The summer after seventh
grade my grandmother sent one of my cousins and me to a snooty boys’ camp up in
New Hampshire. For me it wasn’t a great fit (who were these people?), but I
tried to be a good sport. Around the campfire on skit night, I was asked to
spell “yankee.” Hamming it up and following the script, I began to drawl, “D .
. . A . . . M . . . .”
“Wait,
wait,” hollered the MC. “What are you doing?”
"Wheah
I come from, son,” I drawled on, “it’s all one word.” Which, despite the play-acting,
was exactly how I felt.
This
was also the summer after that ur-reality show, “Candid Camera,” sent its goon
squad into the hills of Tennessee and asked the folks in the little rural
community to say the word “oil.” The answer just about all of them gave was
“awl,” or maybe “awul.” Point being: at this alien hellhole (from which I
demanded to return home after two weeks, while my less sensitive cousin stayed
on for the whole month), when I wasn’t being asked to spell “yankee,” some obnoxious
cretin was my face with “Hey, Yow, say ‘oil.’”
I
mean, what do you say? What I said was, “Oil, you dumb shit, OIL!”
Have
I established my credentials? I’m a southerner, proud of it, and prejudiced to
the bone. But the South’s not perfect, and since the national media love
nothing better than to laugh at our failings and foolishness, I sometimes think
we ought to dial it back a little bit.
I’m
thinking, of course, of the recent mass baptism on the football field at Villa
Rica High School. One of the coaches cooked up the entertainment with a local
pastor, and on a recent afternoon before practice 18 team members, along with the
coach, took turns in the dunking tub. Word got out in advance, as it was meant
to, and throngs of on-lookers applauded.
It
would be one thing, I suppose, if the newly-saved had headed quietly home afterwards, with nothing more to be said. But this was pure P. T. Barnum—the event
videoed and posted on YouTube. And I’m sure that coach and pastor anticipated
with glee the letter from the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation,
which took about a nanosecond to arrive. Surprise: the baptism was in violation
of the First Amendment, and, specifically, of 2003 Federal guidelines mandating
that “teachers and other public school officials may not lead their classes in
prayer, devotional readings from the Bible, or other religious activities.”
Gee,
thanks, but so what? Are the kids and the coach and the preacher going to take
it back? They’re in the spotlight—thank you,
Jesus!—having the time of their lives. It’s like the reverend said: “I need
to send those [Freedom from Religion] people a thank-you letter because what
they’ve done is ignited the base.”
Honestly,
I wonder why Freedom from Religion rises to the bait, why it insists on playing
its predictable role in this tawdry drama. Well, I guess I know why, but still,
doesn’t it sound like a bunch of people who don’t have enough to do, or worse,
a bunch of damn yankees who don’t have enough to do?
As
for our part, though, don’t we have to confess that we bring it on ourselves? We
say we just want to be left alone, but it looks to me like we can’t stand to be
left alone. I say let’s turn down the volume, and see if we can’t get the
do-gooders to go bother somebody else.