How could I make such a mistake? I have no idea. But given my own 40 years of believing a lie, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a growing number of Americans believe – despite all the evidence to the contrary – that President Obama is a Muslim or that he was born outside the United States.

It is so easy to believe something that is not true. I know this from personal experience. For most of my life, I believed that my dad did something he did not do.

The “memory” is crystal clear in my mind – I was about three years old, maybe four, and my family was at a pool behind a house in Florida, where we were living at the time. My dad was in the pool trying to convince me to jump into the water. I was running around on the deck of the pool, saying No, no, no, and he was promising that if I would jump in he would catch me. Finally I summoned up the trust necessary to run to the edge of the sparkling blue water and throw my little body in. But … he didn’t catch me.

For about 40 years, I held onto the sense of betrayal I felt that day, adding it to a long list of other fatherly deficiencies. But I never discussed it with him or anybody else who might have been there. And then one day, my husband casually mentioned the event to my mother in the course of a conversation. She was horrified to hear what I had believed all those years, because it wasn’t true! She was there that day in the glittering Florida sun. The man who coerced me to jump in the pool and then let me sink was not my dad but his cousin.

How could I make such a mistake? I have no idea. But given my own 40 years of believing a lie, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a growing number of Americans believe – despite all the evidence to the contrary – that President Obama is a Muslim or that he was born outside the United States.

In August, a Pew Research Center poll showed that 18 percent of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, and that figure is up 7 percent since 2009. A whopping 43 percent of respondents said they don’t know what his religion is despite the fact that the president has said he is a Christian about a gazillion times and despite the fact that many Americans wanted his Christian pastor’s head on a plate during the campaign. The number who believe he is a secret Muslim has risen by 9 percent in the past year.  Also in August, a CNN poll showed that only 42 percent of Americans believe Obama was born in the U.S., despite wide distribution of his American birth certificate.

I was reminded of my mistaken belief last weekend at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, where I listened to Meredith Maran discuss her new book, My Lie: A True Story of False Memory.  While working as a researcher during the 1990’s heyday of repressed memory discovery, Maran came to believe that she had been molested by her father. After accusing him and spending years being estranged from most of her family, Maran now believes that she had fallen victim to the cultural phenomenon of false memory, that her father never molested her. She has recanted her story and tried to make amends with her family.

It was the growing problem of falsehoods about Obama that inspired Maran to write the book. She believes that, in the same way many Americans are being influenced by Tea Party kooks to believe untruths, she was heavily influenced by the repressed memory researchers she was working for. Now she just wants to re-establish a relationship with her father, who is old and ill.

I wonder if some day the Birthers will come to their senses and recant their false beliefs the way Maran has. Somehow, I doubt it. But, then, I have been a distrustful soul ever since that day at the pool.

Too bad I can’t accuse Sarah Palin or Glen Beck and the other crazy-assed pseudo-journalists out there of planting false ideas in my head about who misled me into a near drowning. Alas, I have only the mysterious memories of a four-year-old to blame, and who knows what goes on in their little minds!

Why am I writing about a frivolous subject like shoes? I tried to write about some high-minded, political topic today. Really, I did. But then I opened the newspaper and saw that kitten heels have returned as the “new” fall fashion. …

 I do not have evidence to prove it, but I am willing to bet that nobody had to give shoes to men in New York City on 9/11/2001 when the Twin Towers were falling. Do you remember how, as thousands of New Yorkers poured into the streets, fleeing the wreckage and in some cases trying to walk home to Brooklyn or New Jersey, shoe store managers handed out sneakers to women with aching, sometimes bleeding feet?

Do you know why women needed the charity of shoes on that fateful day? Because they had gone to work that morning wearing the tendon-killing, movement-inhibiting, pointy-toed, spike-heeled torture devices that so many women mistakenly call shoes.

Do you know why men didn’t need such charity? Because they are far more likely to don sturdy footwear that distributes their body weight in such a way that they can not only walk, but actually run, when necessary.

