"when you end a Flannery O’Connor story, you’re furious at her...

because you say, 'Well what did that mean?!' You always think there were three missing pages where she was supposed to tell you what everything meant. And what you have to do is keep going over it and over it and over it until you figure it out. That’s the process of saving you. But Flannery really respects her audience. Now granted a lot of the audience misses the deeper level. But you know what, the ones who get it – it saves their soul."

I can vouch for that.

Two Quick Things

1. Someone in America complaining about an oil crisis is like a vegan in a steakhouse complaining about a hunger crisis. Yes, you're gonna be starving, but only as long as you cling to your silly, privileged lifestyle. And Americans are going to have an oil crisis only as long as they value polar bears they will never see (and that aren't threatened anyway) over their own lives.

2. Michelle Obama spent this past weekend comparing gay rights activists to the black civil rights movement from slavery through Jim Crow. Everybody's distracting her children with criticism about how wrong and perverse her remarks were. Actually, she has a point. Gays today are being oppressed severely. Some, even a few as young as fifteen, are being murdered - hanged, actually - by state officials simply for being gay. Of course, this isn't taking place in America, but in Iran. Yes, the very same Iran Michelle's husband has pledged to cozy up to with friendly negotiations. Wouldn't it be just a tad ironic if America's first black president was the best thing that ever happened to a country that regularly lynches its citizens?