The Hightower Report

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MY HOLIDAY GIFT LIST

It's that gift-giving time of year, and once again I'm delivering the goods to people I think are in need of something special as they head into 2005.

Let's start at the top. For George W., I've bottled up something small, but potent. It's an ounce of humility – not enough to make him truly humble, but just enough to wipe that Viagra-size smirk off his face. Even a little touch of the stuff would make him that much better of a president.

For Tom DeLay, the loopy former pest exterminator who's become a giant-sized pest himself, I sent a big can of Raid. If he'll spritz a bit of it under each arm in the mornings, it'll hold down his offensive arrogance enough to make him almost human.

But, what to get Wal-Mart? You'd think it has everything. Ah, of course, I'll give it the one thing it does not have: A union! This will enable its employees to get a fair wage, decent health care, and maybe even a pension, thus improving the public image and community reputation of the biggest and Scroogiest corporation in the world.

The Democratic Party. Now there's a hard-hit outfit in need of lots of help. But I can think of the perfect gift to let it help itself, build its strength, and even flourish again. I'm sending the national party leaders some gumption – specifically, the gumption to be Democrats. Period. That's what people want the party of Jefferson, FDR, HST, JFK, and LBJ to be. Not the corporate-hugging, mealy-mouthed party its been the last few years, but the unabashed, uncompromised party of working folks, willing to return to its populist roots and go right at the Bushites and their corporate sponsors.

Then there's Donnie Rumsfeld, who's so puffed up on himself that he can't see the mess he's made with his neocon warmongering. So, I'm sending him a six-month stint as a grunt in Iraq, assigned to drive one of those vehicles that he still hasn't outfitted with life-protecting armor.

Happy holidays to all!

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THE POLITICAL JESUS

In the cacophony of Christmas commercialism, it can be difficult even to recall that it's about Jesus. But this hardly is the only time that Jesus gets lost in our modern swirl.

Take politics. In the recent presidential run, much was made by George W. and his handlers of his supposedly superior moral values based on his commitment to Jesus. But before we let Bush steal away with the robe of Jesus and don it as a Republican garment, let's reflect a moment on the moral teaching of this man from Nazareth.

Like George, I grew up in a Methodist church in Texas. Unlike George, I didn't find any burning anti-liberal theology there. My little church might have considered itself "conservative," but only in terms of its commitment to the deeply egalitarian, truly progressive values we found in the Biblical teachings of Jesus.

I recall many a sermon that began with Jesus' words in Matthew 19:24: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." I recall that the greatest sin of all, "the root of all evil," Jesus said, is "the love of money." I recall the passionate retelling of how Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple – threw them out for charging interest rates far less than usurious bankers now charge us on our Visas and MasterCards, by the way.

I recall also that Jesus fed all of the masses that day on the hillside at the Sea of Galilee, not turning away anyone who lacked a platinum card to buy fish and loaves. And I recall that Jesus flatly said: "You cannot serve with both God and Mammon."

In the good book, Jesus talks more about economic justice than nearly any other subject, and the apostles make clear that the most important ethical/religious test of Judeo-Christian faith is in how we treat the least wealthy, least important among us.

Let's call on Bush – and the Democrats, too – to live up to these moral values before they claim that Jesus is on their side.