Joshua's Trail

On Saturday AMs, on my drive home from running with my blind buddy, I've come to enjoy listening to Joshua's Trail on the radio.  It's a self-described "black conservative radio program from a Judeo-Christian perspective."  It's a long drive, so I get to hear about an hour of the show.  The host and his sidekicks are pastors at some local church(es).

Sometimes they are a bit off the wall for me, perhaps too literal in their Biblical interpretations.  But often they are right on the money.  Frequently they instruct by merely asking questions.  It seems to me that some of the questions, directed at those who differ in perspective, would make people uncomfortable.

Today, in the hour I listened, there were a couple of topics, lengthy due to several callers.  I did get a chuckle out of the characterization of President Obama as "despicable," as in "a despicable human being."  Yes, these black radio hosts have been very critical of the President--and toss in Hillary Clinton and the Democrat Party.  Often, the hosts ask how in the world black Americans can continue to vote for/support the Democrats.  Oh, they provide answers, including the promise of freebies, but still don't ever seem to convince themselves of the answers.  I don't necessarily subscribe to this view, but the hosts are convinced the President is a Muslim.  I don't find their arguments conclusive or even convincing, but they are relentless.

Also, today saw (heard?) a lengthy segment on abortion, including the partial-birth abortion.  It was ignited by Don Trump's statements last week.  You might have guessed that the hosts are extremely anti-abortion and frequently refer to it as a cover for "murder."  One caller tried to justify abortion, even partial birth, and the main host really shot him down, with facts, with postulates, in every such way.

Speaking of radio, it was great to hear a caller get the best, quite easily, of Rush Limbaugh the other day as I listened on the way home from class.  I'm not a big Limbaugh fan; in fact, I'm not a fan at all.  I catch his show often because he's on one of the few stations I can consistently find on the car radio.  (I can get some FM stations, but they are filled with sports talk or music, which I choose not to listen to most of the time.)  Any way, the caller kept at it and pinned Limbaugh into a corner again and again, one from which he never escaped.  (It's surely a sign of my own slipping powers of recall that I cannot for the life of me remember the topic!)  And, as usual, when the host is being battered by a caller, there's always the old hang-up and then berate the caller for being wrong or misinformed or unthinking or......  Not this time he wasn't.

Bill Bennett has retired from his daily radio show.  Again, I couldn't always pick it up; sometimes a foreign language station overrides it.  But I liked Bill Bennett and his show, despite that he's a Purple Cow from Williams.  He is usually thoughtful and reasoned.  Although I disagree with him on some matters (the Common Core, gay marriage), he never is disrespectful of callers.  He gives them their time and their opinions.  He'll disagree, but never tries to belittle anyone.  I'll miss him.

Did I hear this correctly, that last week Sen. Patrick Leahy of VT called for Congressional hearings into the human rights abuses of Israel?  Is this guy serious?  Can he even be taken seriously?  I might well actually take him seriously if he had called for such inquiries into the actions of, say, China or North Korea.  Human rights abuses??????  Has he called for Congressional inquiries of human rights abuses in Muslim/Islamic nations?  I'm curious.  How many people have the Israelis headed?  How many of their young women and girls have the Israelis genitally mutilated?  How many gays have the Israelis thrown off of rooftops or drowned?  How many Christian women have been raped by the Israelis?  Do the Israelis strap explosives to their children and sent them out as human bombs?  I wonder if, when walking by Leahy, people manage to keep a straight face.

We wonder what's wrong with higher education in the US and Walter Williams has given us a peek. I repeat from the other day the titles of some courses on some US college campuses.  "GaGa for Gaga:  Sex, Gender, and Identity."  "Centuries of Dramatic Cross-Dressing."  "Philosophy and Star Trek."  "What If Harry Potter Is Real?"  And let's not forget the many comic books as literature or sports literature courses.  Contraposed (OK, I'm not sure this word is technically the one to use here, but I don't think there are many times to use it.  So, I thought I'd take the chance.), I was sent this title from a current Amherst course, "Readings in English and American Fiction, 1950-2010."  Included in the description is "The effort will be to refine and complicate one's performance as a critic of these writers and their books."  I'm not sure I know what that means, but I think I'd find out in a hurry.  This professor was at AC when I was there and co-taught a course (I think) on "The 19th Century British Novel."  For our final exam we had to read John Fowles' book, The French Lieutenant's Woman, which was published in 1969.  The exam question was to "Describe The French Lieutenant's Woman as a '19th Century British Novel.'"  No, I have no idea how I passed that.  Another course, in the religion dept, for the final exam had us read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and then answer this, "Describe The Autobiography of Malcolm X as a religious experience."  I don't know how I passed that one, either.