Listening to the Guy in the Sky

When it comes to getting your marching orders from god, Democrats can't hold a candle to the Family Values Republicans.

Two recent GOP cultural icons and big-time news makers disclosed this past week that "the guy in the sky" has mandated recent decisions on their parts which will forever shape the course of American political history. They are none other than Mark "the Galloping Gaucho" Sanford and Joe "the Plumber" Wurlzebacher.

Actually, god took action in their situations that were individually the exact opposite of each other. I assume that if you can create the universe in six days this would not be too difficult. In the case of Sanford, he told Quick Zipper Mark to stay on as governor of South Carolina and in the case of Joe the Plumber that now is not the time for him to run for public office.

Joe the Plumber is not, nor has he ever been, a plumber. He is some disconnected buffoon the Republicans had hidden away in 2008 and then rolled out during the homestretch of the presidential campaign. He was to represent Middle America, confront Obama during a campaign stop in Ohio and somehow make the vast majority of Americans stop drifting toward the Democrats and go back to embracing failure after failure by the GOP. Within a week, Joe's "plumber's crack" had been exposed.

Prior to announcing that god told him to be patient and not run for office just yet, Joe had a few days earlier called for "stringing up" U.S. Senator Chris Dodd (D.-Conn.) No specific reason was given for this pronouncement, but I have to assume it has to do with Dodd's strong efforts for health care reform. Joe must believe enough inbred dopes out there still think he is a plumber and, therefore, doesn't want the government messing with the cushy health care benefits he gets through his union.

In some ways, though, my favorite recent utterance by Joe was not too long ago when he proclaimed the Constitution as "almost like the Bible" and that the the Founding Fathers "knew socialism doesn't work. They knew communism doesn't work." Joe would have us believe he knows how to replace a bad elbow joint under the bathroom sink. That's a good idea because he knows nothing about history. Madison, Hamilton, Washington, Wythe, Franklin, Rutledge, Sherman & Company reportedly never got around to addressing socialism and/or communism what with all the concerns and focus on Federal vs. States rights, separation of powers, elections, etc. Well, that and the fact that socialism or communism didn't even exist in the late 1780s. It would be nearly 60 years before both were really rolled out as economic and political theories by the likes of Marx. Joe is rumored to also believe that Lincoln was the first chief executive to address the nation on television.

Hey, when god talks directly to you, you can't be concerned with historical accuracies.

Nevertheless, Joe's talking to the guy in the sky is not nearly as entertaining nor as delusional as Sanford's. A little background: roughly two weeks after "returning-from-Argentina-where-I- was-fucking-my-hot-little-Latina" Family Values Mark let it be known that god spoke to him and commanded (or whatever gods do) that he was to stay where he was and not vacate the governorship. It's easy to see why this would happen.

Sanford, who has banged the bible relentlessly since becoming a politician, has belonged to a bible study group run by a guy named Warren "Cubby" Culbertson. Cubby (not to be confused with Carl "Cubby" O'Brien one of the original Mouseketeers on the Mickey Mouse Club show in the 1950s) runs a court reporting business in Columbia, SC when he isn't leading his charges in bible 101. Cubby has for many months been helping Sanford and his wife "work through" the problems associated with Family Values Mark nailing babes south of the border.

It gets better. Today's edition of Buzzflash has a story from Facing South: A New Voice for the Changing South. After reading it, it makes sense why god talks to Mark. The article is titled "Meet Gov. Sanford's Other Family."

Now he has a third family!!

Anyway, read on:

There was a cryptic moment in the emotional press conference South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford held last week to apologize for committing adultery.

"C Street," Sanford said, is where men face "hard questions." Later, in response to a question from a reporter, the Republican governor and former congressman said that he had been to "what we called 'C Street' when I was in Washington." Sanford was referring to the address of the Washington headquarters for The Family -- perhaps the most politically powerful religious group in Washington. Sponsor of the annual National Prayer Breakfast that draws leading U.S. politicians, the secretive Christian organization also known as The Fellowship was founded in Seattle in 1935 by Abraham Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant and itinerant preacher who worked with the city's poor and feared the pull of socialism.

He claimed that God appeared to him to warn that Christianity's preoccupation with the poor and weak was misguided, so Vereide began to minister to the powerful. He organized prayer breakfasts for political and business leaders to promote anti-Communism and anti-unionism, and the group later went on to work with dictators in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The family is headed by a man named Douglas Coe, who has controversially encouraged the men under his tutelage to follow Jesus with the same sort of blind devotion shown by Hitler's followers.

The members also refer to themselves as the "new chosen people," believing that the Jews broke their covenant with God. Incorporated today as a tax-free 501(c)(3) nonprofit operating under the name The Fellowship Foundation, the Family maintains a three-story, $1.1 million brick townhouse at 133 C St. in Washington -- a former convent that's now home to members of Congress while being treated like a church under tax law. In a meeting with his cabinet after his public confession, the New York Times reported, Gov. Sanford apologized for letting people down but said he has no plans to resign. He referred to the biblical story of King David: "the way in which he fell mightily ... but then picked up the pieces and built from there."

In a radio interview yesterday with Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air, Jeff Sharlet -- author of "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" -- shed more light on the shadowy group and Sanford's connection to it. Sharlet, who is also the co-creator of Killing the Buddha, an online literary journal about religion, spent almost a month several years ago living at Ivanwald, The Family's two-story colonial house on a cul-de-sac in Arlington, Va. that serves as a training ground for the group's next generation. Recommended for membership by a banker acquaintance, Sharlet was in fact there on a reporting mission that besides his book led to a 2003 Harper's magazine story titled "Jesus plus nothing: Undercover among America's secret theocrats."

During the interview with Gross, Sharlet noted The Family's emphasis on the biblical King David story that Sanford referenced. In that tale, David sees the beautiful Bathsheba, decides he must have her, gets her pregnant, arranges to have her husband killed in battle, and then marries her. Asked by Gross whether he had a better understanding of the Sanford affair because he studied The Family, Sharlet pointed to the governor's King David reference:

That's actually one of the sort of core parables of The Family that I encountered, and describe this experience with David Coe, the son of Doug Coe, the leader, came around and gave us this long lesson. He says, 'What made King David great?' And the men I was with are all trying to say, 'Well, he loved God,' all this. He [says], 'No, No, that's not it. King David was a terrible man. You know, he was an adulterer and a murderer. So why is he a hero of the Bible?' And the answer is because God chose him. King David is beyond morality, in their limited understanding of scripture. ... I could almost hear Doug Coe's voice when Gov. Sanford was saying, 'I need to keep governing, because I'm like King David.'

The calls for Sanford to step down are growing louder, with a half-dozen newspapers, a majority of Republicans in the South Carolina state senate and U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett (R-S.C.) all urging his resignation.

But the South Carolina newspaper The State reports that Sanford says he plans to stay "until they throw me out." After all, that's what King David would do.

Well, this explains it and it certainly makes a lot of sense. We men now have the perfect excuse: the next time the ol' lady confronts you for having a babe on the side just tell her it's what King David did.

Have a nice Fourth of July. Oh....and Michael Jackson. Still dead.