The full list of 600 nationwide closings is here (PDF format).
Danforth & Santa Fe (Edmond)
15th & Santa Fe (Edmond)
NW 122nd & Penn
Memorial and May
Broadway Extension & Britton
SW 89th and Western
SE 29th & Linda (Del City)
I'm not a coffee drinker and I've never set foot inside a Starbucks. However, my friends who are regular Starbucks customers were devastated when they heard the news about the closings.
Fifteen years ago:
Thirteen years ago:
God have mercy on us.
The title of this post comes from an edited audio recording of a private speech given by Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern (R) to a group of fellow Republicans, probably some time in February or March 2008. Rep. Kern had the misfortune of being recorded and edited, and the resulting audio of her speech went viral on the web a little over a month ago.
What was she talking about that stirred the pot so much? Nothing new, really. Just the same tired old boilerplate about "gays taking over America" that has been repeated for the last thirty years by the Moral Majority and its acolytes.
Studies show, no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted for more than, you know, a few decades ...
I honestly think it’s the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam ...
You know, Gays are infiltrating city councils ... Did you know that the city council of Eureka Springs is now controlled by gays? ... They are winning elections.
We have the gay-straight alliance coming into our schools ...
One of my colleagues said We don’t have a gay problem in our community… well you know what, that is so dumb. If you have cancer in your little toe, do you just say that I’m going to forget about it since the rest of you is fine? It spreads! This stuff is deadly and it is spreading. It will destroy our young people and it will destroy this nation.
Like me, Sally Kern is a nobody. No one had ever heard of her outside of Oklahoma (where she raised a small ruckus a couple of years ago). And really, there isn't anything in this speech that is profound, original, or really worthy of comment.
Or is there?
I find it interesting that Rep Kern's remarks sound remarkably similar in tone and urgency to these:
"The government gives [African-Amercians] the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."
"... We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."
or this:
"I am now the chairman of a national campaign to pass a constitutional amendment to take the right to vote away from born-again Christians. [enthusiastic audience applause] Just a little project of mine. My feeling is that born-again people are citizens of heaven, that is where there citizenship is, [laughter] is in heaven, it's not here among us in America. If you feel that war in the Middle East is simply prophecy fulfilled, if you believe that tribulation and suffering are just the natural conditions of life, if you believe that higher education is vanity, unnecessary, there is only one book that one needs to read ... then you don't really share our same interests, do you? No, you do not."
or this:
Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states. There used to be a kind of hand-to-hand fight on the frontier called a "knock-down-drag-out," where any kind of gouging, biting, or maiming was considered fair. The ancestors of today's red-state voters used to stand around cheering and betting on these fights.
or Michael Weisskopf's infamous 1993 Washington Post article about devotees to Religious Right icons like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, that described Evangelical Christians as "poor, undereducated, and easy to command."
Or Rosie O'Donnell's Sept. 2006 comment on The View: "Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America." (added 4-25-08 after some Googling)
But Mike, pants the hyperventilating leftist, those things are all true! What Sally Kern said is all lies! It's hate speech!
---
Several years ago, Richard Dawkins and a number of other secular humanists decided to rechristen themselves as "brights," formally defined as anyone who holds a naturalist, as opposed to a supernaturalist (that is, centered around a belief in God) worldview. As Chris Mooney explains, the choice of such a smug moniker was perhaps cunning, but ultimately insulting:
In his original New York Times op-ed announcing the "brights" label, [Daniel] Dennett wrote, "Don't confuse the noun with the adjective: 'I'm a bright' is not a boast but a proud avowal of an inquisitive world view." That's certainly nice in principle. But who did Dennett think he was kidding? How could anyone hear the label "bright" and think anything but that atheists were claiming to be smarter than everyone else? As ABC News.com commentator John Allen Paulos remarked of the "brights" campaign, "I don't think a degree in public relations is needed to expect that many people will construe the term as smug, ridiculous, and arrogant."
And so, it seems, the lines have been drawn. On one side there are the "brights," those who are possessed of a keenly refined intellect that has been trained to excel in the formulation of public policy centered around matters of justice, fairness, happiness, and the common good, without being bogged down by such trivialities as religion and ethics. On the other side there are the Keepers of the Right, those who have charged themselves with defending their traditional way of life and restoring a Biblically-centered value system (or at least, one that they believe to be Biblically-centered) to the American culture at large.
To each side, the other is the ultimate, perfect incarnation of evil -- Godless liberals who will turn your children in to drug and porn-addicted homosexuals, or jackbooted fascists who will lock everyone away in fundamentalist re-education camps.
The keepers of popular culture (and those who document it for the boredom of future generations) would unhesitatingly suggest that the secularists, or "brights" if you prefer, are the transformers who have emerged victorious; those who, in the span of only five years in the latter part of the 1960's, managed to utterly eclipse generations-old conventions regarding recreational drug use, promiscuous sex, patriotism, respect for elders, marriage, homosexuality, abortion, vandalism, profanity, obscenity, and responsibility. And in their wake they left an older generation of Americans confused, angered, and frightened by such a sudden cultural paradigm shift. They also left behind most religious Americans and "small town folk," those who had, up to that point, experienced little cultural change in their lives.
These sometimes disparate groups of people were left wondering why -- suddenly! -- no one cared anymore about what they thought, why suddenly no one was interested in standing up and saying that certain behaviors were wrong, why suddenly no one felt any inclination to stem the tide of anti-American and anti-religious sentiments that filled pop music, movies, television, and print media. This turned out to be a significant commonality.
Thus "religious conservatives," "The Moral Majority," "The Reagan Revolution," etc. came into being. It was a reactionary movement born out of the perceived idea that the wagons had better be circled and the camp had better be defended, or else what little traditional belief that remained would soon be erased. In Ronald Reagan they finally saw a leader who believed in faith, family, and restoring America's honor. And in the Religious Right, the Republican party saw the votes necessary to win the White House. It was a simple marriage based on common interests. It's really no more complicated than that.
