It is so interesting.

On the one hand, we get news reports almost daily about how one of the major American health threats is obesity. We see a doctor on a news program giving the grim news …and then the network cuts to a commercial pushing a jusicy hamburger with all the trimmings, an order of fries and a sugar-filled drink.

Or, we hear about how bad the economy is, how Americans abuse credit, how everybody overspends …and then comes the commercial telling people who do not have money to go to a legal and legitimate predatory lending company to get a loan. The commercial features smiling, friendly faces, something the poor or “in trouble” don’t often see, inviting people into the bowels of hell …aka, debt.

There are scores of commercials that seem to denote a schizophrenia in American culture: in one breath, we are presented the sordid facts of what is very wrong with us …and in the very next breath, we are encouraged to engage in the very behavior which makes us not so well in the first place.

The reason is simple: the insatiable quest for money. In order for capitalism to work, people must spend money, even if they do not have it, and even if it means the demise of their personal health. Commercials specialize in capitalizing on the weaknesses of the human spirit. We like to eat. We like things …and so we are lured and spend money on things, to our own destruction.

It seems that all is fair in the quest for …money.

I just finished reading John Grisham’s book, “The Appeal.” It made me sick. No, not the writing, but the storyline. In that book, a corporation knowingly dumped toxic waste in a poor community rural Mississippi. The people were deemed worthless; the quest for money was deemed most important.

People began to get sick and die, and a widow finally files a lawsuit against the company, which blatantly lied about what it was doing, bribed or got rid of potentially damaging witnesses, and got angry that it had even been called on its actions.

The company lost the lawsuit which would have cost them millions had the ruling been upheld. Of course, it wasn’t. People … with big money …manipulated the system and paid big money to make sure a sympathetic judge would be seated on the state’s highest court. They got their guy in, the appeal was overturned, and the company went back to making millions of dollars.

Damn the people.

That’s what it feels like to me, watching these commercials. It really doesn’t matter that the fast food restaurants, which cater to everyone but which unfortunately become the primary food sources for too many poor people, are  making foods which make people obese. The restaurants are making money.

And it doesn’t matter that once a person borrows from one of those predatory lending companies, he or she cannot get back on their feet. They keep spiraling downward into debt, while the owners of the companies get rich.

Are we a nation that stands for justice or are we not?

We speak out of both sides of our mouths, espousing one ideal value but then working another value, set quite apart from the ideal.

It’s capitalist schizophrenia. It’s dishonest, and it is manipulative.

There is nothing wrong with making money, but when one will stoop to any level to make it, keep it and multiply it, something is amiss.

The commercials manipulate everyone -from the very poor to the very rich. One of the members of my congregation once said to me, “There is a lot of money in poor people.”  The marketing experts know that. How better to get poor people to make them richer than by putting a sports icon on a television urging them to rent furniture at some ridiculous, weekly rate.

Or how better to get a “wanna be” rich person to buy a luxury car he or she cannot afford by suggesting that only the most sophisticated person can …or even qualifies … to drive a vehicle such as this?

It is not right. This capitalist schizophrenia is killing us, even while some people are making a lot of money.

I guess they forgot that rot starts internally and makes its way to the surface eventually.

That’s a candid observation.

It is a hurtful thing when someone feels that things or money are more important than one as an individual.

A while ago, a friend of mine, pregnant, found herself at her stepmother’s home when she went into labor. Her husband had dropped her off and was at work; my friend’s labor was getting bad rather quickly, and so it was not rocket science, after watching her pain intensify, that there was a need to get her to the hospital.

There was a problem, though. My friend’s husband was not there, and the stepmother had an issue.

“You can’t get in my car,” she said. “You might mess it up.”

The car was a Mercedes. My friend was devastated.

She called another friend who lived nearby, who rushed over and picked her up in time to get to the hospital before her baby was born. When the stepmother came with my friend’s father to see the baby, my friend refused to let her in the room.

“Her car was more important to me,” she told me later, her eyes filling with tears. “Her car was more important than me or this baby.”

It was a hurt that has probably not healed to this day.

In another instance, this one more personal,  I was graduating from college. Education was preached to us our whole lives; it was expected that we would all go to college, all five of us, which we did.

Our mother, however, died before seeing us all achieve that.  That was sad, but we were pretty sure our dad would be just as proud as Mama would have been, because he had preached education as hard as had she. But when it came time for me to graduate from Occidental College in Los Angeles, my father, who lived in Detroit, did not come.

“It’s too expensive,” he said. It’s not that he did not have the money; it’s that seeing me graduate was not a priority for him, not something on which he wanted to spend his money.

So, I graduated with no parent present.

I thought about those two instances today as I listened to the debates going on about health care coverage for all. The battle cry is that it is too expensive; both political parties are balking about the cost, and to be sure, it is high.

But the alternative, the so-called “least of these” not being able to get health care, is not acceptable to me. If it is that people are “pro-life,” then shouldn’t that sentiment carry over to wanting to take care of those who have been born and who are trying to live?

