Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking on climate change.

(Hat tip: Juan Cole)

The Next Celebrity Culture?

UPDATE: Seriously, I just finish writing this post and this CNN story comes up on Twitter . . . case closed.

UPDATE #2:  Welcome to everyone who got here from WordPress’ front page!  I want to apologize in advance for the rather nasty tone some of this post took in the middle of my 2 a.m. rant last night . . . of everything I’ve posted on City Streets, I promise you this is not one of my favorite posts.  Thanks for reading!

One strange thing about coming back from college to be with family is re-acquainting myself with the TV.  Real-life people watch it all the time, apparently: the nightly news (haven’t these people heard of an RSS feed?), football, sitcoms, TV dramas and . . . talent shows.  I’m amazed at how much of primetime TV is a talent show now.  American Idol, of course.  But also, America’s Got Talent, So You Think You Can Dance–the list would go on, I’m sure, if I spend more time in front of the tube.

But sitting around with my mom, aunt, and grandmother a couple nights ago, we started watching something that finally started to bug me.  It was this hour-long special celebrating Susan Boyle, this British lady who made it big on Britain’s Got Talent.  The thing about Susan Boyle is, she’s not a great singer.  I mean, she’s a good singer.  But she’s nowhere near impressive.

No.  The main thing about Susan Boyle is, she’s ugly.

It sounds mean, but I’m serious!  The whole shock about her was that she was this old, ugly British lady who had a surprisingly good voice.  That was the appeal.  So she showed up on this Britain’s Got Talent show and everyone’s thinking . . . oh no . . . this is going to be terrible, when, to their surprise, what they get is a suprisingly good rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables.  And she makes it to the next round, and to the next round, and loses in the finals, but still ends up with a record deal AND this hour-long special recounting her story, with Colin Firth (I think) and Simon Cowell talking about how incredible she was and how she finally made her dreams came true and how you can too if you only try and try and manage to hit the right audition for the right television show, your dreams will come true too, or if you can’t do that, at least if you sit at home and watch our television show you’ll get to rejoice vicariously in this woman’s “accomplishment”, and sit back and think about how you, too, are just as special as Susan Boyle, because we’re all special aren’t we, deep down, we’re all good people just waiting for our big break . . .

Or something like that.  I can’t remember exactly.

Seriously though, this stuff makes me a little sick.  Susan Boyle didn’t “accomplish” anything except managing to capture the hearts of a bunch of people who have nothing better to do than watch TV, be used and manipulated by a television industry trying to save a buck (these types of shows are much, much cheaper than weekly dramas, but tend to get high ratings regardless), and ride that wave of popularity for all it was worth.  The whole process is literally produced from beginning to end by TV producers, writers, and businessmen, and in one month, no one will care about Susan  Boyle because we’ll all be crazy about that poor black dude from South Central LA who escaped gang violence beacuse of his talent for swing dancing as recognized by NBC Studios, or whatever amazing story these talent shows have in store for us next.

My suspicion is that all of this has been engineered by some genius who understands that the more ‘ordinary’, ‘everyday’ people who become special for an hour on TV, the more special and extraordinary all of the other ordinary people will feel themselves to be.

‘Cause you know, I’m not too bad of a singer myself, and I’ll bet if I went on one of those shows, I could show Susan Boyle what’s up.

In the past, what we had was a celebrity culture that worshipped actors, singers, or whatever because they are hopelessly beautiful and, perhaps, decently talented.  You’d have a cult of people who might follow a certain celebrity for a long time—Britney Spears, say, or Mel Gibson or something.  Who knows.  But with Susan Boyle and all of these other zero-to-hero stories popping up, what you might be seeing is a cult of people who follow a succession of ‘heroes’ who, really, come from among themselves.  So you go from singer to dancer to actress to whatever, in a very rapid succession so that you can hardly remember who the celebrity you adored a month ago was.

I, of course, have a theory about this.

Maybe we’re all secretly kind of hoping that we’re next, that inside of us, too, is someone worthy of celebrity status, for whatever reason.  With the earlier celebrity cult, my impression is that what you ended up with was a kind of self-loathing among the masses, because really, what woman can live up to the standard set by goddesses like Jennifer Aniston or, you know, whoever, as far as looks goes?  And what man can hope to be as, well, ‘manly’ as Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp or whoever? 

But with this new kind of celebrity cult, what you end up with is a kind of undeserved self-love.  We project ourselves onto these Susan Boyles: if she deserves it, then dammit, so do I!  I, too, am special!  And I won’t have to work for it, either.  It will stumble upon me, or I will stumble upon it, and my dreams will come true, all because of the generosity of primetime television.

Whew!  This constitutes a rant if I ever read one.

Now, here, perhaps, is the relevant point.  When we listen to and watch these stories and celebrate them in our popular culture, what kind of heroes do we exalt?  What kind of dream do we say is worthy of coming true?  And what kind of dream do we say is worth having?

And what does that say about us, as a people?

How about a society that celebrates its people of virtue, rather than rewarding its seekers of fame?

More Mindless Post-Finals Unwind Action

Charlie Bit Me, plus autotune.

(H/T: Patrol Mag)

Finals Week

Yep.