Eat How?

I heard a phrase in a television commercial today that one hears often. The phrase is “eat healthy,” presumably meaning eat lots of fruits and vegetables, avoid saturated fats, etc. Walking back to the kitchen to clean up the dinner dishes, however, it suddenly occurred to me that this is an odd phrase. A check of the dictionary confirmed my intuition. “Healthy” is an adjective and needs to modify something, as it does in a phrase like “healthy food.” If one is told to “eat healthy,” the obvious question to ask is “healthy what?” Of course, what is really meant is something like “eat in a manner that promotes good health.” Our phrase need an adverb, not an adjective. (I do hope that no one will try to convince me that “healthy” is—or ever can be—a noun.) In other words, we should say “eat healthily.” That doesn’t sound very idiomatic, of course. “Eat healthfully,” which can mean the same thing, sounds a bit more natural, though still a trifle strange. Perhaps if we used a gramatically correct phrase more often, however, it would not sound so odd.

Trying Too Hard

Have you noticed that some people’s scrupulous pronunciation gets them into trouble? Sometimes this appears to be the effect of wanting to articulate one’s speach so as to sound intelligent and to be clearly understood. There is a woman in Pittsburgh, for example, who appears in local commercials and whose speech always sounds stilted. She makes “school” into a two-syllable word: skoo-wul. I have also heard a number of young people lately use an odd pronunciation of “didn’t.” Rather than saying did-nt, they say did-dent, which, besides being wrong, is actually rather difficult to say. I’m not sure what’s going on here; contractions are supposed to leave out sounds, and this pronounciation seems to be adding them. “Didn’t” is a contraction for “did not,” so where does the other “d” come from? Then there is the unfortunate word “often.” Centuries ago, the “t” in this word was always pronounced. As part of a wider trend, however, the “t” was dropped. In recent times, presumably because people trust spelling more than they trust their ears, the “t” is being put back into “often,” so much so that some dictionaries consider this a standard, though not the preferred pronounciation. Curiously, some words have been imumune to this sort of misguided carefulness. No one puts a “t” in “listen,” for example. On the other hand, one regularly—and mistakenly— hears an “l” in words such as “calm” and “balk.” (See my essay on words containing a silent “l” in Language Notes.)

Update on New York Meeting

The bishops meeting in New York this week issued a joint statement Wednesday morning, September 13. The statement, as reported by Episcopal News Service, was brief and to the point. The key sentence is the following: “We could not come to consensus on a common plan to move forward to meet the needs of the dioceses that issued the appeal for Alternate Primatial Oversight.” Apparently, bishops loyal to their ordination vows held the line against the Network bishops.

I should note, by the way, that the list of likely attendees that I gave in my previous post was almost the same as the list of actual attendees. Only Bishop of Texas Don A. Wimberly did not attend. He, of course, is hosting his own meeting of “Windsor-compliant” bishops later this month.

A number of the bishops who participated in the meeting have commented on it. Readers can find those comments elsewhere; they offer little insight into what happened.

It is worth mentioning a statement by Network Moderator and Bishop of Pittsburgh Robert W. Duncan, as reported in a follow-up ENS story:

Describing the meeting as “honest,” Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, moderator of the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes (NACDAP), said it became clear that “the division in the American church is so great that we are incapable of addressing the divide which has two distinctly different groups both claiming to be the Episcopal Church.”

This is a curious statement. Technically, all the participating bishops are, at least for now, part of The Episcopal Church. The Network has sometimes claimed, however, as the Moderator seems to be doing here, that it represents the real Episcopal Church (and, of course, the General Convention, Presiding Bishop, and 90% or so of Episcopalians in the church do not). This is nonsense, and it is unfortunate that the ENS story did quote anyone directly disputing such a disengenuous remark.

Bishops Meeting Again

A small number of Episcopal bishops, including the Presiding Bishop and the Presiding Bishop-elect, are meeting for three days in New York City beginning today. The meeting, suggested by the Archbishop of Canterbury through his representative, the Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, has been surrounded by mystery and circumspection. NPR had a brief report on the meeting this morning, but ENS has been silent about it since it published a letter from Presiding Bishop Griswold on August 22 clarifying his understanding of the nature of the meeting.

According to Bishop Griswold’s letter, because the Archbishop of Canterbury has no authority to interfere in the affairs of The Episcopal Church, he has urged the church to find a way to resolve the requests Network bishops have made for oversight of their dioceses effectively outside The Episcopal Church. (The consolidated request from the seven dioceses has only just become public and can be found, of all places, on the site of the Connecticut Six, who would benefit directly from the proposed arrangement.) Bishops Lee (Virginia) and Lipscomb (SW Florida) will serve as conveners for the meeting, and Canon Kearon will be present, representing Archbishop Williams. Presiding Bishop Griswold will be joined by Presiding Bishop-elect Jefferts Schori, as well as Bishops Wimberly (Texas), Henderson (Upper South Carolina), O’Neill (Colorado), and Sisk (New York). Of the bishops who have asked for “alternative primatial oversight” or something similar, Bishops Iker, Duncan, Salmon, and Stanton will also be present. (The NPR report spoke of “six bishops,” so one should not consider this list definitive.

