Colin’s blog had a copy of a NY Times story today, which he calls a “…brilliantly simple clarification on why Bush won the election. He got more votes – its that simple. Its nothing to do with religion, or any other dark movement within the US.” I agree that it’s not a “dark movement”, and I agree with the author, David Brooks, that the liberal reaction to the election is akin to the “rage of the drowning man”. I also agree that the exit poll question that has everyone up in arms about “moral values” was worded in such a way that the results might be misleading.

However, I don’t believe for one second that it had nothing to do with religion. Brooks tries to refute this by claiming that no more evangelicals voted for Bush this time than in 2000, but that just means they’ve voted for him both times and in no way relates to whether or not their votes were influenced by religion. A week before the election, before we heard anything about this morality question on CNN, I mentioned a conversation I had with a friend about how Americans vote based on things like religion and gun control. This isn’t a new phenomenon. This wasn’t a sudden uptick in religious fervour. This is the status quo in America right now. The news media were expecting the issues to be war or terrorism or the economy, and it seems they weren’t. Now the media need to explain themselves, so there’s an epidemic of conservatism gripping the US, right?

Ask yourself this, and be honest: would George W. Bush ever have become president if a) his father hadn’t been president, and b) he wasn’t an evangelical? Of course not. I think the former got him to the primary. I think the latter got him to the Oval Office.

I offer up two examples from the last few days of how this election — and this presidency — most certainly have something to do with religion:

• The Washington Post says that christian groups themselves feel they spearheaded the Bush win.
• Karl Rove has said that Bush will defintely seek a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Reuters believes this stance was crucial in gaining a bigger share of the conservative vote.

My mother and mother-in-law would be so proud…we went to church yesterday. Sadly, it would not be for the reasons they would like; last night the Cowboy Junkies returned home to Toronto and set up camp at Trinity/St. Paul’s. It’s the perfect venue to see such an intimate show…all creaky wood and vaulted ceilings. It was meant to remind us that the Junkies recorded their breakthrough album The Trinity Session in a church, just a few miles away.

We were definitely among the youngest people there, and the crowd ranged from young children to people in their 60s and 70s. They played from 8:00 until after 10:00, with one encore: “Misguided Angel”, which they played in a very quiet, mournful way to close the encore and beckon the lights. Not owning any of their discs, that was the only one of their songs that I recognized. They did break out two covers which I didn’t recognize — a Neil Young song and a Townes Van Zandt song that was really pretty — and two more that I most definitely did: Neil Young‘s “Helpless” (which they used to close their first set) and a psychedelic version of the incredible & scary Bruce Springsteen song “State Trooper” from his brilliant Nebraska album. When they played the first few notes I knew what it was and nearly wet myself. Honestly, I would’ve been quite happy if they’d played those two songs and “Misguided Angel”…and maybe thrown in “Common Disaster” too.

Anyway, it was very intimate, as I said before. Margo often talked for 3 or 4 minutes between some songs, but would often lapse back into trances while singing, sometimes howling or getting up to dance. I see now why my brother loves her. And I can see why they’ve entered this iconic phase in their career; no one can name their last 4 CDs, but everyone knows who they are, they still draw crowds, they still sell albums. In my opinion, they’re perfect embodiments of Canadian music, like the Rheostatics. They’re a prairie novel: bleak but beautiful.

It definitely wasn’t a typical show for me, but it was certainly worthwhile.

If you like South Park, dislike Jerry Bruckheimer movies and aren’t afraid of puppets and/or crude humor, go see Team America: World Police (imdb | rotten tomatoes). It’s worth it just for the soundtrack (which includes the classic rock ’em sock ’em tune captioned above).