And so, for the last thirty years, the Sally Kerns of the world have felt that it was their sacred duty, even if it put them "in jeopardy," to resist the secularists, and to inform unsuspecting average Americans of the evil plans of dominion quietly creeping under the radar. Plans to force their agendas on your children. Plans to turn our great nation over to the forces of evil. And the "brights" have felt compelled to continually remind us, through films, songs, television, newspapers, etc. just why their revolution was so important -- namely, middle America is a collection of sincere but ignorant people who bitterly "cling" to guns, God, and bigotry because they haven't "figured it out" yet and just don't know any better; thus they are pawns for the likes of the truly eeeeevil minions of the Republican party and fundamentalist Christian leadership -- people like Sally Kern.
Why such a bitter fight over "middle America?" Because it has always been where the majority of Americans live. Up until the late 1960's, most of our great struggles for social change were designed to benefit them. They were (and still are) the great pool from which the ranks of our fighting men were drawn. They grew our food. They made our stuff. Most struggling writers, artists, and actors came from humble means, and those who eventually reached the top in those professions rarely showed contempt for their upbringing. Perhaps the great robber-baron leisure class of the 19th and early 20th centuries privately expressed disdain for the great unwashed masses among themselves, but politicians knew that the great sea of voters was mostly filled with them.
But just as the small-town Americans, Christian fundamentalists, and Greatest Generation Americans who had been crushed by the juggernaut of liberalism in the 1960's came together to build the Reagan Revolution, a similar alliance was forged between the wealthy leisure class and the brights. Perhaps each had what the other wanted -- money and power appealed to the brights, who were highly educated but still only dreamed of living in mansions; the erasure of moral boundaries appealed to the wealthy, who were somewhat able to buy their way out of scandals, but who still longed for the ability to say and do whatever they pleased without the nagging expectation of being "standard bearers." Nowhere is this alliance more visible than in Hollywood, where cash and leftism continually swirl together at a cyclonic level.
As a result of these alliances, politicians have had a difficult time. On one side, conservative politicians and religious leaders have wholly denounced Hollywood as the epitome of evil and have proudly disassociated themselves from it. Hollywood delights in this kind of demagoguery, and has had a field day mocking conservatives on television shows and in movies. On the other side, liberal politicians want to court the brights and the big Hollywood stars, but they can't afford to be seen as elitists or haters of Middle America. Peggy Noonan writes,
Sen. Obama seems honestly surprised by the furor his the-poor-cling-to-God-and-guns remarks elicited, and if one considers his background—intense marginalization followed by the establishment's embrace—this is understandable. He was only caught speaking the secret language of America's elite, and what he said was not meant as a putdown. It was an explanation aimed at ameliorating the elites' anger toward and impatience with normal people. It's a way of explaining them, of saying, "You have to remember they're not comfortable and educated like us, they're vulnerable and so we must try to understand them and feel sympathy for and solidarity with them." You could say this at any high-class dinner party in America and not cause a ruffle. But America is not a high-class dinner party.
---
The reaction of liberals, particularly gay activists, to Rep. Kern's remarks was as predictable and boilerplate as her remarks - a mocking phone call from Ellen DeGeneres, a series of angry "open letters," rumors that her son was gay, etc. Of course all Republicans believe this. Of course all Christians believe this. Of course all Republicans are homophobes. Of course all Christians are bigots. Rep. Kern just got caught saying what all Republicans and all Christians secretly believe. Just like Barack Obama was caught saying what "all liberals and elitists" secretly believe*. Give me a break.
At the heart of this is a simple problem -- the over-reliance on stereotypes and self-fulfilling prophecies. Both the political Left and Right in this country have wholly succumbed to the temptation to reduce all of our problems to simplistic "us" vs "them" battles. We see this in gay rights issues. We see it in immigration issues. And frankly I am sick and tired of it and I refuse to participate.
You see, I've discovered that when you are sitting at the dinner table with someone and listening to them tell their life story, it's difficult to point your finger at them and accuse them of an endless list of evil plots. I've learned much more about people by simply listening to them, rather than listening to the stereotypes and conspiracy theories of others.
I would humbly suggest that everyone, particularly those in any kind of leadership position, put aside their own prejudices and self-aggrandizing postures and try this approach as well. I think we would be amazed at how much easier it would be for us to work together if we listened to each other first -- that is, if working together for the mutual benefit of everyone is really our ultimate goal. Sometimes, I have to wonder ...
...
* Astute readers of my blog will note that I wrote earlier about Barack Obama's "God, guns, an bigotry" remark. I questioned what Obama himself believes, and this includes beliefs that I feel represent widely-held beliefs among elites, and are thus shared by many others besides Obama, but not ALL who would identify themselves as liberal. So noted. (comment updated)
During the past two years, my church (First Church of the Nazarene, Oklahoma City) has cultivated a wonderful friendship with Fairview Missionary Baptist Church, one of the metro area's largest African-American congregations.
A few weeks ago, we had the opportunity to march with them in Oklahoma City's downtown Martin Luther King parade. It was cold and very windy and unfortunately my family couldn't make it, but my friends who participated had a wonderful time. And check out that banner -- "Fulfilling The Dream." That's simply eloquent.
I have said before that it is shameful that in America, the most segregated time of the week is 10:00AM Sunday morning. And America's white southern evangelical churches certainly bear a significant responsibility for helping to perpetuate segregation in the American south. Now is the time for us to begin to heal those wounds.
(The photo was taken by my friend and professional photographer Carl Zoch, who is also one of our pastors.)
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