What are we to make of this meeting?

To begin with, it is yet another meeting of bishops. (Canon Kearon represents the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is apparently unwilling to visit our shores.) Ever since the votes at the 2003 General Convention, only bishops seem meet to discuss the “crisis” in The Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion. It is high time that priests, deacons, and laypeople assert that bishops are not the church, particularly not The Episcopal Church. Whereas bishops have demonstrated considerable talent in fomenting discord in the Communion in recent years, they have shown little capacity for defusing it. The whole church met in General Convention in June, of course, but, even in that gathering, bishops exercised what many consider inappropriate and, perhaps, destructive, influence when relations with the Anglican Communion were being discussed.

This meeting can be seen as one between militant traditionalists, represented by Iker, Duncan, Salmon, and Stanton, and institutional representatives from The Episcopal Church. The matter at hand is the desire of the traditionalists to separate themselves from The Episcopal Church without having to pay a price for doing so. Bishops Griswold and Jefferts Schori, while usually described as “liberal,” are attending by virtue of their offices, although the Network bishops have made clear that they consider both bishops’ authority unacceptable because of their theology and understanding of the church. The remaining bishops may be meant to be, but can hardly be considered to actually be, representative of the breadth of opinion within the church. Where are the likes of Bishops Bruno, Chane, Mathes, or Robinson? This lack of balance is certainly cause for anxiety among loyal Episcopalians.

That this meeting is taking place at all is distressing—certainly that it is taking place at the behest of Archbishop Williams. Bishop Griswold began his explanation of the origin of the meeting as follows: “Shortly after the General Convention, Kenneth Kearon, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, shared with me some conversations he had had with the Archbishop of Canterbury regarding the whole notion of “alternative primatial oversight” and the difficulty in making a response.” What, we must ask, was the nature of Archbishop Williams’ difficulty? He has no authority over The Episcopal Church; the Presiding Bishop’s letter acknowledges that the archbishop knows this. Moreover, it is perfectly clear to anyone who might look at them—which may or may not include the archbishop—that the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church neither allow for the kind of isolation asked for by the Network bishops nor give the Presiding Bishop, the House of Bishops, the Executive Council, or anyone else the right to negotiate or grant such a radical arrangement. The response of Rowan Williams to the appeal of the Network bishops should not have been “I have difficulty deciding what to do” but “get a life!”

Leaving aside for the moment whether there is reason to talk, consider what the two “sides” want. The Episcopal Church wants its bishops and clergy to obey their ordination vows and to act within the established polity of the church. It expects bishops to participate in church governance, not to subvert it by perverting its canons, building their own organizational structures, and negotiating with other churches as though they represented an autonomous church without connection to The Episcopal Church. It expects toleration of divergent views, certainly those consistent with the parameters of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral and the ongoing development of Anglican traditions in this church and elsewhere. It expects those who, for reasons of conscience, cannot support The Episcopal Church to have the integrity to renounce their authority within the church and to leave empty-handed, their reward being the conviction that they are following Christ to the best of their understanding. This is what other groups dissatisfied with The Episcopal Church have done in times past.

And what do Bishops Iker, Duncan, Salmon, Stanton, et al., want? Institutionally, these people want a church best described as neo-Puritan—narrow theologically, moralistic, ruled by bishops, and dedicated to the principle of sola scriptura. At a more practical level, the Network seeks (1) effectively to be free of The Episcopal Church, (2) to be, in its own right, a member of the Anglican Communion, and (3) to retain the property of parishes and dioceses of which its members are currently in effective control.

Short of simply throwing away the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church, which is as immoral as it is illegal, where are the issues that could reasonably be subject to negotiation? Although loyal Episcopal bishops cannot, on their own authority, promise very much to the insurgents, they certainly can agree to try to convince the House of Bishops to act so as to enforce certain kinds of agreements. The bishops effected a moratorium on the consecration of new bishops prior to the 75^th General Convention, for example, and appear to be committed to enforcing some continuing moratorium by virtue of resolution B033. The Network bishops could, therefore, be offered an agreement—one that would have to be sold to the House of Bishops—that they would not be presented by their colleagues for past misdeeds if they uphold church order in the future. The bishops cannot bind clergy and laypeople to such an agreement, however, and it is unclear that bishops could agree conscientiously not to move forward presentments not originating from bishops. Such an offer, and no other, should be made to Bishops Iker, Duncan, Salmon, and Stanton.

