Category: language

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Business-general, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, language, media-general, Politics, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

A libertarian participant on a LinkedIn discussion group posted,

how does business do anything to make you miserable ??

dont like their products then dont buy them

without biz making those things you would [be] naked growing your own vegetables in the wilderness

My response:

William: I know you espouse libertarianism but I don’t think of you as naive. I was once a member of the Libertarian Party, and still see a great deal of merit in libertarian approach to foreign policy as well as civil liberties; I would love to see Ron Paul as US Secretary of Defense, because if HE were willing to go to war, the situation must be dire indeed. But when you write,

You come across as VERY naive. Or are you pulling our collective (yes, a loaded word in libertarian circles) chain?

Consider…there are many corporations that do great things, create reasonably enjoyable workplaces, and work to heal the planet. BUT, worldwide, there are others that 1) create utter misery for their employees (think about the sweatshop workers in the factory that burned in Bangladesh a year or two ago); 2) pollute and destroy the neighborhoods they’re located in, causing severe adverse health effects for their neighbors and others; 3) rape the earth for their raw materials and then dump the toxic leftovers back on the poor, beleaguered planet, taking no responsibility for their actions.

You will say to #1 that no one forces people to work in slave conditions; they could just go off and start their own business if they don’t want to work for “The Man.” I did that, and from your ID line, it looks like you did, too. But that’s disingenuous. Not everybody can think through that alternative, not everybody has access to even a sliver of capital. If you’re making barely enough to keep your family from starving and from being thrown out of your one-room shack, even a few bucks will be too much.

I started my own business with $200. I was pretty poor at the time, but I did have the $200 (and even a bit more) in the bank. And I had to survive during the very lean start-up phase. At the time (1981), I knew almost nothing about marketing and was in a community that had little use for the service I was offering. I made $300 the first 6 months—before we moved to a more supportive community—and lived on a mix of rapidly depleting savings, odd-job income, and what my wife-to-be brought in from her meager job at a restaurant. But I had that luxury! I had a couple of thousand in the bank that I could draw from. Many people in developing countries, or even in our own inner cities and poor rural areas, do not. If they have no job and they start a business that isn’t immediately viable, how do they eat?

I would have more respect for the libertarian position if it accepted responsibility for #s 2 and 3. But libertarians discredit themselves with me when they claim that it’s their right to plunder the earth because they got there first, and that it’s perfectly OK to extract the resources, pollute and dump wastes just because of that arbitrary fact.I don’t object to profit; I make a chunk of my living writing and speaking about how to be a better capitalist, after all. But I have no respect for businesses that claim they have every right to privatize their profit while externalizing—dare I say socializing—the harm. A true libertarian would see overharvesting and pollution/dumping as theft from others, forcing them to incur economic costs to clean up someone else’s mess. But somehow, the libertarians I know sound a theme more like “we got here first, too bad for the rest of you, and the mess is not our problem.”

Libertarians often cite economist Milton Friedman on the social responsibility of business to maximize profits. However, even Friedman saw a need to limit business. I went back to the source: his New York Times Magazine essay of September 13, 1970. And to my amazement, I found that Friedman added some major conditions to his remarks. Here’s what he actually said:

In a free-enterprise, private-property sys­tem, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct re­sponsibility to his employers. That responsi­bility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while con­forming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom. (emphasis added)

At the very end of the essay, he quotes from his own textbook and repeats the qualifier, phrased a bit differently:

“there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use [its] resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” (emphasis added once more)

To put it another way, in this essay, Friedman was totally willing to concede that self-rule doesn’t always work in the business world. Government is needed to keep business from exercising its self-interest at the expense of others’ self-interest and the wide society’s interest. Whether it’s a retailer avoiding the cost of health insurance by paying its workers so little that they qualify for government assistance or a manufacturer spewing poisons into the air and water and land, expecting that the government—in other words, the taxpayers: we the people—to clean it up,  I would definitely count as “deception or fraud”: the externalizing of responsibility for the mess.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, censorship, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, language, Marketing Trends/News, poverty, privacy, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

Very interesting post on Business Week: “Can Small Businesses Start a Gay Rights Movement in Mississippi?”