Lawmakers have excellent health care, as do their children. Is the fact that those who “have”  cannot “see” those who “have not” getting in the way of them exercising compassion?

It is so easy to ignore people who are struggling; we isolate ourselves and stay in our comfort zones, and then, as if to justify ignoring those who “have not,” we begin blaming them for their conditions and fall into the not-so-true statement that if one wants something in the United States, he or she can have it.

Tell that to Indians on reservations. Tell that to people who live in Appalachia, or to brown and black people in ghettos who cannot make ends meet in spite of working two to three jobs.

Tell that to parents of children with cancer or other terminal or chronic diseases whose health care benefits have run out, and all they get when they confront the system is a lot of double talk and red tape.

Tell that to young college graduates who cannot get jobs with benefits and who cannot afford to get health care on their own.

Some people give up, but far more keep pushing and reaching for the American dream which simply is not guaranteed to everyone who seeks it

Crunched in the middle of the overall health care plan overhaul is the issue of children’s health care. Yes, Congress passed the CHIP bill earlier, but what is needed now is a solidifying of a health care plan which will insure all children. The Children’s Defense Fund is supporting amendments to the current health care bills being considered that will insure all children, that children will receive all medically necessary services regardless of the program serving them, and that the bureaucratic barriers that keep far too many children uninsured will be done away with.

We’re talking about 9 million children. We’re talking 42 million adults. We’re talking about human beings, all worthy of getting health care.

Someone said to me, “Health care is not a right.” Huh? I don’t understand that. The way the system is set up now, that person is right; health care now is a privilege. But it ought not be that way. It ought to be, especially in this country, that any American citizen, anyone working and paying taxes, gets adequate health care.

Someone else said that’s socialism.

Huh? How is everyone getting health care the definition of socialism?  Though those who are preying on the fears of people are using the “s” word, the health care reform package in no way gets rid of private health insurers. It does make it possible, though, for people to get health care through the government if they cannot afford private health insurance.

The arguments being put forth against health care for all reminds me of the stepmother who didn’t want her Merceded soiled by her pregnant stepdaughter, or my dad, who didn’t want to spend the money to see me graduate from college.

What we invest in the people of America will determine the strength of America. The health of too many Americans is badly compromised by largely preventable disease and illness. Are the “haves” so covetous of their status and things that they really cannot share enough so that the least of these have a fighting chance at a good life?

Gee, I hope not. I know that the fight is all about money. It’s about big business not wanting to lose profits.

But what does it cost a nation to keep its profits and in the process, slam the door of indifference in the face of so many of its citizens?

Because that’s what all this barking about the cost feels like.

And that’s a candid observation.

I don’t like Sarah Palin and I don’t like Liz Cheney.

But I agree with Liz Cheney on two things: 1) the media has exercised its sexism in its coverage of her, and 2) every time Palin is attacked by those who do not like her, her ratings are going to go up.

The latest report of Palin’s so-called ethics violations made me gag. Who’s fooling whom? There is no way Palin has been any less ethical than any of her male counterparts, yet we do not hear of these incessant ethics violations charges against them.

For some reason, the mainstream just does not like her, and apparently, many in her political world do not like her, either.

But if they (the media and the political sphere) think that they are going to destroy her or make her go away by keeping these charges coming against her, or attacking her, they are more naive than I’d like to believe.

Why don’t I like Palin? Because I think she represents a small, bigoted portion of America, not the masses. I don’t like her because she seems too ready to do what I think “the right” has done too much of: attack and prey on the fears of people. I do not like politics at all, and I especially hate attack politics.

It feels like, from the reports that we’ve all seen on television and read in the media, that the good ol’ boys did not and do not like her. Their sexism has been apparent, and I think they have pandered to the mainstream media that they say they hate, to get them to print and report their opinions of her.

I don’t think that’s right, even though the last thing I want is Sarah Palin in the White House. Sexism, like racism, is wrong.

It’s OK if the good ol’ boys don’t like her, but it’s not OK for them to manipulate the press to attack her. They are only garnering more support for her. The press has attacked her through attacking her daughter and her infant son. That does not bode well.

To make matters worse, her “almost son-in-law” jumped into the fray and has attacked her as well.

They are setting her up to be the scorned maiden of the political world, and for many, that will bring sympathy and outrage, bolstering her appeal, not lessening it.

I wish Sarah Palin would go away. It is clear that she is not. She is, in spite of my angst about it, being a very clever politician, and the men in power are too dumb to see it. She is playing them, and they are losing.

That’s just a candid observation.

I think that we are seeing an insidious form of white supremacy in the confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor.

This is not an accusation. It is an observation.

At the heart of the issue is the assumption that only white men have the capacity and ability to be impartial, that only white men have a history of not allowing their biases and prejudices to affect the decisions they make in court or, for that matter, the stories they write or produce for television and radio.

It is obvious that Judge Sotomayor’s comment that a “wise Latina” might make better decisions than white men has galled the good senators, and many journalists as well.  There is an air of incredulity that she would have the audacity to say such a thing, and a genuine distrust of her, a fear that she will be unable to make sound judicial decisions because she will allow her background to sway her.