But where, you say, is the Christian charity in a position of such uncharacteristic resoluteness?

It is time, I think, to suspend the endless arguments about theology; they are largely beside the point. Although I find the theology articulated by the Network hateful, disingenuous, ignorant, and self-serving, that is not the point. Believing that the genius of Anglicanism subsists in its willing embrace of theological diversity, however, I would exclude it from Anglicanism only because of its categorical rejection of differing opinions and the authority of those who hold them. This posture recalls nothing so much as the ancient controversy known as Donatism, which no less orthodox a figure as Augustine of Hippo repeatedly and successfully denounced as heretical. Even this is not a reason to eschew discussion of accommodation, however, as one might, in principle, imagine the Network agreeing to be more tolerant without sacrificing its other theological positions.

The Episcopal Church should take a hard line against the insurgents not because they are “conservative,” “orthodox,” “Evangelical,” or whatever—not, in fact, because of their expressed theology at all. These bishops and all who follow them, particularly those in holy orders, must be treated harshly because of the way they behave—because they are willing to lie, cheat, and, ultimately, steal, to achieve their goal of an independent “pure” American church—a church whose assets will, largely, be furnished by “liberating” them from The Episcopal Church. This is appalling and unacceptable behavior. All who engage in it demonstrate that they are unfit for Christian ministry, and The Episcopal Church has every reason to purge itself of people who behave in such a manner before they do more damage to it.

I will offer a more detailed argument for this position at a later time, though many Episcopalians are perfectly capable to documenting the ways in which the Network has subverted the church, lied about its intentions, and recklessly misrepresented and violated our Constitution and Canons, to say nothing of the Ten Commandments. In fact, their appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury is reminiscent of the story of the boy who murders his parents, then pleads for mercy because he is an orphan. The Episcopal Church is being asked to resolve a crisis created by the Network (and its predecessors) in a way that gives the Network virtually everything it is seeking until such time as it can negotiate being given everything it is seeking. Balderdash! Extortion is extortion, and putting a veneer of religion over it does not make it a holy enterprise.

What do I actually expect from this meeting? Not much. For now, I will be happy if the non-Network bishops simply refrain from giving away the store. For many Episcopalians who want to get back to being the church but who are unwilling to trade our rich Episcopalian heritage for ecclesiastical peace, I pray that Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will prove to be a defender of The Episcopal Church when she becomes Presiding Bishop in November. She sacrificed a degree of prestige in urging passage of B033 at General Convention. She perhaps has an opportunity now to get some of it back. If not now, let us hope, then soon.

Meanwhile, all of the rest of us can do is to pray for the church.

Apply Directly to the Whatever

There has been a good deal of comment on the Web about the bizarre and cheesy TV commercial for the headache remedy HeadOn. Besides having production values that suggest that the ad might have been produced by a crew of not-quite-talented middle schoolers, the commercial consists only of the directions for use, repeated three times: “HeadOn—apply directly to the forehead. HeadOn—apply directly to the forehead. HeadOn—apply directly to the forehead.”

Once I recovered from my initial disgust over the HeadOn commercial, I thought about the pronounciation of the word “forehead,” both in the ad itself and in the commentaries on it. (See and listen to the commentary by Brian Unger from NPR, for example.) Everyone seems to pronounce the word as fore´hed these days. I was taught to pronounce the word as fawr´id (or perhaps for´id), however, and the dictionaries I have consulted agree, at least insofar as they list such pronounciations first.

I suspect that the pronounciation fore´hed has become so common because it is analogous to the pronounciation of a whole list of nouns beginning with “fore” that do not change the pronounciation of the element that follows it: forarm, forebrain, forecast, foredeck, forefinger, forefoot, foreground, foregut, forehand, foreleg, forelimb, forelock, foremilk, forename, forenoon, forepaw, foreplay, etc. All these words begin with the prefix “fore,” indicating before, front, or superior. A number of verbs begin with this prefix as well, though these words generally do not emphasize the first syllable: forebode, foreclose, forefeel, forego, forejudge, etc. (“Forecast” is an exception, but this word is also a noun that occurs in the previous list.)

A small number of nouns that begin with “fore,” in addition to “forehead,” do alter the pronounciation of what follows: foreland, foreman, and forecastle (!). In any case, whenever I hear the pronounciation fore´hed, I begin thinking of where one’s afthead must be.

Favicon

I had to perform a hard reset of my Palm V yesterday My choice seemed to be to try a hard reset or to throw away the unit and buy a new one. The digitizer had gone banannas, and I could not access the menu to recalibrate it. But that’s another story. My Palm V seems to be working fine now.