I totally support nondiscrimination in any public accommodation or retail setting—and I’m delighted to see the “We don’t discriminate. If you’re buying, we’re selling” campaign in Mississippi. But at the risk of alienating some of my friends, l think service businesses–especially values-based ones—are a different case. Before you jump all over me—read the language I send to new prospects for my marketing and consulting services:

Please note that I reserve the right to reject a project if I feel I’m not the right person for it. This would include projects that in my opinion promote racism, homophobia, bigotry or violence–or that promote the tobacco, nuclear power, or weapons industries–or if I do not feel the product is of high enough quality that I can get enthusiastic about it.

Notice that this language doesn’t discriminate against a person or class of people–but it certainly does discriminate against a set of beliefs.

Now, if I reserve that privilege for myself, how can I possibly justify withholding it from someone else who runs a service business and has different values than mine?

Also, there’s a provider quality issue. If I were forced to write a piece of marketing copy for a product whose values I despised, I would do a terrible job. Even if I consciously tried to do my best, it would come out shoddy and insincere, because I wouldn’t believe in what I was promoting. By the same token, I can’t imagine why a same-sex couple would WANT to hire a homophobic wedding photographer (one of the examples cited in the article); the pictures will be terrible.

If you’re renting a room, buying a sandwich, riding a bus, patronizing a theme park…yes, you should have the right to be served. But if a service provider is being asked to use specialized skills to support a cause that service provider finds morally repugnant, I’m not at all sure we should coerce that behavior.

Please comment below. I’d love to get some good dialog going on this.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, language, Shel's Personal Life, travel Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

mosque-sunset-jeddahStaying in the Embassy Suites in Kissimmee, Florida. Inside the usual Guest Services manual, I found this remarkable document (spacing and centering in original):

To Our Guests

In ancient times there was a prayer for

“The Stranger within our gates”
Because this hotel is a human institution to serve people, and not solely a money making organization, we hope that God will grant you peace and rest while you are under our roof.
May this room ad hotel be your “second” home.
May those you love be near you in thoughts and dreams.
Even though we may not et to know you, we hope that you will be comfortable and happy as if you were in your own home.

May the business that brought you our way prosper.
May every call you make and every message you receive add to your joy.
When you leave, may your journey be safe.

We are all travelers. From “birth till death” we travel between the eternities.
May these days be pleasant to you, profitable for society, helpful for those you meet, and a joy to those who know and love you best.

Wow!

As both a frequent traveler and a professional marketer who focuses a lot on values-based businesses—green and ethical ones, specifically—I invite you to walk with me as I analyze this document a bit.

  1. This says to me: here’s a business willing to take a risk and say what they stand for. They’re willing to alienate the militant atheists and say that God is important not only to them personally, but also to the way they run their business.
  2. They did it in a way that was very inclusive. Most of the time, when I come across religious messages in the US heartland, they tend to be specifically Christian. I’m a non-Christian who was raised an Orthodox Jew until age 10. I consider myself fairly spiritual but not very religious. I’m often turned off by religious messages that assume my Christianity (or, for that matter, assume I’m Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, whatever). There was nothing in this message embracing any particular religious tradition. If you accept the idea of God (and not everyone does, of course), there’s only welcome here, not exclusion.
  3. The content of the message is wonderfully positive. It’s about peace, prosperity, safe travels, and joy. How could I not feel better about a business that takes the time to draft a document conveying these various blessings in my direction?
  4. Never be your own editor. OK, not many people are such grammar nuts that they’ll notice the language flaws—but what if they host a convention of English teachers? I’m actually here with a conference of people who teach business communication, and I’m betting a high percentage of those attenders who saw the message will pick it apart for its sloppy writing. It’s so easy to avoid the problem in the first place.
  5. Most importantly, being greeted by this message sets a tone for all my interactions with the hotel. I’m going in to any conversation with the attitude that they care about me. This perception is reinforced by the very helpful nature of every staffer I’ve dealt with so far (even before I opened the services notebook and saw the memo)—and would, of course, be destroyed if their personnel were rude, etc. But it certainly creates a good flow of positive energy.
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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Democracy, Environment, language, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

As Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union speech last night, I found myself agreeing with upwards of 95 percent of it—something that NEVER happened under his predecessor. And it’s good to be reminded in very concrete terms of how much progress has been made on the economy, and in drawing down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (one of the few bits of foreign policy that made it into the very domestically focused speech).

