Branson Bound!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Jorge Medina is a retired Roman Catholic Cardinal from Chile whose chief claim to fame until recently was that he made the official announcement of the election of Pope Benedict XVI to the world. But being retired doesn't mean that Jorge has to stop making news.

Madonna (the singer, not the mother of Jesus) is making her first concert tour of Chile, and, being Madonna, she is salaciously stirring controversy as she struts her stuff in front of whooping and hooting South American audiences. "This woman," the Cardinal is reported to have said, "comes here and in an incredibly shameless manner, she provokes a crazy enthusiasm, and enthusiasm of lust, lustful thoughts, and impure thoughts." (Sounds to me like a man who has at least one hand in his pants pocket!)

Just for the record, Cardinal Medina made those comments during his homily at a Mass in honor of Chile's late military dictator, Augusto Pinochet, who caused the deaths of over three thousand dissidents during his seventeen-year reign of terror. (Hey Jorge, what was the penance for that little atrocity?)

Also for the record, the crowds at Madonna's two Chilean concerts were huge, with some people waiting in line for up to three days for tickets.

Madonna is a now fifty-years-old, and while she still apparently has the ability to stir lustful thoughts, at least among Catholic ancients and Alex Rodriguez, I suspect that the days of her world tours are numbered. And although I've never seen her perform in person, sooner or later I will probably catch her act - in Branson!

The Savage Detectives

by Pa Rock

I've just finished reading The Savage Detectives, a splendid but rather lengthy tome about a group of poets who were on a mission to protect a prostitute from her pimp while scouring the Sonoran Desert in search of a legendary poetess who faded from view fifty years earlier. The book also covers the last three decades of the twentieth century and follows the individual lives of these visceral realist poets as they tramp across Mexico, Central America, Europe, and Africa in search of life. They were a scroungy lot living on the fringe of literary relevance, yet their stories were as deeply touching as they were troubling.

The Savage Detectives looks at the world in a realistic fashion, and, as an honest spectator, it is certain to become a banned book. There are several reasons that make it inevitable that the work will not be welcome on the shelves of high school libraries in the inbred areas of rural America, particularly in the South.

First of all, the book was written by a foreigner. Roberto Bolano, Chilean by birth, accurately captured the sense of outrage and desperation among average Chileans when the United States stepped in and helped Pinochet and his uniformed thugs murder Salvador Allende, the elected President of Chile. (That probably qualifies as a couple of reasons!) The book was about foreigners and presented them as ordinary people, not the stuff of a good Christian education. Also, there was sex...lots and lots of casual sex, mostly heterosexual, yet none of which was performed with the benefit of marriage. And the sex was constantly presented in such a way as to imply that it was a natural act that could be enjoyed for reasons other than procreation!

The icing on the cake, as far of the banning of this book is concerned, is that the lefty New York Times named The Savage Detectives as one of the ten best books of the year. There ain't no way that marker will slip by the religious censors and other small minded people who want to control what we read, write, watch, listen to, and enjoy.

I plan to hang onto my copy of The Savage Detectives until it receives its proper recognition and is placed on some of the more prestigious lists of banned books. Then I will carefully wrap it and send it to the Wasilla, Alaska, Public Library.