While tapping from screen to screen to assure myself that the organizer had been fixed once I had synchronized it with Microsoft Outlook, I was reminded that I had a note called “favicon.ico” on it, a note intended to remind me that, someday, I wanted to add a favicon to my Web site. A favicon is a “favorites icon,” originally an icon associated with a Web page saved as a favorite in Internet Explorer. Different browsers now use favicons in various ways, and Internet Explorer seems to use them less extensively than do other browsers. Firefox, for example, displays the favicon next to a page’s URL and on a page’s tab, as well as showing it when bookmarks are displayed. You have almost certainly seen Google’s “G” favicon or Wikipedia’s “W.”

Anyway, when I first learned about favicons, they seemed difficult to construct, so I put the task aside for another day. Upon rediscovering my Palm V note, however, I went to Google and looked up “favicon.ico.” There, I quickly found a page called “FavIcons from Pics,” which promised to generate favicons from nearly any graphic. This seemed worth a try.

Of course, one reason I had not gotten too excited about creating my own favicon was that my Web site, Lionel Deimel’s Farrago, did not really have a logo. The offer of a free, easily generated favicon, however, got me thinking. It took me little time to get the idea of using existing graphic elements from my site to create an attractive icon. I took the backgroun for the page banners used on most pages, compressed it horizontally into a square, and superimposed a white “LD.” (I tried superimposing “Farrago” in red over the result, but this produced a design that was too busy and that would not reduce well to a 16x16-pixel graphic.) I saved the result, tried the free favicon generated, and liked the result.

All this is by way of saying that almost every page of my Web site is now changed, which I explain only because visitors may be perplexed that, on my Site Map page, almost all page dates are 9/6/2006. This seems a small price to pay for better “branding” for my Web site. If you have a Web site, why not try getting your own favicon?

Another Comma Problem

Gore Vidal was the last author to set me off by the niggardly use of commas (see “Commas”). The latest author to do so is J. K. Rowling, who, through six volumes of Harry Potter stories has mostly been a source of endless delight. Five hundred thirteen pages into Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, however, I found myself rereading this sentence:

They had one of their rare joint free periods after Charms and walked back to the common room together.

It was immediately obvious that the sentence was wrongly punctuated, but it took a few moments to discover its meaning, and therefore, its proper punctuation. In the magical world of Harry Potter, odd collections of words are sometimes juxtaposed, and knowing this fact doubtless slowed my winnowing out unacceptable interpretations.

In the latest Harry Potter novel, Harry, Ron, and Hermione are sixth-year students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and they are getting together in the Gryffindor common room during a class period for which none has a class scheduled, a situation that does not occur often. The sentence should, I think, read as follows:

They had one of their rare, joint free periods after Charms and walked back to the common room together.

As it appears in the book, the sentence might be read as if rendered as “rare, joint-free periods” (no one smoking pot) or “rare-joint-free periods” (a period free of rare joints, whatever that might mean). In context, of course, any reader would reject such interpretations but would nonetheless stand a good chance of getting well into the phrase “rare joint free periods” without a clear sense of what Rowling is getting at.

Even with the suggested punctuation, I am not completely happy with the sentence. One wants to put a comma after “joint” for additional clarity, but doing so belies how the sentence would be spoken and, in fact, its intended meaning. One would speak of “free periods” that are “rare” and “joint” (i.e., shared), not of “periods” that are “rare,” “joint,” and “free.” "Free periods” is really a compound noun modified by the two proceeding adjectives, and the phrase would be perfectly clear if written as “rare, joint free-periods,” except that “free periods” is not conventionally hyphenated. If one knows that the sentence is punctuated correctly, the reader, if paying close attention, should get the right meaning the first time if the single comma is used in the phrase. Particularly these days, however, such confidence is seldom justified.

John Bolton

Many Democrats seem—and “seem” may be exactly the right word here—upset over President Bush’s recess appointment of John Bolton as U.N. ambassador. They should get over it, stop talking about John Bolton, and worry more about John Roberts.

The recess appointment represents a minor victory for the opposition; Mr. Bush could not, in fact, get his man confirmed! The recess appointment was perfectly proper, and there is nothing the Democrats can do about it. It has been made clear to the world, however, that Bolton is the President’s choice, not that of the American people. If Bolton is as much of a bull in a China shop as many believe he is, we need only wait for confirmation that he was a poor choice for the U.N. post. The Democrats can then say “I told you so” without irony or insincerity. Isn’t that a pretty good outcome?

Finding the Right Noun

(CNN) -- NASA engineers have determined that Discovery can safely return to Earth and that the space shuttle's thermal tiles don't pose a safety hazard, deputy shuttle manager Wayne Hale said Saturday night.

Thus begins a story on today’s CNN Web site. Similar copy was read on the air, but what was said was not quite what was intended.