From the Kansas City Star, by way of Chromewaves

Camera-shy Berkeley Breathed marks 25 years of Opus… even though the strip is only 24
By STEVE GREENLEE
The Boston Globe
Mon, Nov. 08, 2004

It seems like only yesterday Opus was putting cucumbers in his nose and Spam on his head. But Berkeley Breathed’s strip “Bloom County,” about a transplanted penguin and his motley crew, made its debut in December 1980. This year, the cartoonist figured, what the heck, let’s get a jump on the 25th anniversary.

Little, Brown & Co. has just published Opus: 25 Years of His Sunday Best, a lavish collection of Breathed’s favorite strips from the popular “Bloom County” and the two Sunday-only comics that succeeded it, “Outland” and “Opus,” the latter of which now runs in 185 papers (including The Kansas City Star).

Breathed, who won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1987, lives in Southern California with his wife and their two young children. The 47-year-old illustrator/satirist does not do many interviews but consented to this tongue-in-cheek interview by e-mail that covered just about everything.

Q: So how old is 25 in penguin years?

A: I dunno. Ask Madonna how old 46 is in Idiot Diva years.

Didn’t “Bloom County” start in 1980? How do you figure 25 years? Sounds like fuzzy math.

Buy the book Jan. 1 of next year if these things bother you, and sleep at night with a safe 25 years. Listen, (President) Bush has raised the bar with getting comfortable with fuzzy everything. On his terms, I should have been able to call this the Centennial Opus Collection.

What’s with doing the strip, then retiring, then doing the strip, then retiring, doing the strip.… Are you a flip-flopper?

Did “Bloom County” look like it was affectionate toward anything resembling Conventional Practices? I had (angered) my loyal readers and editors in every way imaginable through vulgar and objectionable comic material, and this seemed the Last Great Mountain to Climb. It worked. Jim Davis (“Garfield”) has the right idea: For God’s sake, never, never stop.

Why did you start doing a strip again?

I left in 1995, when the world had gotten finally, safely boring. It was a lot of work helping this happen. Larson, Watterson and I all packed up our stuff and went home, happy that it was Mission Accomplished. (Gary Larson created “The Far Side”; Bill Watterson, “Calvin and Hobbes.”) We all know where that attitude can get you.

How come only on Sundays?

My children, recently purchased, need a Monkey Monster to chase them during most of the week that used to go toward drawing cats dressed as Gene Simmons, vomiting. A Sunday-only strip is … not actually a comic strip in most any sense. Four cartoons a month rather than 30 is something else. Something less, I fear. But I hope that it’s more than nothing. This is exactly how our government rationalized the current war. The wrong war is better than, well, no war. Bush told me this in an e-mail.

You must have a lot of spare time, compared to, say, Aaron McGruder (creator of “The Boondocks”)?

Mr. McGruder is actually a cabal of leftist professors in Berkeley, Calif., working with a hired artist. “Aaron McGruder” is the name of their cat. I’m sorry to have to break this into the national media here today.

What do you think of “The Boondocks” anyway?

I think he’s almost ruined the two loveliest words in cartooning for the rest of us: Dick Cheney.

When Opus came along, it was basically just him and Chilly Willy. Now there’s the Linux penguin, the Bud Ice penguins, Feathers McGraw, Wheezy from “Toy Story 2.” … Any same-species rivalry?

Dreamworks has “Madagascar” coming, with a band of criminal penguins. Sony has a movie coming about surfing penguins. Warner has a singing-penguin flick coming. We’ll be behind them all with our own Opus movie at Dimension/Disney. We let them go first largely because we’re polite.

What’s the oddest thing you can tell me about penguins?

They’re genuinely multicultural. As opposed to us, who are fraudulently multicultural. They sit around in mixed company, happy to have a gentoo next to their nest as a rockhopper. They don’t blather on incessantly about how neat this is. And they don’t quietly head back to work pooping on the ice and go home where they return to hanging out exclusively with birds just like themselves.

But give them time.

What ever happened to Steve Dallas? The last we saw of him, I think, he was out of the closet, heading somewhere on a bus with his partner. He wasn’t headed to Massachusetts, by any chance?