Of course, some of why I agreed with such a large percentage was because of what he chose to omit: government spying, drone attacking civilians, support for highly dubious massive energy projects, and other things that I find strongly objectionable. He did mention the disgrace that Guantanamo is still open.

And he left out other things that should have been in there. I’m still waiting for him to call for a Marshall Plan-style conversion to clean, renewable energy. I’ve been waiting for that for years. He talked briefly about energy independence and the success in switching much more to US-based power sources—but failed to put it in context of solving environmental problems as we change our energy sources.

But the real question is: How will he get it done? Despite his calls to the Republicans’ higher selves, and his pointing out repeatedly that he could have moved a lot farther if he’d gotten some cross-party cooperation, implementation is the problem. He needs to motivate his base to be heard in the halls of power, to be convincing their Senators and Representatives that it’s in their own self-interest to end the gridlock.

With less than three years left in his presidency, he still has time to claim a place in history as one of the great presidents. But he’d better get started with that.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Environment, language, Peace and War, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Progressives can be a gloomy lot. Too often, we focus on all the things wrong with society, all the problems we need to fix. I say “we,” because I’ve certainly done my share of that global kvetch.

But every once in a while, we actually win a major victory. I’ve been actively involved in a few of them, and I have to tell you, they feel great.

One of my favorite members of Congress, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla) knows the importance of celebrating our victories. He sent out an e-mail with the headline, “Hey, We Progressives Won Something.”

I opened the e-mail and discovered what we won: we didn’t go to war against Syria. And Syria destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile, under international supervision. The massive outcry of opposition certainly helped us get there.

Grayson gives us a lot to celebrate:

Let’s celebrate the war that never happened.

Let’s celebrate NOT having to hold sad and somber funerals for young Americans who would have lost their lives fighting in Syria.

Let’s celebrate NOT having to nurse and care for the wounded veterans who would have returned from the U.S.-Syrian war.

Let’s celebrate Congress NOT having to appropriate billions of tax dollars in emergency spending to support U.S. military operations in Syria.

Let’s celebrate NOT having to attend bitter marches protesting the U.S. war in Syria.

Let’s celebrate NOT having to rebuild Syria’s roads and bridges and schools, so that we can have a shot at rebuilding our own.

Let’s celebrate peace.

We won the battle, and the military-industrial complex lost the war.

We should be proud of our victories, because our victories matter. I know that politics sometimes can seem discouraging right now. Progressive often seem to lose, and lose frequently. But, you know what? Sometimes we win. And when we win, we save lives. We promote equality. We serve the cause of justice. We improve people’s lives.

(You can read Alan Grayson’s whole essay at this blog.)

Indeed, we do! Our actions–as individuals, and especially when we band together–actually do make a difference. Think how much poorer the world would be if the likes of Nelson Mandela, Lech Walensa, Wangari Maathai (the tree-planting woman of Kenya, who won a Nobel Prize for her work establishing a greenbelt in her country), Gandhi, Gray Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn, and Martin Luther King, Jr. had not walked it.

And you don’t need to be an activist. The world is richer for the presence of scientists like the brilliant energy strategist Amory Lovins, who is still very much alive–and Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, and George Washington Carver, who are not…writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Alice Walker, and even Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield (his The Success Principles is the one self-help book I regularly recommend)…and ordinary people whose names you won’t recognize, who turned their lives into blessings for the world. I’m going to honor one of those unknown heroes by name: my late mother, Gloria Yoshida, who was a civil rights volunteer in the 1960s. If a black person was told an apartment had already been rented, my 5’3″ white, Jewish mom was one of the people who would go and try to rent it afterwards. I remember her yelling at our own landlord, who towered over her, and looked pretty ashamed as she lit into him because “you just don’t want to rent to them because they’re black.”

That family history made it easier for me to take on a long list of causes over the past 40 years–even organizing the movement that saved a threatened mountain while all the “experts” said “this is terrible, but there’s nothing we can do.”

What are YOU doing to make the world better? Please share in the comments section, below.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, language Tagged with , ,

My hometown newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, MA, noted today that the City of Northampton’s Office of Planning and Development has been renamed the Office of Planning and Sustainability.