The shuttle's thermal tiles, rather than posing a safety hazard, are intended to protect the shuttle. When they operate properly, they do just that, allowing the craft to survive the enormous heat of re-entry into the atmosphere. The concern NASA had was not that the tiles might be a threat, but that their condition could be. Were they or were they not damaged in the ascent to orbit?

Even if Hale was imprecise in his statement—notice that he is not quoted directly—CNN should have cleaned up its lead with something like:

NASA engineers have determined that Discovery can safely return to Earth and that the condition of the space shuttle’s thermal tiles don't pose a safety hazard, deputy shuttle manager Wayne Hale said Saturday night.

Space Shuttle Design Flaw

The relief resulting from the successful launch of Space Shuttle Discovery after a 2-1/2 year re-engineering effort following the Columbia disaster has been quickly replaced by dismay. Before the shuttle even reached the International Space Station, NASA had announced that the shuttle fleet would again be grounded. Although the craft seems not to have been damaged by foam shed from the external fuel tank, design changes were unable to keep a piece of foam, estimated to weigh about a pound, from coming loose during the ascent to orbit. Clearly, NASA is beginning to worry that there may be no economic solution to the problem of foam coming loose from the big fuel tank.

The space shuttle and its launch system are increasingly beginning to seem fragile. Some of their vulnerabilities result from a major early design decision. Unlike other objects we have launched into orbit, the space shuttle sits not atop the rockets that propel it, but beside them. This tends to make propulsion system failures catastrophic (as in the case of Challenger), and it puts the vulnerable thermal tiles of the shuttle in harm’s way of insulation that breaks off the external fuel tank. If the shuttle sat on top of the rockets that propel it, rocket engine failures—even rocket explosions—might be survivable. And, of course, the shedding of foam insulation would be completely innocuous.

E-commerce at eMusic

With a recent download, I received an invitation to try the music download service eMusic. The incentive to do so was “50 free downloads,” which sounded like a lot. What did I have to lose?

I should say that I am not a regular consumer of MP3 music files. I have probably downloaded no more that a handful of songs over the years, a couple from the old Napster and Morpheus, and the rest from Web sites devoted particular artists or genres. I do own an MP3 player, but I use it more for its FM radio, for transfering files, and for recording voice or music than I do for actually playing MP3s. I am a long-time audiophile, and the notion of purchasing music in one format when it can be had in a higher-fidelity format is a hard sell.

Not surprising, my “50 free downloads” required that I sign up for a trial membership that would be converted automatically to a regular membership if I failed to cancel. I had every intention of cancelling—this sort of arrangement had cost me money in the past when I failed to pay close attention to offer details—but, since I had never used a fee-based download service, I was willing to try one. Nonetheless, when signing up, I used my American Express card—American Express is great in customer-merchant disputes—and selected the lowest-priced monthly plan for my post-trial membrship. This offered 40 downloads for $9.99.

There is much to like about eMusic. It is oriented toward albums, rather than individual songs. This suited me fine, as I am used to buying albums, not singles. One can purchase individual songs, of course, but eMusic does make it simple to download complete albums with a single click. I give the service high marks for its search capabilities, the annotations provided about albums, and its download software. I was somewhat less impressed by the music selection itself. I found few titles I actually searched for, though I had no trouble finding 50 items I wanted to download. I chose several complete albumns and half a dozen or so selections from others, mostly from the folk/country and classical categories. I was pleased that I could copy album cover art from the site and use it on the folder icons in my computer’s My Music folder.

Downloading whole albumns, it did not take long to exhaust my 50 downloads. It was now time to cancel my membership. Before doing so, however, I saw an "Upgrade" link and thought that I should review all my options first, since I didn’t recall the details of every membership level. I am used to making purchases on the Internet, so I expected to be given a set of options and several opportunities to say no before I had actually committed to a purchase. I clicked on the Upgrade link. Bad choice. I was congratulated for having purchased another month of the service, allowing me 40 additional downloads. This was an especially surprising outcome, since eMusic had missed an opportunity to sell me something more expensive. Apparently, however, the company was not going to miss an opportunity to earn something out of the deal.

I was glad I had used my American Express card, but I was hoping I would not actually have to dispute a charge. Natually, I looked for a customer service telephone number. Naturally, I didn't find one. There was a Web form for sending e-mail to eMusic, however, so I composed a complaint and request for a refund. I said, in part: “I am very angry at this aggressive piece of deceptive marketing. Please confirm that I will not be charged for another month. I WILL dispute any charge with American Express.”

The next day—kudos to eMusic here—I received a reply. It referred me to eMusic’s Terms of Use and essentially told me that I was out of luck: “Unfortunately we are not able to issue you a refund for charges incurred during your subscription.” I resisted my urge to call in American Express. Included in my reply, however, was the following: “I was charged without warning. Your Web site does not conform to standard practice of verifying the user's intention before he incurs a charge, particularly a non-refundable one. I consider this deceptive and possibly fraudulent. If you do not remove the charge within 24 hours, I will dispute the charge with American Express. It will be easier for everyone if you do the proper thing and process a refund.”