This difference was brought home to me last spring in a less important but, to my self-centered way of thinking, equally dramatic manner when my car broke down in rural Florida. As a burly young man in a muscle shirt unhooked my car from his tow truck and deposited us in front of a broken down garage on a – I’m not kidding – dirt road in some back of beyond town in the panhandle, I realized that I was terribly and inappropriately shod.

While six grimy mechanics peered under the hood of the car, my daughter and I did a little fire ant dance in the dust. We, assuming we were embarking on a leisurely and uneventful drive home from vacation, were wearing shorts, t-shirts, and … flip flops. No need for constricting footwear in the car. The only walking we were likely to do would be ambulating from the back seat of my land yacht into a Cracker Barrel or a gas station restroom.  

Yet, there we were, watching a hot wind blow up little eddies in the dirt road as we punched family members’ numbers into our cell phones so that if we suddenly heard Dueling Banjos playing in the distance, we could hit one button and say our final goodbyes to loved ones, because we both knew we’d never be able to outrun marauding locals – not even the ants – in our flimsy foot coverings.  Emergency numbers were pointless, because we were so far out of civilization that rescuers would never have found us in time.

Was my mate in a similar situation? Noooo… he was reliably if a bit compulsively shod in his usual black sneakers and socks. Was he smacking at fire ants and god only knows what other insects crawling up his legs? Nope. He was comfortably peering under the hood of my car while pretending to understand what the grimy mechanics were talking about.

Ever the parent, I used the situation as a teaching moment, even though my daughter is grown. “Note to self,” I told her, “shoes can save your life.”  To divert her attention a bit from our plight, I told her about a book I had read some time back – Chris Bojhalian’s Skeletons at the Feast – a historic novel that follows a small group of people during World War II who attempt to cross the remnants of the Third Reich to reach the safety of the British and American lines. One of the female characters survives the Nazis only because she leaves home wearing a pair of boots instead of slippers. That is a lesson not to be taken lightly!

Why am I writing about a frivolous subject like shoes? I tried to write about some high-minded, political topic today. Really, I did. There were lots of options – Stephen Colbert’s “Truthiness” testimony before Congress, the Republican Pledge to America, the Vatican banking scandal.

But then I opened the newspaper and saw that kitten heels have returned as the “new” fall fashion. Do you remember kitten heels, those little shoes with one-inch pointy daggers attached at the back? Their more demure shape is supposed to look feminine, I think, as opposed to looking hot and sexy like a higher heel.

I don’t even know what that means, actually.  All I know is that whether women are teetering around on 4-inch spikes or wobbling on 1-inch nails, they are still wearing shoes that cause them to hunch around with their center of gravity thrown out of whack. What, exactly, is sexy about incapacitation?

Easy for me to say. What about my flip flops? They are neither sexy nor functional!

What is this dysfunction women share when it comes to shoes? I guess one advantage to pointy-toed high heels over flip flops is that you could whup some serious ass if you had to with a good sharp kick to the groin. Or you could just take off your shoe and pummel somebody with the spikey heel.  But when your enemy is bigger or stronger than you – like the tallest buildings in the world, for instance, or fire ants on a dirt road – you just need to be able to run.

Christians and Americans have been burning things since the days of their beginning…what makes Terry Jones different?

Whew, it looks like the world has been saved from certain apocalypse because Terry Jones – an egomaniacal preacher from a Pentecostal church in Florida – has decided not to burn a pile of donated copies of the Koran. Unless, of course, he changes his mind before today is over. He’s waffled a few times lately, depending on which figure of world-class importance was calling him on any given day.

