AROUND THE BEND

What are they thinking? It has me flummoxed. Four out of five Americans disapprove of removing the Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of Alabama's state judicial building. I know America is populated by weirdos. How else do you explain TV shows like Fox's "Miss Dog Beauty Pageant"? But have we gone so completely nuts that we want to install a theocracy? Have we learned nothing from the Ayatollahs? Take a look at walking man. Anyone for putting him in the rotunda?

Postscript: Leave it to Christopher Hitchens for the punchline: "Too many editorialists have described the recent flap as a silly confrontation with exhibitionist fundamentalism, when the true problem is our failure to recognize that religion is not just incongruent with morality but in essential ways incompatible with it."

Still, Arts Journal reader Shane Hockin has a point:

Both sides are totally overreacting. On one side, one hunk of concrete in a courthouse does not mean the Bible is going to become America's lawbook just because it has religious jargon on it. On the other side, one hunk of concrete taken out of a courthouse does not mean that everyone's religious rights are going to be taken away from them next week.

If we take a single step right or left, everyone gets all up in a hissy fit. Nine times out of ten the hissy fit is unwarranted and we soon step back in the middle again. The whole thing has been blown out of proportion. ... In the end I blame Judge Moore. To make himself look like a martyr he has made a mockery of our judicial system. At least someone had the sense to suspend him. Hopefully soon we can all get on with our lives and worry about important things like ending war, fixing the economy, and getting some tacos for lunch.