Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin recently compromised her Christian faith. She issued her annual “Oilfield Prayer Day” proclamation that stated, “Christians are invited to thank God for the blessings” created by the industry and to “seek His wisdom and ask for protection.” It also declared that Christians believe oil and natural gas are “created by God.”
Bowing to pressure from non-believers, she revised her decree to invite people of all faiths to pray for the industry. Apparently the blessings of fossil fuels apply to all, regardless of their religious beliefs.
The recent election may help revive a flagging industry. Already suffering from Internet competition, the besieged porn industry had largely fled the Los Angeles area because of burdensome government regulations.
“These are Shiite Republicans – they don’t compromise, they don’t deal, they don’t look for the middle way. Because they believe they’re right. They think it’s them against evil. And everybody who ain’t them is evil. I’m just warning you. This is about to happen everywhere. The whole country is being turned into the state whose proudest boast is that sometimes we’re ahead of Mississippi.”
The late, lamented Molly Ivins was an aficionado of Texas politics. And national politics when a Texan made it onto the big stage. I was recently reading “Letters to The Nation,” a collection of dispatches she wrote for The Nation magazine. From “Notes from Another Country,” her report on the 1992 Republican National Convention:
“The Republicans spent much of their time peddling fear and loathing, but it was more silly than scary, like watching people dressed in bad Halloween werewolf costumes.”
“In trying to determine just how far to the right the G.O.P.’s loony wing will go, it’s worth noting how Pat Robertson … says feminism ‘encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.’”
“The … source of the nastiness is cynical political professionals pushing divisiveness for political reasons, exploiting fear and bigotry because it works. Old dog. Still hunts.”
And some nostalgia:
“Listening to George Bush, near the end of his speech, read the poetry written by Ray Price with the gestures scripted by speech coach Roger Ailes … I’ve been listening to him since 1966 and must confess to a secret fondness for his verbal dyslexia. Hearing him has the charm and suspense of those old movie serials. Will this man ever fight his way out of this sentence alive? As he flops from one syntactical Waterloo to the next, ever in the verbless mode, in search of the long-lost predicate, or even a subject, you find yourself struggling with him, rooting for him. What is this man actually trying to say?”
After nearly eight years of oppression, we white people have finally broken the shackles of political correctness.