If you have been conscious – maybe even semi-conscious – for the past week, you know that Jones planned to burn copies of the Islamic holy book as a protest against the actions of Muslim terrorists. He chose today, September 11, for reasons that are obvious to you if you have been conscious on pretty much any day for the past nine years.  He has also linked his pyromaniacal act to the proposed building of a mosque near the site for the now missing World Trade Center, and at one time said he would call off the burning only if the building site were to be relocated. For many days, the laser pointer of world media attention has been focused on his forehead. As a result, he has vaulted to public infamy in forms as diverse as being burned in effigy in the Middle East to having Secretary of Defense Robert Gates phone him with pleading messages from President Barack Obama that he is endangering troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Why this ignorant crusader for the Christian god has been imbued with such power is a mystery to me. Let him burn the Koran. Without the “all Jones all the time” press he has received, who would have known? The 50 members of his church? I hear not even all of them were planning to bring wieners and sticks to the party. So maybe 25 people would have whipped themselves into a frenzy in Gainesville, and then life would have continued. Politicians would have continued debating the mosque in New York, and terrorists would have continued to kill American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan but without the excuse of Terry Jones for doing it.

You should understand: I do not support Jones’ plan. I find it reprehensible. But the reason I find it reprehensible is that it is a crime against literacy, not that it is a crime against religion. I don’t think any book should be burned. And, as an atheist, I place no more – perhaps less – importance on the Koran, the Bible, the Torah, or any other “holy” book than I do on Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Metamorphoses, Ulysses, or the Harry Potter series, all of which have been burned along with thousands  more as one form of protest or another.

So, it pains me to add to the millions of words dedicated to Terry Jones’s bonfire, but two comments I heard in regard to it are stuck in my head like the earworm you get after listening to Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It.

First, President Obama called it un-Christian and un-American, but he’s wrong. Christians and Americans have been burning things since the days of their beginning…what makes Terry Jones different?

Christians have burned everything – most notably people. By some estimates, more women were burned during the Witch Hunts and the Inquisition than Jews were killed during the Holocaust. And while we are talking about the Holocaust, let’s not forget that Hitler was a Christian.  Christians will even burn their own holy books when one sect disagrees with another’s interpretation or translation. William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament was burned by the Bishop of London in 1526, and Martin Luther’s German translation was burned by the Catholics in the 1600s.

The U. S. hasn’t behaved any better. During the 1950s, that most “American” of decades conservative politicians would love to return to, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration burned the works of psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich (who might have been a little crazy) and President Dwight Eisenhower’s State Department burned books that advocated Communism.  But, at least we don’t burn people, you say? Before believing that, you should do a little research into the “discovery” and colonization of the U.S.  Read Mark Twain’s essays on American imperialism. How many people do you think burned in the Native American villages that were torched so European settlers could plant corn? Think about Atlanta during the Civil War. How about all those villages in Korea and Vietnam?  Remember the famous photo of the little girl burned with napalm?

Those Christian and American values President Obama talks about are nebulous concepts that get toted out anytime one group or another wants to condemn the other.

The second comment that stuck with me came from a Muslim imam who was surprised when NPR’s Morning Edition host told him that 49 percent of Americans hold a negative view of Islam. In light of the especially negative news we hear about the Muslim faith, why would anyone really be surprised by that statistic?  If moderate Muslims want to improve the image of their faith, they should work hard to usurp the media coverage that goes to al-Qaeda and the more radical sects of Islam. They could make a public effort of encouraging their more radical brothers …

… to stop giving guns to little boys and promising virgins for suicide bombers.

… to unveil their women, give them the car keys, and let them seek medical care.

… to stop throwing acid on little girls who are trying to go to school.  

… to stop killing non-Muslims who publish cartoon depictions of Mohammed or burn copies of a book.

Terry Jones’s decision to burn the Koran may be ignorant and bigoted, but it’s not really un-Christian or un-American. If he really wanted to be radical, he would sit down with a copy of the Koran and the Bible and read them through from cover to cover to discover on his own the good and the bad in each. Now, that would be remarkable in our increasingly illiterate culture.

Hello world!

If you know me, then you know that I used to write a column on politics and culture for LEO, the Louisville Eccentric Observer. During its four-year run, “Don’t Get Me Started” tickled some people pink and really ticked off others. I stopped writing it because I got tired of having to express an opinion every other Wednesday, and  in the six years or so since I stopped, I really have not missed climbing up on that soap box twice a month. Suddenly, though, I feel the urge again. Why? I don’t know, but here I am. Watch this space every couple of weeks on Fridays, and we’ll just see what happens.