A Wee Violation of Two of Polite Society's Conversational Taboos
by Walter Agnew Moore II, Gentleman Scholar
1 March 2002, Amiens, France

PART ONE: RELIGION

Well folks, somehow the word got out that I am Jewish. Don't get me wrong, I never had any intention of hiding that fact, but I don't remember telling anyone either. As you can see, I don't have a particularly "Jewish" name, so I don't know what clued them in. I know for a fact that I have never been to temple here. Sure, some of my pals here in Amiens are Jewish, but most are not. Couldn't be that.

But word has gotten out. Cool. Fine with me. Some of the side-effects of it being public knowledge are fairly pleasant— I have been introduced to a couple of interesting French girls with a nudge to the ribs and a muttered "And she's *Jewish*, Walter."

Like I said, I never hid the fact, I'm just puzzled how they found out.

Because I'm not Jewish. Never have been.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be interesting. I took a Hebrew class or two in college. I liked them. But then, on the other hand, my friend Ray is Jewish, and he's crazy. I still think he had something to do with that Penthouse Comics Editor jumping down the elevator shaft of the Sheraton in New York City, but I can't prove it. Still, it cancels out the Hebrew classes.

I was raised as Southern Baptist. Kind of like Jewish, plus an extra book.

Now, the stereotype of Southern Baptists is some frenzied jack-ass standing on a stump, deep in the Bogaloosa Swamp, screaming damnation at an audience of slack-jawed inbreeds who are daydreaming about going back out to the road to scrape that possum roadkill off the pavement afore Cooter comes along n gits it.

Or that *was* the stereotype. Thank God for the Coen Brothers film "O Brother Where Art Thou". There is a dreamy scene where lines of nice, well-behaved people go down to the river to be baptised, symbolically starting a new life free from past mistakes. Every French person I have talked to about it loves that scene, and even more, they love the beautiful hymn that the people were singing, the one with "Oh mother, let's go down, down to the river and pray." As likely as not, they will sing it for you. If this becomes the new stereotype, fine with me.

Unfortunately, here's the truth about growing up Baptist from somebody who's been there: You will sit in a church like any other, sing a song or two, stand up, sit down, and be bored out of your skull for an hour or so. Having a human explain the divine always seemed as frustrating to me as having an English teacher explain poetry.

Tried out Catholicism for a semester or two at the university. It was alright, until I figured out all the new times that I was supposed to sit down and stand up, that the priest actually expected me to say I thought the Pope knew what God meant better than anybody else, and, and I suppose this was the main thing, that all the songs we played on our guitars at the evening Folk Mass were in the key of A minor. Every single one.

Then I had some Pagan friends. They are Unitarian now.

Satan-worship is right out. The black-hair-dye manufacturers will have to get by without me.

Let's see, other Protestant sects, Methodist, Episcopalian, etc ... all I can tell is that they have different types of cars in their parking lots. Whiskeypalian would probably be OK with me, they drink, don't really care what God or the Pope thinks, and they still have pretty churches. But I don't drive a Beemer.

If I could be a Muslim like my old roomie Zein, that would be alright. He was the kind of guy who was a walking advertisement for religion— happy, able to kick back and have fun, understood your point of view and was happy to explain his if you asked. BUT, and this is a big but, I fear if I became Muslim I would have to constantly associate with people like this other roomie I had, a real wonder of integration into the modern world, who would pop off that all girls were sluts who didn't take orders from him, and who managed to turn half the house into a monument to third-world squalor. And I don't want to go to Saudi Arabia on hajj if I can help it. Green places, good. Desert, bad.

A similar reason rules out becoming Mormon. Salt Lake City. You have a desert called Utah, and there is a big lake in the middle of it with water you can't drink. How is this different from Saudi Arabia? Why do religions have to base themselves in awful ecological disaster-zones, uninhabitable places like Mecca or Utah or Rome?

I'd talk about more some other religions, but I know even less about them than I do about the ones I have already mentioned. Lemme adjust my seat on this bar-stool and rant about something else.

PART TWO: POLITICS

FRENCH POLITICS: Doesn't matter what they do in France, they are still stuck with their bureaucracy which prevents anything from ever happening. Do you know that the French actually defeated the invading Germans in 1940? They did. The German Army was not "occupying" France, they were simply sitting around waiting for the French Prefectures to process their paperwork so they could go home. By 1964 or so it would have been almost done, but then the Allies had to come in shooting guns, in *1944* no less, and that made a mess of it.

BRITISH POLITICS: I understand from yesterday's Times that the House of Commons is all against fox-hunting, but that there may be some chance of saving the ancient custom when it goes for a vote at the House of Lords. I did not make this up.

Fox-hunting... perhaps they could get more popular support for it if they changed it to "stray-dog hunting", and let you use something more within the reach of the Workin' Man than a horse, maybe ratty little scooters. And lose those dominatrix riding clothes. Or else make them kinkier. I don't know, I just have a feeling that there is a way to please everybody on this one. You've got the football hooligans sitting around who can't get healthy exercise anymore, plenty of dogs probably, it just cries out for a solution.

AMERICAN POLITICS: huhuhuhuuuuuu duuuuuude, like my dad's got me this killer trust fund set up? and like duuude I'm gonna take the cash n like run for president? cuz my name is (insert name of favorite Republican/Democrat here).

In America, if you don't feel like sucking up to glorified frat-boys, you have some other choices:

Libertarian/Ross Perot/Buchanan: You are a loner who is a really good shot with a deer rifle. You have memorized the Constitution. You print your own money and have a play-bunker out back for the kids. Them feds better not come up on this here land...

Communist: Used to be a fashionable way for you to make sure you never worked again anywhere but Mexico or The People's Republic of Jack-Squat, but these days, I can't even find 'em. Maybe I should hang out around more university literature departments.

The KKK: You are now in the Republican Party, and they make you wear a suit, and you can't tell your favorite jokes in public, OR you are a skinny guy with broken knuckles, no job, no hair, no hood or robe, and prison tattoos. Klan just ain't no fun no more.

The Whiny Guilty Party: OK, I just made this up, but since it doesn't exist you are almost certainly a Democrat.

The Black People Party: Another one I made up, because being Black in America is not a political party, it is a suspended sentence. DWB. Watch out for yourself, because nobody else is going to. They'll still take your vote though.

The Green Party: I didn't make this one up, but some people in a bar in Texas acted like I did, once. This is your prime chance to hang out at drum-circles with White Boys in Dreadlocks and Skinny Hippy Chicks. The reek of patchouli replaces the missing ozone.

Actually I like this one the best. Ralph Nader saved my life. Three times. In the 60's, while the Dems and Repubs were figuring out where to send off everybody but their own kids to die, scrappy little Ralph got the big car companies to install seat-belts. Three mighty scary head-on collisions for Walter. Three times unbuckling the seat-belt and walking away, instead of lurking nearby as a disembodied spirit while they hosed my brains off the dash. Knock on wood. (A Pagan, ahem, Unitarian custom.)

Hey, it may be a fairly medieval reason to vote for a progressive party, but it's how I'm built. If you ever save my life, I'll vote for you too.