“I Can See Us Sittin’ 'Round the Table, When from the Family Koran Dad Would Read …” *

Usually the only solicitors drawn to our neighborhood are those wily Jehovah’s Witnesses and the guys who want $10 to paint our address on the curb in a Texas flag motif. But Friday brought something new under the sun: Some believer had swept down our street and hung a black-jacketed paperback copy of the Koran (or Quran, as it was spelled on the cover) from the doorknob of every household.

An accompanying flier informed recipients that the Muslim holy book was a “free gift” from the Book of Signs Foundation, which according to this recent Chicago Tribune article “hopes to clear up misconceptions” Americans supposedly harbor about Islam. But the group has a “particularly ambitious” long-term goal, the paper reported:

… that each household in the U.S. possess a Quran, even if the residents are not Muslims.

From what we could detect the gift** was not unanimously well-received in our neighborhood. The lady next door approached us we puttered in our front yard after the afternoon rains and asked, her voice heavy with suspicion, “Did you get a copy of the Koran put on your front door?” We said that we had and assured her she hadn’t been precision-targeted for conversion. “Well, it pisses me off,” she said, going on to assert that Muslims in the U.S. are given much wider latitude in their proselytizing than Christians. We had no facts on which to argue or agree and simply said that we guessed that the deliverer had right to drop the volume on our doorstep, as many times as desired, as long as he didn’t make a nuisance of himself. "Yeah, I know," our neighbor agreed. "But it still pisses me off."

Later we read the fine print on the flier and discovered that the gift was not really free and that the Book of Signs Foundation actually wanted---demanded---something of us, something that would not only require an expenditure of our valuable time but our conformance to a tenet of Islam:

NOTE: Please remember that this is a Holy Book and therefore treat it as you would treat your own scripture. While it is our sincere desire to present this to you as a gift, we realize that some may not want the copy. Please don’t throw it. Call us and we’ll arrange to have it picked up or you may give it to your nearest Mosque or another Muslim …”

Nah. This still being America, we’ll retain our right to toss our new Koran into the garbage or the recycling bag or pitch it in the barbecue pit next time we’re running low on charcoal. And we suspect our neighbors will do the same.

*With deep apologies to Willie, of course.

**We once again made a run at skimming through the Koran and once again were struck by what an angry load of gibberish it seems to be, with almost every page we opened devoted to dictate after dictate on the necessity of bending to Allah’s will. Here, randomly chosen, from the book of Al-Mujadila, 58:5: “Verily, those who oppose Allah and His Messenger will be disgraced down to dust, like those who were disgraced before them: For We have already sent down clear Signs (Ayat). And the unbelievers (will suffer) a shameful penalty …” Which we suppose is no different than the biblical threat of roasting for eternity in the Lake of Fire, but at least the Bible tells occasionally coherent and interesting stories, and the power of the language in the King James version cannot be denied.

A Pre-Emptive Invasion, Based on a False Premise, With No Apparent Exit Strategy

And Greeted With Nearly Unanimous Credulity By a Compliant and Unquestioning Media

Where Have We Heard That Before?

We’ve held our tongue on the state’s raid and dismemberment of the Yearning for Zion Ranch, lest we be accused of endorsing child abuse in a public forum, but we can no longer stand by and jingle the change in our pockets after watching Channel 11’s Friday night coverage of the arrival in Brazoria County of some of the dispossessed-by-the-state-of-Texas FLDS children. For some reason the Belo-owned CBS affiliate thought it was newsworthy to show footage of the children as they were herded off the school buses and hustled into the foster care facility. The filming appeared to have been done from a helicopter hovering directly above the procession at a height of 40 or so feet (we could be off on this, but it was too damn close). Then one of the male anchors, we can’t remember if it was Greg Hurst or the other clown, offered up this unattributed “fact”: “Yeah, y’know, some of these kids had never ridden in a moving vehicle before!”* Now that the Therapeutic State has taken care of that alleged omission in their upbringing, we’re sure it won’t be long before some of these kids will be watching Teletubbies and pestering their foster parents (or whoever they end up with) to buy flat-screen TVs from Wal-Mart.

We’ve been surprised by the lack of sustained outrage, or even skepticism, on the part of politicians, journalists, pastors and other mainstream tastemakers (even, um, bloggers) over what seems to have been an egregious misapplication of police power by the state (of Texas), not to mention a gross violation of the Constitution. One person who been ringing the alarm is James Harrington of the Texas Civil Rights Project, who in in op-ed piece in Wednesday’s Houston Chronicle asked why the state is “so intent” on punishing the FLDS mothers and children (who, barring proof of actual documented child abuse, have a right to be left alone) and suggests the raid and its aftermath “may be a tragedy in the making.” In case you missed it, we’ll quote Harrington at length:

It is becoming increasing apparent that either officials were duped into obtaining a false warrant or obtained a warrant for which they knew there was no reasonable factual basis.