This seems to have done the trick. The next e-mail message, which arrived the next day, read, in part: “Your eMusic account associated with the email address "lionel@deimel.org" is now canceled. We have issued you a refund in the amount of $9.99.” It was suggested that I check back later to reconsider subscribing. “Over the next several months, we're going to be enhancing the service with new features and new content.” The note failed to explain if the enhancements would include a more user-friendly e-commerce component.

From Yellow to Orange

In response to the bombings in the city of London, today, Homeland Security informed the world on its Web site as follows: “The United States government is raising the threat level from Code Yellow--or Elevated-- to Code Orange--or High--for the mass transportation portion of the transportation sector.” The CNN link to the story about the change read “US raises alert level after blasts.”

Homeland Security has consistently refered to its color-coded advisory system as specifying a “threat level,” but I had not noticed until today that this terminology represents either fuzzy thinking or deliberate manipulation by the Department of Homeland Security. I hope that, in fact, Homeland Security is raising the perceived threat level; if it is raising the actual threat level, we have a serious need to re-evaluate what this organization thinks it is supposed to be doing! No doubt, the Department would like citizens to believe that the declared “threat level” corresponds to an actual statistically meaningful measure of the current threat from terrorism. Without more information than the government will ever have, however, the “threat level” is simply a best guess of that hypothetical statistic. Homeland Security should call its colored levels “perceived threat levels” or, more reassuringly, “estimated threat levels.”

The CNN use of “alert level” seems to be a headline-writer’s mistake, at least insofar as it does not capture directly the sense of what Homeland Security said it was doing. Because each “threat level” corresponds to a detailed specification of steps to be taken by public safety organizations, however, a change, like this one from yellow to orange, does indeed (and unambiguously) elevate what could reasonably be called the “alert level.” Perhaps Homeland Security should use this term, which emphasizes something the Department does know, rather than something it doesn’t.

Nuclear Option

The Senate tonight is moving closer to invoking the “nuclear option” to circumvent the filibuster rule for judicial nominations. I sent the letter below to my two senators: Santorum (who will surely vote for the “nuclear option”) and Specter (who may have the courage to vote against it).

I believe that the two greatest political ideas contributed by the United States are the separation of church and state and a system of checks and balances. The filibuster is part of the latter. The Republican Party seems intent on diminishing both of these great ideas embodied in the Republic.

Dear Senator:

The President says that every judicial nominee has a right to an up-or-down vote in the Senate. This is not true. Nominees deserve a decision on whether the Senate consents to his or her nomination or not. (Whatever happened to the notion that the Senate also provides advice on nominations?) Anyway, a successful filibuster on a nominee amounts to a rejection by the Senate and surely fulfills any moral or constitutional obligation to the nominee, the President, or to the American people.

The filibuster rule in the United States Senates, any history notwithstanding, has no exceptions regarding the matter at issue. Any argument to the contrary is disingenuous, and I suspect that you, every Republican member of the Senate, and the Vice President of the United Sates all realize that.

The filibuster rule is not, I admit, “democratic.” It is, however, a bulwark against democracy run amuck, one of the many checks and balances built into the structure of the Republic, albeit not a check institutionalized in the Constitution.

Preserving the filibuster in its current form, and certainly for judicial nominations, is especially important because it is vital that our courts be and be seen to be impartial. Judges confirmed by 51-49 votes are likely to be people who will compromise that appearance and, likely, that reality. Should the next Supreme Court justice be confirmed by such a close and partisan vote, it will, I believe, be a step toward the destruction of the American experiment that, for more than 200 years, has been such a shining light to the world.

For me, your vote for the “nuclear option” will be a legislative sin that I can never forgive. Should you vote to support the cynically improper scheme for approving the President’s judicial nominations hatched by the Vice President and the Senate leadership, I will forever hold you and your party responsible for a wanton blow to the Republic more devastating than any a mere terrorist might inflict.

May your conscience overrule your party loyalty on this issue.

Sincerely,
Lionel Deimel

Charitable Diversion?

Yesterday, President Bush announced that predecessors Clinton and Bush would head an effort to raise private funds for tsunami relief in southeast Asia. The three presidents, their entourage, and the press then visited four embassies of southeast Asia nations to express America’s sympathy for the recent natural disaster. This has all been reported matter-of-factly in the press. Am I the only cynic who sees in these actions more blatant self-interest than humanitarian sensitivity?