When I moved to town in 1981, Northampton was in the midst of a building boom and developers were snapping up large farm and forest parcels on the fringes of town. Sprawl was the order of the day.

Now, huge amount of acreage have been protected, both in Northampton and all surrounding communities; Hadley, the neighboring town where I currently live, has preserved thousands of acres. And the City of Northampton has openly changed the mission of the planning department to embrace sustainability.

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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Copywriting, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, language Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Reading a newsletter from a marketer I generally find thought-provoking, sincere, and personable, I was rather surprised to read an article where she took one of her subscribers to task for objecting to the word “sucks” on her home page.

To me, that word inserts an unnecessary barrier, the more ironic because she bases her whole approach on connecting person-to-person.

So of course, I wrote her a note:

As some one who does my best to–and *usually* succeeds–find the best even in the grumps (in that way, I’m like your late father, I guess)–may I put another possible interpretation out there? It’s likely that this person was just looking for an excuse to act out–BUT it’s also possible that he had good reason to be offended by the S word. I personally don’t use that word, because it can be can be interpreted as homophobic–being derived from a longer expletive that starts with a c, the first four letters of which represent the male organ (I’m not being a prude here by not stating the word, but I do have a goal of avoiding the spamfilters). For the same reasons, I don’t use the word “niggardly”, even though its etymology has nothing to do with the n-word–I don’t want people who don’t know that etymology to think I’m racist.

And there’s a difference between “plain language” and foul language. I grew up on the tough streets of the Bronx, and it was a minefield of F-bombs and other expletives–but I’ve lived in places where cursing is considered not just extremely rude but an offense against religion. So, take your choice–the left -wing or right-wing possibility of why he was teed off.

I don’t remember how I found your list, but I suspect I would not have subscribed if the first thing I’d seen was “disconnection sucks”. I have a thicker skin than to be offended, but there are always better ways to say it, and I would not have wanted to get into the network of someone whose language could have been interpreted as mean and deliberately offensive, because I surround myself with people who empower others and don’t denigrate them.

Luckily, I found you some other way (I have no idea how our paths crossed, actually)–and I know you to be a caring and empowering person. But think about the message you’re putting out here, intentionally or not. This is not so much a question of political correctness as it is of establishing unnecessary barriers. yes, I understand that you want to drive the wrong people away, and I respect that. I do the same thing. For instance, when someone approaches me about working together, there’s a paragraph in my reply that says,

“Please note that I reserve the right to reject a project if I feel I’m not the right person for it. This would include projects that in my opinion promote racism, homophobia, bigotry or violence–or that promote the tobacco, nuclear power, or weapons industries–or if I do not feel the product is of high enough quality that I can get enthusiastic about it.”

But I wonder if what your doing might drive the RIGHT people away too–especially since to me, it is so out-of-harmony with your real core message of marketing through the power of personal story.

I’ll be very curious to receive her response. And meanwhile, how about a response from you? Are curse words a barrier for you? Am I overreacting? Is she unnecessarily defensive? Why, or why not?

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By Posted on Posted in language, Media Ethics, Peace and War, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This year’s “Shame On You, That’s Propaganda, Not Journalism” award goes to AP reporter Julie Pace, the Associated Press for distributing it, and the dozens of newspapers and blogs that ran the story on President Barack Obama’s decision to consult Congress before going to war with Syria over chemical weapons.

Pace’s story, “Analysis: Obama’s credibility on line in reversal,” greeted me from Page 1 of my local newspaper this morning. Her message: Obama will be seen as weak if his line-in-the-sand on chemical weapons doesn’t lead him to military action.

Perhaps channelling the discredited Judith Miller of the New York Times, who helped drum up domestic support for the ill-advised, illegal, and tragic war in Iraq during the George W. Bush presidency, Pace writes, among other zingers,

President Barack Obama’s abrupt decision to instead ask Congress for permission left him with a high-risk gamble that could devastate his credibility if no action is ultimately taken in response to a deadly chemical weapons attack that crossed his own “red line.”

The stunning reversal also raises questions about the president’s decisiveness and could embolden leaders in Syria, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere, leaving them with the impression of a U.S. president unwilling to back up his words with actions.

