Mitt Romney's dilemma

Sadly, political expediencies often informs moral choices.

Would it help with voters if Mitt Romney was more out and proud about his Mormon practice? Or is it better to down play it and hope that conservative evangelical voters and independents make the choice on other grounds?

Rightly, Romney made the point, when he briefly addressed the question a few years ago, that there is not, and should not be, any religious test for office.

Apparently, however, for some voters, your faith or lack of it can disqualify you. That's why, perhaps, we haven't had many atheists candidates.

What do you think? Address the issue head-on? Or...hope it goes away?

Right.



http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/631239_Column--Romney-s-Mormon-dilemma.html

One of the "mean girls" -- moi?

I'm having a wee bit of an identity crisis, so bear with me.

Am I one of the "mean girls"?

Over the past few days, I've been overcome with waves of fury.

Their target? The girlfriend I referenced yesterday.

The cause? The way that, not clever enough to hide her tracks, she's given me a window into her world.  Not that I didn't have a few before .   

But it's not about her. It's never really been about her.  And if she was more astute, she'd realize that, fundamentally, it's not about me, either.

If there's no threat, life is rosy. No worries.  

If there is a threat, it's from within.  

Not that I'm saying there is one.  I am constantly humbled by what I don't know about our nature as humans

Frankly, I can't imagine the world she inhabits.  

We are as alike as chalk and cheese.

But I don't really want to imagine it, either.  I don't want to sink to her level.

Yet that's just where I fear I go, at least in imagination.

I write my son's baseball coach about game times and schedules, and fantasize about....oh, don't worry, nothing violent.

That is to say, nothing that involves pugilism or gore.

Perhaps a bit of scheming, a tince of plotting, a few well-place verbal stabs.

That's enough to frighten me, to make me wonder if I'm shrinking, my spirit becoming smaller, my boundaries more confined.

The anger will evaporate, eventually.  I am incapable of being wrathful for long.  Besides, it serves no good.

And good is, hopefully, my aim.

So if you hear any "mean girl" remarks, feel free to remind me -- ultimately, it doesn't matter who she is or what she does, short of murder or poisonings.

It does matter who I am -- and what I lose, if I allow myself to drink from the poisoned chalice.

I will put it down, and walk on.

I am bigger than this -- I hope.

When will I be done with you?

My excuse? I am impelled to write this by virtual visits from the ex-wife, and the discovery of one by the current girlfriend in another venue.  Again, I play the ingenue.  I suppose I AM, with respect to other people's motives and behavior, suited only for that part.


Dipping my virtual pen in blood, I write....


___________________________________________________________________

When you told me you wanted to be free to date others, as though I had you in my iron claws
 (perhaps mistaking me for many others), and I accepted without question (jealousy is not in my nature)....

I was not done with you.

When you came to my house for dinner, head buried in the baseball scores, and chided me for purchasing the wrong beer, sitting at my dinner table and exchanging workplace stories with another friend while I sat silent and stunned...

I was not done with you.

When you told me, in words that echoed eerily,  that I wasn't attractive enough for you...

I could see the pattern, and though I tried mightily, I wasn't done with you.

Forgiving, understanding, patient...my blessings and my wounds.

Silent, hoping for the healing distance and forgiveness can bring, I waited.  Even when you deleted my name from your list of Facebook friends for no misbehavior of mine...

I wasn't done with you.

Months passed.  Hopes for friendship ebbed and flowed.

Recently, I discovered that your girlfriend had tracked you, and me down on another social media site - to see if we were still, somehow, connected?  Possessiveness and fear so far from my native language, I wonder -- what concerns her, after all these months?

I am SO not her.

And still, against the advice of pretty much all my friends, I am not, finally, done with you.

Somewhere, buried in the ruins of the honest, open and kind friendship we had, is a person capable of creating a better ending, if ending there need be to the affection we shared (even if Plato be our guide).

Forgotten, perhaps, like a melody half-remembered, is a man of principle and warmth.  I knew that man. I gave him something I had not given any man in decades, and in spite of the many others who have auditioned for that role, have not given since -- my trust.

A precious thing, trust.

I want to be done with the man who is, now, the man he was before I met him.  I don't live in that place of shadows.

But to give up on the hope that someday (though impossible, impossible, impossible now) that someday words will heal as they have hurt is to give up on part of myself -- and the goodness I saw in him.

Not yet.

Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am, and wild for to hunt, though I seem tame.

Finally, Mr. Moore

Recall, dear friends, a while ago, I mentioned a certain writer, a bestselling one.

In my little rant, virtually posted in these pages, I noted that he had turned down my request for an interview, unless it was done via email.

He doesn't trust journalists, he told me, because consistently, when he has been interviewed, he has found that they have their own agenda and distort what he said.

Radio and television are different, he said -- because there, he knew that his words would speak for themselves, as it were.  

I wanted that interview -- but not enough to compromise my principles on email dialogue -- which can easily be shaped, particularly by writers, into something as glossy and vapid as a p.r. brochure.

No interview. Just the prospect of my review, and the realization that sometimes the relationship between writers and their subjects is, well, as bizarre as that of the plot of a Christopher Moore novel.

Here it is....

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20120415_Review_of__Sacre_Bleu__by_Christopher_Moore.html