President Bush had a couple of problems. He had been criticized by former President Clinton, among others, for offering little funding for the tsunami relief effort and for being slow even to do that. (One is reminded of the bewildered Bush reading with a group of toddlers for several minutes after he had learned about the 9/11 attacks on the United States.) Even after the President had increased the U.S. pledge to $350 million, we still found ourselves playing second fiddle to a generous Japan. Bush may well be benevolent by nature, but he faces massive Federal deficits that will be exacerbated by the developing quagmire that is the Iraq war, as well as by the Income Tax and Social Security giveaways that seem even closer to his heart. Spending more billions in southeast Asia wouldn’t help.

The solution, of course, was to pass the buck to the private sector, thereby getting credit for what the American people would do, while keeping the cost off-budget. It is not clear why President Clinton signed on to this project, though perhaps he thought that doing so would enhance his own reputation for selflessness. The American people, even without nagging from past or present presidents, are showing their usual generosity in the wake of the tragedy, and it is not clear that the Clinton-Bush effort will raise substantially more money than would have been raised anyway by existing relief organizations.

As for a gaggle of presidents, advisors, reporters, and photographers invading one’s embassy for a photo op, what ambassador wants that? Wouldn’t a private, personal telephone call from the President communicate more genuine human concern? Such a call could even have been mentioned in a White House press release. Of course, it would have produced no footage on the evening news.

Reflection on the Recent Election

November 2, 2004, was a sad day for me. When it became obvious the next day that President George W. Bush had been elected, I wrote the following message to the e-mail list of Progressive Episcopalian of Pittsburgh (PEP). I am PEP’s president.

Discipline yourselves; keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.

— 1 Peter 5:8-10 (NRSV)

I am profoundly sad today, and I suspect that many in Progressive Episcopalian of Pittsburgh feel as I do. Even supporters of George W. Bush—a group that most certainly does not contain me—must have reservations about yesterday’s elections. Although both the popular and Electoral College votes will be closely divided, the vast interior of the country is, to borrow a term from Maureen Dowd, Bushworld. Democrats cling to the continental fringes—the Northeast, part of the Upper Midwest, the West Coast, and Hawaii. Florida, whose residents surely favored Gore in 2000, is today blood red. Republicans continue to be a slim majority, yet rule with arrogant swagger. Bush has failed utterly to be a uniter and not a divider. And, yet, we appear to be condemned to another four years of his polarizing “leadership.”

Putting aside my fear that neither the United States nor the world can survive another four years of Republican rule without some as-yet unknown global calamity, I am worried by the widely remarked phenomenon that the Bush victory—and I assume it is a victory—is driven by “moral values.” Apparently, 80% of people interviewed in exit polls who cited “moral values” as their top concern voted for Bush. This appalling statistic is a challenge to all Christians who are not conservative Evangelicals. I fear that, in the popular mind, God is a Republican. This is a situation we must change, lest the years ahead see a spiritual and intellectual return of the Dark Ages.

Whatever our immediate goals in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the Episcopal Church, or even the Anglican Communion, we, with other Christians in the country, must represent Christ’s message as one of love toward God and of our fellow brothers and sisters. Christianity needs to be recognized in the popular imagination as a religion whose message is not necessarily one of literal adherence to a simpleminded reading of the ancient texts. I want to be proud, not embarrassed, to call myself a Christian. I want others to join me on the Christian journey, a difficult path whose twists and turns are not always obvious and whose borders are often ambiguous, rather than sharply delineated. I want people to recognize that “moral values” are not a fixed checklist so much as a set of principles and a process for applying them. Chief among those principles is love and the example of it we have in Jesus Christ. We achieve our moral vision by engaging our entire selves—mind, body, and spirit—in the quest for God’s plan for us. Prayer, study, reflection, and listening are elements of the journey, as is action, but not simply reflexive action that mistakes self-interest and prejudice for God’s will.

Perhaps our mission statement is too narrow, our audience too restricted. We are Christians, and our job is to represent Christ to the world. That world is very different from the one in which he walked two millennia ago. We would do well to ask ourselves the question often asked, though perhaps poorly answered, by conservative Christians: What would Jesus do? Let me put that another way: Were Jesus in the White House, would his agenda be that of George W. Bush? The answer to that question is obvious to me. We need to make it obvious to others.

Lower Manhattan

Recently, I saw a news segment on television about a Dick Cheney campaign event at the Statue of Liberty. The correspondent said something about the changed view of Lower Manhattan from Liberty Island since the destruction of the Twin Towers. For the first time, it struck me that "Lower Manhattan" has taken on a somewhat different meaning since the events of September 11, 2001.

Is “Both” Really Necessary?

In a news story on NPR this morning, a reporter read the following sentence (or something close to it): “Both of the planes disappeared within a few minutes of each other.” I considered writing to NPR yet again to protest this manner of using “both,” but I decided to post a comment on my Web log instead. Obviously, my previous letters to NPR on the overuse of “both” have been to no avail.