If you ask ME…

  1. The President is constitutionally required to get Congress’s permission. Even G.W. Bush did so, though based on a tangled web of fabrications, untruths, and misleading statements.
  2. It is fairly clear that chemical weapons were used in Syria, and that is definitely not acceptable. However, there’s been quite a bit of speculation about who actually used them. Here, for example, a Congressman in Obama’s own party expresses skepticism about who used the weapons—and about their use to justify military action. And here, an AP story that speculates the rebels may have been the ones using chemical weapons, in order to draw other countries into the conflict.
  3. Pace makes an assumption that military force is the only acceptable response. That, frankly, is just plain crazy. Why not just send in a small, well-protected squad of international peacekeepers to arrest Assad, and try him? This is not so different from the way the US killed Bin Laden, after all.
  4. If the justification is to save innocent lives, please explain to me how the far greater bloodshed that inevitably occurs in war will accomplish anything other than the embitterment of the local populace against us and their recruitment by terror elements, as has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan—which, not coincidentally, undermined most of our credibility and our reservoir of good will in those parts of the world.
  5. War generally does not solve problems. Usually, it makes things much worse.
  6. In this case, war with Syria runs huge risks of involving Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and Iran. Do we really want to create a regional holocaust and the potential for World War III?
  7. Diplomacy and example are much more powerful credibility builders than macho posturing.
  8. Speaking of example, the US is not in a position to throw stones here. The US has a long and ugly history of using unconscionable weapons that disproportionately affect civilians. Examples include the Dresden firebombing against German civilians and the use of atomic bombs against Japanese civilians during World War II, Napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam (aren’t those chemical weapons?), and depleted uranium in Iraq.

Lastly, which part of Obama’s noncredibility do we want to focus on? Is it the red line in the sand about chemical weapons that Pace focuses on—or the deeper issue that even she mentions later in the article?

Obama could make good on the promises he made as a senator and presidential candidate, when he called for restraint and congressional consultation by White House’s seeking military force. And with the American public weary of war and many opposed to even modest military action against Syria, Obama could share with Congress the burden of launching an attack.

To me, he started losing credibility when he failed to make good on those promises of peace for which he was elected. He has proven himself a war hawk, a lover of the Bush-era NSA spy apparatus, an enabler of torture and false imprisonment at Guantanamo, a suppressor of dissent, and  unworthy of my trust. If he tries to be a Boy Scut about his promise of retaliation if chemical weapons are used, he breaks those earlier, more crucial promises yet again.

Barack Obama is still an improvement over Bush, but it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference.

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By Posted on Posted in Business-general, Copywriting, language

Guest post by John Forde

[Note from Shel: I agree with Jack on this. In my 30+ years in business, I’ve been asked to write many complaint letters—and my track record in getting results for my clients and for myself is pretty darn high. I’ve been a subscriber to his newsletter for many years. If you’re a copywriter, I suggest you subscribe as well. He’s both entertaining and useful. Signup info follows his post.]

There was something else that got me thinking about today’s topic. I saw a post over on Copyblogger.com (an amazing site, by the way) about using our copywriting skills to get better customer service.

Their tip focused on help tickets for tech services. But it’s a great insight and one I’ve tapped myself, more than a few times. In fact, I’m a little famous for getting results, among friends and family — enough that I’ve been asked to write “complaint” letters for others.

Not only does a good customer service get problems fixed, it can lead to even more perks. And, I find, all you have to do is follow a simple formula. For instance, I don’t really “complain” in complaint letters. Nor do I get mad or use all-caps or threaten lawsuits or the like. That’s almost always a waste of time.

Instead, I start out with a quick tale of praise and expectation. After all, I say, I bought with the belief that this was the best there was. Almost always, by the way, this is true. Sometimes, I share a little story about why we were excited to make the purchase, too — a birthday, a special trip, to give as a well-deserved gift, and so on.

I’m thinking here, for instance, about a letter I once wrote to Canon, when a video camera failed. It wasn’t just a camera to me. I bought the thing to take video of our son, in his first few days. But the lens jammed so we missed it. From there, I let the seller know that I’m more let down and disappointed than I am angry. I trusted the provider with something important. I believed. And they didn’t deliver. Surely, I allow at this point, it was a one-time mistake… unintentional… and something they could easily fix. Then I tell them how I’d like to see that happen.

