Saturday Stew

Congressional elections were held this past November and we at the Manor had hoped that we would be given a year's respite from electoral politics. But, as often happens, we were wrong. Once Pelosi Galore took her position as Speaker of the House nannying a bunch of spoiled children, we knew that the election cycle is not a cycle. It is a permanent condition. Now we can look forward to a day after day diet of politicians, both Democrat and Republican, posing and posturing like fashion models on a Milan runway telling us all how they are concerned or outraged while preening before news video cameras as the position themselves for the next election. Actually, despite their best efforts to appear that they have the wisdom of statesmen while looking like Ava Gardner or Tyrone Power, they come across as car salesmen trying to sell one a Pinto and look like those middle aged bleached blonde bimbos wearing stretch pants and too tight knit tops buying lottery tickets at the liquor store and trying to flirt with the twenty-five year old clerk. It's a sad, sad sight.

In the same vein, more than a few pols have announced that they plan to run for President of the Great Republic. Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, Sam Brownback have announced. Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Newt Gringrich and John Kerry will probably soon announce. Watching this mess is like watching vultures circling a watering hole where nothing is dying. They just can't wait. It reminds one of children sitting in the back of a car leaving Los Angeles and driving to Boston crying "Are we there yet?" when they cross the the Riverside County line.

We here at the Manor, because of our location, are often subjected to Spanish language (mostly Mexican) television. And most of it is pretty forgettable expect for the bustiness and blondness of some of the "actresses." But while flipping through the available fare on the idiot box last night you faithful correspondent was forced to stop in wonderment and glee at a Spanish language station. This particular television station seems to be a television station dedicated to the Mexican form of Roman Catholicism. Yours, being a hardshell Baptist, is not very interested in the Roman church, so he usually passes right by this particular broadcaster without a look. But last night the station ran a commercial for the Boy Scouts of America. The commercial was narrated in Spanish, so yours was unable to understand what was being said, but the visuals were of mostly Hispanic boys in Boy Scout and Cub Scout uniforms doing the things that Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts do - camping, cleaning up, singing, playing sports, etc., while accompanied by their parents, both fathers and mothers, in uniform. It was jarring for a moment because yours has never seen such a thing. Many years of living among Mexican immigrants and their offspring has shown that the children often run wild, the fathers ignore the children and the mothers seem to think that they are living in a pueblo instead of a modern American city. But this whole Boy Scout thing may be the thing to get Hispanics to assimilate into the larger American culture. One reason is because it appeals to something that Hispanics claim is important to them - the family - while integrating the Scout into the idea of Duty, Honor, Country and God. The local yokel politicians keep wondering what to do about the gang problem in the Los Angeles County area.

Here's an idea: urge the parents in areas infected by gangs to get their boys to join the Boy Scouts and the girls the Girl Scouts; or the Woodcraft Rangers or the Campfire Girls. Such organizations give the child a broader horizon than just a crappy neighborhood that no one wants to live in and would move out of if they got the chance.

Ask yourself this question: Would you rather see your son dressed in an athletic tee shirt and khaki pants with a shaved head or daughter wearing too tight jeans, a tube top and bleached hair standing on a street corner listening to gangster rap at midnight, or wearing a Scout uniform and building birdhouses or planning on a way to clean up the local vacant lot.

If the Roman Catholic Church had any damn sense, it would urge its members to enroll their children in the Scouts or some other youth organization instead of bleeding about the fate of illegal aliens because the Scouts would bring the illegal alien into the American world faster than an act of Congress would.

Your faithful correspondent doesn't mention Protestant churches because those Hispanics who become Protestants tend to (and it sounds racist or religionist, but is not meant to) have abandoned the Hispanic culture in regards to the children and work harder to keep the kids on the straight and narrow. This may have something to do with the fact that for Protestants every day is a Confession day, and not just Saturday.