It is also clear the evidence Texas Child Protective Services has so far is slim, to say the least, and even that questionable evidence may have been manufactured.

If there was child abuse, it should be punished — that means the perpetrator and not the mothers and the children. It is the culpable man or men who should be arrested.

Nothing at this time suggests wrongdoing to justify mass separation of all the children from their mothers. Otherwise, all that happens is victimizing innocent children. So far, nothing has come to light that shows any grievous misconduct at the Eldorado ranch. In fact, it now turns out that the one alleged perpetrator has been in Colorado all the time.Yet, CPS convinced the judge that mass genetic testing was necessary and wants to move forward, removing children from their moms.

... One certainly can get the impression the officials may be motivated more by bias against the FLDS people because of their practice of plural marriage and their self-isolation in an enclave. It would not be the first time in American history that majority society has struck out against Mormons or other self-isolating religious groups.

Simply because their beliefs and lifestyle are very different, and maybe even incomprehensible to majority society, is no reason to leverage the law against them. Religious freedom is a cardinal tenet of the First Amendment. It may be hard to swallow for many "mainstream" folks, but it is essential to any pluralist democracy. And so is due process.

Amen. We suspect somebody’s going to be very embarrassed (and liable, too) when this shameful episode finally plays out (but not Greg Hurst!).

*Something we wish we could say---that we'd never ridden in a motorized vehicle.

¡Indio Apache Es Tu Papá!

There’s no clearer window into Houston’s soul, or maybe just the soft brown underbelly of its 3 a.m. fever dream, than Channel 61, the independent Spanish-language station that's carried on the Channel 3 spot on the cable system.

As the true cognoscenti know, Channel 61 is the local home to the Jose Luis Sin Censura show, a sort of lower-rent Jerry Springer (if such is possible), except the overweight and tattooed products of consanguineous marriages who strut and preen their fretful half-hour on cheeky Jose Luis’s stage sometimes appear to be actually fighting, or at least look to be a little closer to actually throwing down (lots of sweat, shirts pulled up over the head, a hint of blood on the lip) than the usual flailing-away-at-the-air and tiresome trash talk that passes for “violence” on the Springer show (we generally understand only a fraction of what they’re saying on Jose Luis, which may explain why we do not find the trash talk tiresome).

Another 61 warhorse is Secretos de Houston, in which a leather-clad team of sexy professional busybodies led by the suave J.C. Uribe uses the latest in electronic surveillance equipment to ensnare philandering Hispanic husbands and wives in their love-nest hideaways. After the offending esposa or esposo is cornered---usually by methods that in “real life” would constitute unauthorized entry---Uribe’s team ushers in the cuckolded spouse to confront his or her formerly significant other, who invariably is poised to slap the ham with someone much younger and more attractive. These confrontations always culminate in a round of Springeresque swearing and swinging, although Uribe wisely has some muscle on hand to see that nobody gets killed. (The acting’s not too bad on Secretos---a notch or two below your average TUTS production---and no knowledge of Spanish, or any other spoken language, is required to follow the “plots.”)

It appears that Secretos is a syndicated show that splices in some footage and local color for the markets where it airs. That’s what gives the show a kind of updated Naked City feel: When Uribe’s assistants tail their target past some graffiti-pocked apartment complex offering $99 move-in specials, we go, “Hey, we drive past there sometimes!” Or when a scheming husband is caught on-camera going into the Best Buy near the Galleria to procure some equipment with which to film homemade “pornos” of two senoritas mas fina (and it’s a real shame his naggin’ wife had to bust in on ’em before production got under way), we exclaim, “Hey, we shop there sometimes!”

But it’s the early morning programas pagado that really get us to thinking we should move to the south of France, or the south of Utah, as soon as we can get off the clock. Our longtime favorite---and we know there are others out there who share our enthusiasm---is the faith healer and snake handler who goes by the name of Indio Apache. (Not to be confused with his earlier-morning rival, Indian Kamacum del Amazonas, a less animated presence who bears a passing resemblance to Hidalgo “High-Born” Hidalgo, a Channel 61 viewer and the onetime reader representative and executive editor at Slampo’s Place who recently left our employ because, as he put it, “I’d rather go jump on the back of a truck at 5 a.m. everyday than keep slaving for what you pay me.”)

Indio’s the guy in the headdress and war paint who’s usually clutching a copperhead (or maybe it’s just a coral snake) while calling down the blessings of Our Lady de Guadalupe, somebody named “Padre Santos” and various other deities and sub-deities with whom we’re unfamiliar.

Money problems, bad luck, sickness, an unresponsive lover---Indio Apache says he can fix what ails you (although for some reason he’s not on our HMO’s list of preferred providers).

We’ve only seen Indio Apache a few times, usually when someone in our household has been watching a DVD the previous evening and left the TV tuned to Channel 3, so we really can’t vouch for his effectiveness, although we see no reason why he would not qualify for sponsorship by the Houston Chronicle.