I admit that the reporter’s sentence is neither false nor ungrammatical. It is true that plane A disappeared within a few minutes of the disappearance of plane B. It is equally true that plane B disappeared within a few minutes of the disappearance of plane A. The question we must ask, however, is whether only one of these assertions could possibly be true. The obvious answer is “no.” The relation disappeared within a few minutes of the disappearance of is clearly symmetric. Near simultaneity is a shared property of two events and cannot be attributed exclusively to one or the other. Particularly on the radio, where brevity is surely a virtue, the sentence should simply have been: “The planes disappeared within a few minutes of each other.” I suspect that whoever composed the sentence, however, was unconsciously using “both” as an intensifier, stressing that the crashes constituted an extraordinary coincidence.

The redundant use of “both” is common. Here are a few more examples: “Both drug stores opened near one another.” “Both boys were of equal height.” “Both speakers shared the podium.” “Both phenomena have a common origin.”

“Both” is nonetheless a useful word that is not always redundant. Consider these sentences: “Both drug stores opened in the suburb of Bethel Park.” “Both boys are 5 ft. 2 in. in height.” “Both speakers were on the 2 o’clock program.” “Both phenomena are caused by magnetic fields.”

Independence Day Thought

Driving home from an Independence Day party and a subsequent outing to view the fireworks sponsored by Mt. Lebanon Township, I reflected on the day, which had included a sermon on political freedom versus Christian freedom and a class that focused on Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who wrote the first Book of Common Prayer. In our class, I expressed the view that separation of church and state was among the greatest and most beneficial innovations of the Founding Fathers. At the time, I was thinking of the many people, including Archbishop Cranmer, who were burned or beheaded in a sixteenth-century England in which church and state were inextricably entwined. On the drive home, however, my thoughts were more abstract and more analytical: separation of church and state denies to the state the imprimatur of the church and denies to the church the power of the state. The effect, in a society generous in its grant of rights to a free people, is to encourage the honesty and integrity of both church and state.

I hope your Independence Day was a good one.

Senate Indecency

Permit me to point out an irony that has been noticed by others, but which is simply too good not to mention.

Last week, Vice President Dick Chaney apparently told Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy “fuck you” on the floor of the Senate during a group photo session. Chaney told Fox News, “I felt better after I said it. A lot of my colleagues felt what I said badly needed to be said.” No doubt!

Both houses of Congress recently voted to allow the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to raise fines for indecency on broadcast radio and television to $500,000 (House) or $275,000 (Senate) per incident. (Apparently the word “fuck” is, in all contexts, deemed indecent.) As disrespect for free speech and willingness to ponder to the basest of voter prejudices knows no party, the votes were lopsided and bipartisan.

The Senate should fine the Vice President to show that, in fact, its vote was completely sincere.

Surprising Old Usages

I have been reading Richard H. Schmidt’s wonderful book Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality. Schmidt describes the lives and writings of 29 notable Anglicans, beginning with Thomas Cranmer and ending with Desmond Tutu. For each Anglican writer, he also provides excerpts to help the reader gain a sense of that person’s work firsthand.

Schmidt treats his subjects chronologically, and, since I have only begun reading the book, I have been encountering some old text. This slows my reading somewhat but isn’t otherwise much of a problem. Every so often, however, I am stopped in my tracks by a word that clearly means something different from what it would mean in a modern context.

For example, addressing the intent of sacraments, Archbishop Cranmer writes: “Our Savior Christ hath not only set forth these things most plainly in his holy word, that we may hear them with our ears, but he has also ordained one visible sacrament of spiritual regeneration in water, and another visible sacrament of spiritual nourishment in bread and wine, to the intent that, as much as is possible for man, we may see Christ with our eyes, smell him at our nose, taste him with our mouths, grope him with our hands, and perceive him with all our senses.” Encountering that word “grope” is disconcerting. Clearly, it simply means handle or manipulate. The modern word is never used that way, and, I think, is being used less often to mean to reach or to search uncertainly (grope in the dark, grope for a word). The first meaning of “grope” that comes to my mind—and likely yours, I suspect—is, as The American Heritage Dictionary delicately puts it,“[t]o handle or fondle for sexual pleasure.” What an inappropriate meaning that would be in Cranmer’s sentence!

A confession from Lancelot Andrewes’ Private Devotions also contains a curious archaic usage. He begins (in the 1840 translation of John Henry Newman—Andrewes had a habit of writing in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew): “Merciful and pitiful Lord.” The word “pitiful” has the most obvious and straightforward meaning here—albeit a meaning lost to current usage—full of pity. The modern word, of course, means inspiring or deserving pity, perhaps due to some inadequacy. Andrewes, however, is hardly calling God inadequate!