In the close, I repeat how much I’m sure they meant to do better… and remind them once again how to go about fixing things, including how to reach me with their solution. I’m not someone to take advantage, but when things have gone wrong, this has almost always worked. For instance, with the Canon camera, I got several personal calls from the head of technical support (yes, he called me) with apologies and attempts at a fix. When we couldn’t get it to work, he gave me an address to send it in. Days later, I got cc-d on a personal email — in Japanese — from the President of Canon, written to his brother in New York, asking him to personally oversee the repair. I kid you not.

I’ve also had the Gap send me $200 in gift certificates and vouchers for four pairs of free pants (this was in the early ’90s) after I bought a defective pair of jeans… We’ve gotten free flight vouchers from two different airlines and courtesy upgrades… Apple has asked me to be on their confidential, early-release program for beta versions of their software… and the list goes on.

Never, ever do I make up a problem where there isn’t one… or pretend it had an impact it didn’t… but when something does go wrong, you’d better believe that copywriting can help solve it.

 

Sign up for Jack’s newsletter, and get $78 worth of gifts, at https://copywritersroundtable.com

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Arts & Entertainment, Diversity, General Commentary, language, media-general Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Recently, a local high school was targeted by an out-of-state hate mail campaign because it chose to produce “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told,” a gay and lesbian retelling of the Bible by Paul Rudnick. Protestors from various church groups promised to picket the performances. The story even made the Huffington Post.

It happened that the school producing the play was Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public High School, where both my children attended some years ago—a school known for its fabulous (reference intended) theater and dance departments. We’ve continued to attend many of the school’s performances even though my younger child is already a sophomore in college.

So of course, both to defend freedom of speech in the Pioneer Valley and to enjoy a night of theater we knew would be terrific, we attended. And we were gratified that in addition to the antigay protestors, a goodly multitude of pro-performance church groups were on hand to lend support.

The interesting thing is…if you accept the basic premise that gay and lesbian couples exist (and, in this play, were present at creation and right through modern times)—there’s almost nothing blasphemous in the play, which centers on Adam, through the ages, trying to find meaning in life. His questioning is very much rooted in the Old Testament tradition of prophets arguing with God. The whole alternate world is set in motion by a Stage Director (female, in this performance), which makes it clear from the get-go that this is an imaginary theatrical universe within the universe we all now, as opposed to any real redefinition of Biblical history. I found exactly one scene that fundamentalists might object to: 30 seconds out of a two-hour play that imply the Christ child was born of the play’s lesbian couple—and even this keeps the virgin birth intact.

Of course, the vast majority of those who protest this play wherever it is performed have never seen or read it. Fundamentalism, of any religion, leaves no window for dissenters and questioners.

By contrast, I just saw a 1999 movie called “Dogma,” a low-budget flick with a superstar cast (including very young Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as a pair of very foul-mouthed sin-avenging angels on a killing spree, George Carlin as a shady, street-tough Catholic Cardinal in New Jersey, Chris Rock as the delightful unknown 13th Apostle, and Salma Hayek as as a celestial being-turned-stripper). Early in the movie, we see Damon in an airport lounge, casting deep doubts about God’s existence into the mind of a confused Catholic nun. After she leaves, Affleck points out the irony that Damon’s character has known God directly.

An angel who kills with an assault weapon is only one of the many blasphemies—not all of them violent. The reimaging of several different pieces of the Jesus story as well as the portrayal of God will no doubt raise a few eyebrows among the faithful. Hundreds of people die in this funny but very gory film.

Now this is a movie that many Christians and religious Jews would find blasphemous all the way through—if they can stop laughing long enough to reflect on it. And yet, I didn’t remember any protests around it!

But Google has a better memory than I do; there were protests, actually. In fact, Disney’s Michael Eisner cut the film loose from his empire, under pressure from the Catholic League. Not only that, but the film’s director, Kevin Smith, infiltrated one of the protests—what a brilliant publicity move! He wrote and spoke (quite humorously) about his experience on this page, which also includes a TV news report of the protest, where he got recognized and interviewed.

I can understand that a film about a couple of angels cursing and shooting their way through modern America would upset people. But what does it say about our culture that people also get upset about sincere and committed expression of same-sex love?

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