Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Hate the Stupidity But Love the Stupids

Went out to dinner tonight with the very great Michael Tola at a hole-in-the-wall Berkeley restaurant called Olivia's, which Tola said was named after the owner's dog.

Splendid food. Just another Bay Area wonder chef who has found a hillock on which to plant his flag. And you ask why we dare the earthquakes? It turns out Tola is having an occasional din-din with a friend of ours -- she's great: a woman his own age with a bank account; the world should be standing in line -- but he has not dined with her at Olivia's because "it's too romantic."

Some things just break your heart. Like this Bush nomination of a nice Catholic girl who turned into an Evangelical Christian, which means she wants to get the news hot and direct from God but then joins a church where some preacher with a comb-over tells her what she should think.

Miss Edith and I spent our teenage years dealing with the fact that Evangelical Christianity m akes no sense and is at best an exercise in mystery: You must posit the ultimate reconciliation of bits of nonsense into a sublime hole. That sense of mystery should make one modest and oh so very hesitant to be certain, to reduce life to a set of cruel and simple rules. The creed is mysterious to the point of incoherence. And then we dare to be certain about the minutiae of human conduct.

Poor us. The Evangelicals are right. Miss Harriet checked her higher brain functions at the door, and the damage is about to begin.

1 comment:

B. Wieder said...

The thing that wife Gloria and I can't fathom is why the far right bullgeese are so up in arms on this, waving the latest George Will spout like villagers with torches. My favorite theory: What they truly and dearly want is not just the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which looks like a slam dunk if Miers makes the team, but the Senate confrontation, the execution of the nuclear option on filibusters, and the elimination of any Democratic influence of any kind on any governmental matter--in short, it's One Party Government Or Bust!