APOLARITY

Jon Stewart once again masterfully demonstrates why he’s the most trusted newsman in the U.S.

Check out this interview between Stewart and John O’Hara, one of the founders and intellectual leaders of the Tea Party movement.

Part two is here (for some reason it’s not embeddable).

Kudos to Jon (and John) for demonstrating that substantive dialogue is possible across ideological divides. He’s able to break simplistic narratives and engage the essence of a matter. Even if such a conversation still ends in disagreement, it promotes commonality and mutual respect.

Sins of Admission – a beautiful essay from a faithful, devout, gay Catholic, on staying in the Church, adoption, parenting (the author and her mate adopted two orphans of AIDS from Africa, and has enrolled them in Catholic school).

I do not take the teachings of the church and its two thousand years of accumulated wisdom lightly. I never have. But in the actual experience of loving my partner, I knew that our love was good. It was as simple as that. Our love as we experienced it was a flowering of our faith, and not its undoing. This was so overwhelmingly apparent that I was immediately suspicious of my own self. The possibilities for self-deception are infinite, I knew. And I was sure “I know that our love is good” was right up there with “It seemed like a good idea at the time” as the phrase of choice of love- and lust-addled adulterers and sundry other kinds of sinner. But at the end of the day, one is left with oneself, one’s conscience (however formed), and the stirrings of the Spirit.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
- Marianne Williamson, from A Return to Love (often incorrectly attributed to Nelson Mandela)

My hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A [person] who takes away another [person's] freedom is a prisoner of hatred … is locked behind bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

- Nelson Mandela, from his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom (ht)

her voice and body dance
turn leap and laugh
(not making fun of
look what a geek
laughter but

we are rare and precious
let’s deafen the world
with the bells of our love
laughter)

that laughter
- beating out of her round
ribcage
a bird unbarred -
knows everything about dance:
the choreography of lumps in the throat
executed with open ears
naked from the heart up

her moving mirth knows
that anything
- unexplained exits, dying clowns,
elephants’ feet smashing glass,
fucking it up and falling down -
even falling apart can be a dance

- Diane L. Tucker, from God on His Haunches, 1996

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

- G.K. Chesterton

Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either) – Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow on the iPad and Apple’s stifling of creativity:

[C]learly there’s a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. But there’s also a palpable contempt for the owner. I believe — really believe — in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can’t open it, you don’t own it. Screws not glue.

(…)

The way you improve your iPad isn’t to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn’t a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it’s a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

Yeah, I won’t be getting one.

How the GOP Purged Me – Chris Currey with a historical look at the Republican party from a lifelong conservative.  Well worth a read.

I grew up in an era where William F. Buckley fought the John Birch society and kicked them out of the Republican Party. I grew up with — in fact voted for the first time for — Eisenhower. In 1956, he ran a campaign of dignity. A campaign that acknowledged that there are certain projects better suited to be handled by the government. See, business thinks in the short term, as he said. That’s the imperative of the marketplace. I invest and I expect that in a few quarters, I garner the fruits of my investment. Government, on the other hand, has the luxury to wait a few years, maybe decades, for a return on a given investment. As a former businessman, I know that first hand. Am I a Marxist for thinking that?