A Talking Flower

Saying this is probably going to extend my current period of unwanted celibacy, but Charlie Rose is one of my favorite TV personalities. I don't agree with him on a lot of things, and I don't always think he digs into the issues the right way, but he still has one of the smartest shows on television. That said, he just had heart surgery in Paris (he's so cosmopolitan!), so I wish him the real best wishes, as opposed to the best wishes I offer engaged/married couples.

Even without Charlie Rose, however, The Charlie Rose Show show rocks. Tonight featured guest host Bill Moyers with interview guest Daniel Dennett, author of Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. I would like to make this book required reading, for anyone who wants to do it, especially anyone who wants to read it to me. My eyes have been really dry lately. I don't know why.

I'm going to give a brief review of the conversation now, which I will watermark 2005 for those of you worried that I'm ruining 2006's "Meanest Year Ever" with remnants belonging in last year's "Smartest Year Ever." (Cunts).

Dennett really impressed me step by step with his argument on the theist versus atheist dilemma I was forced to publish last weekend. His views resonated many of the undertones Papa Justify expressed, and were well supported with reason. His most important thesis, if I must qualify, might be the fact that neither theists nor atheists can use their "religion" to posture for position. In a secular society - which is the only feasible polity in our modern democratic world - absolutists of any kind who cannot reason their argument do not deserve support. Problems must be thought about (a major failing point for fundamentalism) and debated using cultural, historical, and societal facts that are tangible.

A great episode all in all. I wish I had taped it; however, Mr. Rose does have an Achilles' heel, and that is his greed. $10 for a transcript? $35 for a DVD? My taxes are helping support your show, Charlie, as is Leon the Neon, the car I gave away to public broadcasting. And you're telling me that a one-hour interview at a circular, wooden table offers more production value than V for Vendetta, that classic love story that made us all forget the puppy love of Brokeback Mountain? "Come on, Chuck," says Peppermint Patty.

And now, to soften the mood (though not in a sexual way, because, as I said, I'm ruined therewise), a gentle, secular poem for my beloved Baltimore Orioles this opening week:

Oh Baltimore,
The hits You hit, the pitches You pitch,
They all bear the fruit of the heavens;
And let those of other teams who dare compete
with Your unadultered divinity,
Be smited by the fires of hell so hot!
Bathe Derek Jeter and his Yankee brethren
in the hepatitic waters of the Tigris;
And use their ashes,
To smack a home run.
Amen