August 2005 Archives

Maybe it’s giving a television show too much credit or just plain being a sentimental fool before my time, but Six Feet Under has encouraged me to look at death more than anything else in my life. Having not experienced much death at all really, it’s easy for me to consider it only as an abstract concept to be dealt with when it comes along in its many ways and times. No doubt the show intended to do much more and far less, but to me that will be the enduring memory of the Fisher’s and their relations.

For what is at it’s core a 50 minute picture show SFU definitely drew me in far deeper than anything else. The characters came to feel like an extension of my social world, however silly that may sound. So many episodes left me feeling emotionally and physically taxed to the point that I had to just switch off my mind and go to bed in order to recharge. How can a TV show do that to us? How can something that we know is wholly artificial become so real? As what amounts to a former media studies major, I should be able to offer some hypothesis, but I don’t have one to give.

What I do know is that the series finale that I just finished watching left me with a small taste of what it must feel like to lose someone very close — a mother or brother or best friend. I am not saying that I know what it will feel like when my parents die or my grandparents. What I am saying is that somewhere in the last quarter of the episode tonight I really considered what life would be like without the people that I love the most and it was a painful realization that they would be gone someday.

When each of the characters died having lived out the lives that HBO fated them I felt a little more empty inside. It was a strangely moving and cathartic experience — not something that we have come to expect from our television. I won’t go so far as to say I feel compelled to make changes in my life, but I am saying that I have thought about parts of life — and death — that I have never considered before today.

Editor’s note: the preceding was written under the influence of powerful television as well as a surprisingly potent nasal decongestant. Give a guy a break.

She is the Queen on Country, an expert with a bedazzler, and she doesn’t need a biennial name change to boost her public profile. She is Dolly Parton and I had the pleasure of seeing her perform live at Radio City Music Hall last Thursday night. It was a great performance and I had a fabulous time with my friend Laura Sobel.

Dolly had no less than five bejeweled instruments (not including herself) on stage and I’ll be damned if she didn’t play each one at least once. Her instrumental repertoire included an autoharp, a mandolin, a piccolo-type wind, three or four guitars (bejeweled, blue and fender-made), a white bedazzled fiddle, and I can’t even remember what else. It was amazing.

As one of my co-workers who also saw the concert observed, it was amazing to see her connect with the audience and really tell a story along with the music that drew everyone in completely. Dolly really is a genuine performer.

Drinking 249 cans of Dr. Pepper in a short interval would be the end of me, folks. How many can you drink before you keel-over?

Check, this is your life I’m talking about here.

Oops, I spoke to early — President Bush says it’s not a struggle, it’s still a war. But now it’s a war against violent extremism, not a war just against terror. This sounds good… we don’t like violent extremism, it’s nasty and dangerous. Does that mean that non-violent extremism is okay? Probably not, but it is an interesting thought as the US moves towards the extremes on both ends of the political spectrum and farther from centrism and bi-partisanship (even though I hate that word because it has become utterly meaningless in our current political environment).

This morning I received an indignant email forward. A woman claiming to have testified during a trial over her murdered parents was asked to swear “to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but was not prompted to add “so help me God” at the end. When she stopped the court reporter and asked what happened to the missing phrase, the judge responded that it was okay to add if the witness so desired.

The overall point of the email is that we are taking God out of places where it is literally dangerous to do so — the author claims that the “absence” of God in America’s courts will only “result in more criminals and murderers.” What I don’t understand is why so many people think that because they believe in one God — or a god for that matter — that everyone who doesn’t should still have to invoke His name. It’s not a matter of being anti-Christian or anti-religion, it’s a matter of simple respect for those that don’t believe in the same way we do. The 14% of poll respondents who don’t want “In God we trust” on currency or “under God” in the pledge of allegiance should not be told to “sit down and shut up” when they raise a concern.

Obviously if 85% of Americans really do think it’s okay, then it will continue to be the law, which it is, as this a democracy based on majority rule. But there are instances where people are asked to make a conscious and overt call to a deity they don’t believe in — as in the case of courts of law — and in these cases they should not be required to do so. And being conscious of these things, courts allow the optional addition of “so help me God.”

Interesting facts about “In God we trust” — this phrase did not appear on US paper currency until 1957, after an act of congress required it in 1955 in response to communism. However, some coins minted during and after the Civil War included the phrase. It was made the national motto in 1956 by another act of congress.

The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 for a Children Magazine but was not official recognized until 1942. The words “under God” were added to the Pledge in 1954, also in an effort to differentiate the United States from the “godless Soviet Union.”