Reappears magically, enthusiastically heterosexual again, on Nov. 21. He went through one of those homosexual cleansing processes that the Christian right talks about. Seems to have worked. But then, someone should see where he goes at night.

Does “Bloom County”/“Outland”/“Opus” have an overarching message or moral?

“Quit while you’re ahead. Then return. Repeat.”

Does Opus have a sort of doppelganger in classic literature? Holden Caulfield? Odysseus?

R2-D2. Think about it. You said “classic,” didn’t you?

Is Opus ever going to settle down, get married, raise a family, buy a Nissan Murano, etc.?

Have you tried? If so, try with oily feathers but no legs, neck or sex life whatsoever, plus a nose that pulls you over into your pea soup. It’s complicated.

How did you choose the strips you’d include in the new book?

I remember virtually none of them. True, if you saw how most of them were actually executed (3 a.m., in a fog of narcotics and caffeine, slapping myself in the face with a ruler to stay awake), you will believe this normally unbelievable claim. I carefully avoided reading for two simple reasons: I hated how they looked on newsprint and appearing smaller than the labels on spice jars. And I feared reading a strip that made sense only to a mind muddled by stimulants and Ho Hos. So I returned to them with wholly ignorant fresh eyes. I chose the ones that I cackled at. My editor did the same, and we compared notes, agreeing that we would run only the ones we both agreed on. I shot him and sent my choices to the publisher.

What’s your favorite strip in the book?

Changes with the weather. I am oddly, eternally self-entertained with the frame that serves as the book’s endpapers. This makes me laugh no matter what stage of exhaustion I find myself in. My family is deeply embarrassed that I am amused at my own work. Try getting (“Doonesbury” creator Garry) Trudeau to admit to giggling at one of his drawings. No, I’m not describing. Get the book. This is called a tease.

You left out my favorite strip, the one where the politician calls the newspaper office to complain that they’ve misspelled his name as “Potato Head.” Can you put it in “Opus at 50”?

No, but that’s very funny. I wrote that? Do you think your readers would find it acceptable for me to steal my own forgotten material?

Why isn’t the collection coming out on Penguin Books?

Haven’t I always avoided the easy jokes?

The Fiery Furnaces sing “Mouse House“, whatever the hell that is.

From CatBirdSeat

This morning I saw snowflakes in air.

Sonofa…

I just got off the…um, phone, I guess, with my brother in London. I finally installed Skype and he rang me shortly after. After a few minor technical difficulties with my headset we got to chatting. The sound was perfectly clear, even across the Atlantic. Pretty nifty. My other brother in New Brunswick is on as well so now we can all talk voice-to-voice once in a while.

Ah, the weekend. Not that it’s going to be terribly relaxing or anything. Last night we caught up on The Daily Show and went to see Saw (try saying that without it sounding dumb). This morning, while my poor wife had to go to work, I walked down to the St. Lawrence Market area, dropped off some stuff at Goodwill, then walked up to Whole Foods to find some lunch. My new bookcase has just arrived so I’ve been busily moving books around, while attending to 20 other little tasks before I start studying.

Ah, the weekend.

The concept of Saw (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was good, if a little borrowed from Se7en (imdb | rotten tomatoes). The bad guy and methods of death were sufficiently creepy, which made it an effective enough Friday night movie. But the execution was sloppy, the cliches were bad (and plentiful) enough that the audience began laughing at what were supposed to be scary or tense moments, and the acting was BRUTAL. Especially Cary Elwes; the man’s just shite.

I can’t say I’d recommend it, unless you’re easily frightened and have never seen a thriller before.

People in Yorkville name their dogs weird things. I just walked by a lady who called her dog (some big lanky breed, not sure what exactly) Aidan, and another woman right behind her called her yappy little dog Diana.

Weirdos. Granted, we call our cats Sonny and Michael, but that’s just cool.