"I Must Have It"

From The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens, published in book form in 1841, a thoroughly modern portrait of addiction and its economic and emotional toll on family members, especially children. Nell Trent, who's 13, and her unnamed grandfather have been driven from their home and business and to the brink of vagrancy by his gambling addiction. In the midst of their picturesque adventures, they escape a thunderstorm in a public house, where grandpa notices that two men are playing cards:

The child saw with astonishment and alarm that his whole appearance had undergone a complete change. His face was flushed and eager, his eyes were strained, his teeth set, his breath came short and thick, and the hand he laid upon her arm trembled so violently that she shook beneath its grasp.

"Bear witness," he muttered, looking upward, "that I always said it; that I knew it, dreamed of it, felt it was the truth, and that it must be so! What money have we, Nell? Come! I saw you with money yesterday. What money have we? Give it to me."

"No, no, let me keep it, grandfather," said the frightened child. "Let us go away from here. Do not mind the rain. Pray let us go."

"Give it to me, I say," returned the old man fiercely. '"Hush, hush, don't cry, Nell. If I spoke sharply, dear, I didn't mean it. It's for thy good. I have wronged thee, Nell, but I will right thee yet, I will indeed. Where is the money?"

"Do not take it," said the child. "Pray do not take it, dear. For both our sakes let me keep it, or let me throw it away--better let me throw it away, than you take it now. Let us go; do let us go."

"Give me the money," returned the old man, "I must have it. There-- there--that's my dear Nell. I'll right thee one day, child, I'll right thee, never fear!"

She took from her pocket a little purse. He seized it with the same rapid impatience which had characterised his speech, and hastily made his way to the other side of the screen. It was impossible to restrain him, and the trembling child followed close behind.

Morning Lines

Not unexpectedly, Israel goes ahead with plans to build housing units in East Jerusalem.

If you're skeptical about Israel, here's your line: "It isn't serious about peace." If we're impatient with the Palestinians, we say, "If they're serious about peace, they should stop setting so many preconditions and get back to the table."

You can blame the leaders if you want to. You can also blame their people. Remember that many Israelis still refuse to accept that they are complicit in the Palestinians' plight, while many Palestinians refuse to accept Israel's right to exist. I don't think President Abbas is politically strong enough to transcend his people's prejudices. That leaves Bibi.

Moral For Better Reasons

From last week's atheists' conference in Los Angeles, more on the creed's tactical disputes, schisms, and efforts to identify a source of moral behavior not anywise known as God:

The presenters did differ on where a secular morality might come from. In his new best seller, “The Moral Landscape,” [Sam] Harris argues that morality is a product of neuroscience. (The good, he argues, is that which promotes happiness and well-being, and those states are ultimately dependent on brain chemistry.) Others believe morality is bequeathed by evolution, while still others would argue for ethics grounded in secular philosophy, like Immanuel Kant’s or John Rawls’s. But all agreed that nonbelievers are at least as moral as believers, and for better reasons.

Mo And Marty

Special congratulations to two winners of OC Weekly's "Best Of OC 2010" awards: Mo's Fullerton Music Centers (Mo is at left, left), where I got my first guitar on my birthday 15 years ago and my first lessons from Larry Samson (if you honk when you drive by his studio on Harbor Blvd., he'll wave) and novelist and "Orange Coast" magazine editor Martin J. Smith, whom I first met in his native Pittsburgh 25 years ago.

Denoted

Fifty years ago last night, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, though a continent apart for the third of their four presidential debates, still managing to peek over one another's shoulders. Afterward, Nixon accused Kennedy of cheating by using notes. Kennedy and his staff admitted he'd had one, then two documents that he used for quotations.

For its blog, the LA Times unearthed the clipping of its article about the controversy, written by one of the relatively few reporters Nixon trusted at the time, Lou Flemming. The blog gratuitously recaps Nixon's famous perspiration problem, which was an issue for the historic first debate on Sept. 26 but evaporated for the next three. Some felt Nixon won on Oct. 13. Too bad 20 million fewer people were watching.

Hot off the presses, a couple of highlights.

Kennedy at his deftest, parrying a thrust by Thurston Morton, GOP chief, who had said Kennedy owned Nixon an apology because Harry Truman had said that he and his party could go to hell:

Mr. Truman has his methods of expressing things. He's been in politics for 50 years; he's been president of the United States. They may - are not my style. But I really don't think there's anything that I could say to President Truman that's going to cause him, at the age of 76, to change his particular speaking manner. Perhaps Mrs. Truman can, but I don't think I can. I'll just have to tell Mr. Morton that. If you'd pass that message on to him.

Nixon on the religion issue (which in 1960 was Protestant anxiety about Kennedy's Roman Catholicism), a text that Islam-bashers like Newt Gingrich should study:

[A]s far as religion is concerned, I have seen Communism abroad. I see what it does. Communism is the enemy of all religions; and we who do believe in God must join together. We must not be divided on this issue. The worst thing that I can think can happen in this campaign would be for it to be decided on religious issues. I obviously repudiate the Klan; I repudiate anybody who uses the religious issue; I will not tolerate it, I have ordered all of my people to have nothing to do with it and I say to this great audience, whoever may be listening, remember, if you believe in America, if you want America to set the right example to the world, that we cannot have religious or racial prejudice. We cannot have it in our hearts. But we certainly cannot have it in a presidential campaign.

From Fullerton To Everest

Cindy Abbott, hometown fitness hero. Restaurant recommendations included.

Black Socks Scandal

Alex Gibney on Roger Stone, seeking to be New York 's one-man gubernatorial recall-and-replacement apparatus. Mature readers only, please.

Agnes Of God

Malcolm Boyd -- priest, civil rights and peace activist, poet, and theologian-in-residence for the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles -- asked five random worshipers about President Obama's faith life and got this reply from 22-year-old Agnes:

Racism and religion get mixed up when it comes to President Obama. He has disclaimed the dogmatic, historic and highly political "black church." Yet he is clearly not a member of a mainstream "white church." Maybe he's a true original, refusing such a simplistic faith definition. Isn't this OK? Is there anything anti-American about it? I think he may represent the wave of the future.

The photo shows 44 in an old-fashioned denominational moment last month at St. John's Episcopal Church near the White House, being totally cracked up by the Rev. Dr. Luis Leon, the rector.

But He Did Not Shoot The Sheriff

In his history of the Grateful Dead, Dennis McNally describes an unexpected rim shot at the Red Dog Saloon, a now-legendary music venue in Virginia City, Nevada:

On opening night, June 29, 1965, the sheriff stopped by, handed his gun to the bartender, and said, "Check my gun." The bartender fired a round into the floor and handed it back. "Works fine, Sheriff."

Washington Rules

It helps to be a post-modern guy sometimes. Speaking to Peter Baker, 44 skillfully self-diagnoses:

[Barack Obama] has learned that, for all his anti-Washington rhetoric, he has to play by Washington rules if he wants to win in Washington. It is not enough to be supremely sure that he is right if no one else agrees with him. “Given how much stuff was coming at us,” Obama told me, “we probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right. There is probably a perverse pride in my administration — and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top — that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who’s occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can’t be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.”

That presumes that what he did was the right thing, a matter of considerable debate. The left thinks he did too little; the right too much. But what is striking about Obama’s self-diagnosis is that by his own rendering, the figure of inspiration from 2008 neglected the inspiration after his election. He didn’t stay connected to the people who put him in office in the first place. Instead, he simultaneously disappointed those who considered him the embodiment of a new progressive movement and those who expected him to reach across the aisle to usher in a postpartisan age.