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Back in March I went to Salt Lake City, where I spent several days touring Temple Square, a compound in the heart of town home to the most important sites in the Mormon church. As I wrote at the time:

The Mormons employ a vast army of beautiful and exotic young women to greet visitors to Temple Square. The flags pinned to their coats indicate their countries of origin, and they come from far and wide. I saw girls from Brazil, Sweden, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, the Philippines and, of course, the USA. They are trained to make eye contact, and pleasant conversation. And, in spite of the cult-like atmosphere, I will say that everyone I encountered in Salt Lake City was extremely nice. Suspiciously nice.

Saturday morning I answered a knock at the door to find a young woman and a middle-aged man. She identified herself as “Jessica”, and said the man was her father. She asked if I thought that natural disasters were caused by God or something else. I explained that I didn’t think that God played such a direct role in our lives, striking down populations à la Sodom and Gomorrah, but that bad things sometimes happen to good and bad alike. She left me with some literature to look over, which, upon reading I see squares quite well with what I believe.

But what was most interesting was how flattering Jessica was, and how beautiful. Jehovah’s Witnesses are, from my understanding, supposed to be plain in appearance and dress, but Jessica would have stood out anywhere. She wore clothes any twenty-something might wear to an office, and she had little makeup on, but her hair was arranged just so, and I even noticed that she had a pedicure. And she smiled at the end of every sentence she spoke, and made eye contact throughout. Her father stood a few steps back, and I rather sensed that the message–aside from eternal salvation–was, “join the church, get a hot young wife”.

Well, I’ve got one already, thanks, but I am beginning to see a pattern: churches are putting their best faces forward.

I wanted to weigh in on the comments conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly made on his radio program recently following a dinner he shared with Al Sharpton at Sylvia’s Soul Food, an apparently popular Manhattan restaurant. Quoth O’Reilly:

“I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship [sic].”

In a subsequent interview on another program he added:

“There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea.’ You know, I mean, everybody was — it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all.”

I am not the first to point this out, but I’ll be the latest to say that the problem with his statement isn’t that it was overtly racist, à la, “I hate black people”. I am sure O’Reilly meant no harm, and, in fact, probably was genuinely happy with his experience at that Harlem eatery. The problem isn’t what he said, but what he felt. He expected it to be something horrible because it was a restaurant owned and frequented by blacks. That he had a decent time is all well and good; but what is clear is that Bill O’Reilly’s analysis of American society is based on the assumption that black people are bad. This no doubt informs his political beliefs. And when you consider how he is a prominent conservative writer and speaker, it is not an illogical conclusion to draw that many other conservatives’ notions of this country are biased by the ridiculous fallacy that black people are fundamentally different from white people.

That brings me to a recent Paul Krugman column in the New York Times in which he points out what I hold to be a truth, namely that the large numbers of southern whites that vote Republican–62% in 2006–illustrates that race is still the dominant factor in conservative politics - more than national security, more than economic policy, more than other “values” issues.  If it were security or economic policy that mattered, Republicans have clearly demonstrated they are not the best choice.  That leaves race.

In fact, I believe that the major Republican “value” being espoused–albeit in veiled language–is bigotry, be it against Mexicans or Muslims or blacks. The two dominant constituencies Republicans rely on for support are the super-rich (who enjoy the GOP’s slavish devotion in return for lavish financial contributions) and the bigoted. The latter, of course, do not realize that the politically powerful don’t really share their ideology, but exploit it for electoral gains. But, since the massive defection of southern whites to the GOP following the 1964 and ‘65 civil rights legislation signed into law by President Johnson, the Republican party has needed to use “the Southern Strategy” to hold onto power.

And if you need further proof that Republicans have written off the minority vote altogether, note the recent debate of Republican presidential candidates in which the four front-runners did not appear. It is acknowledgment that they have so misunderstood the issues important to black voters–which are the same issues important to all Americans: health care, civil liberties, education, etc.–that they must cling ever tighter to their last bastion of support, bigoted whites, whose ill-informed opinions of blacks mirror those of Bill O’Reilly.

Bruce Springsteen’s new album will be released on Tuesday, and although my goal of not hearing a note of it until then wasn’t met–NPR played a snippet of “Radio Nowhere” earlier this week–I have been reading as much about it as I can. Today, the New York Times‘ film critic, A.O. Scott describes a recent trip out to Asbury Park to interview the Boss following a morning rehearsal at the old Convention Hall there. There’s much too much lyric-related wordplay for my taste, but Scott writes one paragraph that perfectly sums up Springsteen’s music, and how I feel about it:

Mr. Springsteen’s best songs [...] are about compromise and stoicism; disappointment and faith; work, patience and resignation. They are also, frequently — even the ones he wrote when he was still in his 20s — about nostalgia, about the desire to recapture those fleeting moments of intensity and possibility we associate with being young.

Exactly. I don’t identify with Bruce Springsteen’s music because I walk streets of fire; I identify with them because, like me, Bruce is a nostalgist.

There are many wonderful things about autumn, especially the cooler weather and open windows. Also nice: new episodes of my favorite television shows. The Office season premiere was last night, and, as expected, it was great. Spoilers below….

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I am as sympathetic to the suffering of others as anyone, and I certainly don’t begrudge people their right to due process under law. That said, however, I am increasingly annoyed and displeased to read about claims on looted art by descendants of former owners.

This issue really came to my attention in a profound way several years ago when someone came forward with a claim that they were the rightful owner of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, a stunning painting by Gustav Klimt, and one of Austria’s greatest visual treasures. The claimant, Maria Altmann, was the niece of Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer, a wealthy Viennese family who owned four other Klimt masterpieces: Adele Bloch-Bauer II, Apfelbaum I, Birkenwald, and Häuser in Unterach am Attersee. Altmann sued in the United States, where her case against Austria went all the way to the Supreme Court. She won, and Austria turned over the paintings, which, naturally, she sold, splitting up a priceless collection that had been the pride of the Schloss Belvedere. Adele Bloch-Bauer I was sold for an estimated $135 million and placed in the Neue Gallerie in New York. The rest sold at auction to anonymous bidders, and, in spite of Ms. Altmann’s hilariously insincere wish that the paintings remain on public display, they are now stashed away in private hands.

So I read this morning that heirs of a prominent Dutch art dealer are now claiming ownership of 225 paintings and two tapestries by Dutch, Flemish and Italian artists now hanging in museums in the Netherlands.

I do not deny that World War II wrought countless injustices, and that Nazi scum looted many works of art which now reside in public galleries throughout the world, though mostly in Europe. But should we draw the line somewhere for those claiming ownership of irreplaceable treasures? The war ended over 60 years ago, and these works of art have been on public display for generations now. When you consider that what those making claims really want is money, I find it hard to be sympathetic. They are not seeking the restitution of some family heirloom. The governments and museums who now posses this disputed art should investigate these claims, and, if it is deemed prudent, they should pay a fair sum of money to the claimants. But masterpieces of art belong to humanity, and that works now hanging in museums for all to enjoy might end up on the wall of some crooked Russian billionaire, or crazy Japanese businessman, is a notion that should offend anyone who loves that which is beautiful.