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| Art by Adrian Teal |
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| “Rat Race to the Meaning of Life” by Channing. |
I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety to drop dead —Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "I Am Waiting" 1958
“NYC Playgrounds Reopen with Social Distancing” —ABC, June
“Word of the day is 'sorry-go-round' (19th century): a repetitive cycle of depressing actions or events.” —Lexicographer Susie Dent, August
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| Photo source: Photo credit: Lucas Jackson/Reuters via The New York Times. |
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| “Sorted” by Pia Guerra at The Nib, August 17, 2020. |
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| Artwork source: Vox |
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| The U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall, where two iconic figures from every state hold court, will soon have a new resident: A clay likeness of the late Reverend Billy Graham, the popular televangelist who brought the word of Jesus Christ to the masses through a series of high-profile “crusades,” evangelistic campaigns that saw massive rallies across the United States. For Jews and groups concerned with the separation of church and state, the prospect is a problematic one. Last week, a North Carolina legislative committee approved a scale model of the 10-foot, 10-inch Graham statue, which would be placed at the Capitol sometime next year pending the approval of a congressional committee. If that approval comes through, Graham’s effigy will replace a statue of Charles Brantley Aycock, a North Carolina governor and white supremacist… Graham, who died in 2018 at the age of 99, was beloved by many and is certainly an improvement over Aycock, who helped engineer the overthrow of a largely Black government in Wilmington, N.C. But the preacher is controversial on several fronts. His record with regard to civil rights was mixed, as he accepted segregation at some of his crusades and critiqued the tactics of marches and sit-ins to end Jim Crow laws. Like many Evangelicals, he also believed homosexuality to be a sin, calling it a “sinister form of perversion.” And while he had a reputation for building interfaith bridges, a major rift with his relationship with the Jewish community emerged in 1994, when Nixon Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman’s White House diaries became public. Haldeman wrote that Nixon and Graham, alone in the Oval Office after a prayer breakfast in February of 1972, discussed Jewish control of the media. Graham denied having this conversation, but in 2002, the tape was released by the National Archives.In the recording, Graham agreed with Nixon that liberal Jews had too much influence, saying, “This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain.” Graham further accused Jews of “putting out the pornographic stuff” in the culture and contended that, while he was friendly with Jews who “swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I’m friendly with Israel,” those Jews “don’t know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country. And I have no power, no way to handle them, but I would stand up if under proper circumstances.” Graham apologized after the tape became public, telling a group of Jewish leaders he was on his “hands and knees” to make up for the harm of his remarks. —The Forward, August 10, 2020. Photo: An earlier statue of Graham was removed in 2016 from its location in downtown Nashville destined be relocated to a Christian Conference Center near Asheville, North Carolina. —WTVF, Nashville. |