by Iowa's Ted Remington



On the surface, Mark Hyman’s latest collection of “short takes”
appears typically banal and free of anything of consequence (the latest
Kerry “scandal”: a press pass issued for a Detroit event featured an
image of a prototype automobile manufactured by Rolls Royce).



But then there’s this little gem:



“Did you
know there will no longer be a majority religious denomination in
America? According to the National Opinion Research Center, Protestants
will fall below 50% as early as this year for the first time since the
colonial era. The decline is attributed to the rise in people claiming
no religious practice and an increase in Islam, Buddhism and other
Eastern faiths.”



At first
blush, this is simply a statement of a marginally interesting fact. But
facts are rarely what they seem in the world of “The Point,” and
there’s an underlying ugliness lurking here.



Imagine
a neighbor approaching you and saying, “Hey, there’s a new family
moving into the old Richardson place on the corner. Just saw the U-Haul
pull in this morning. Did you know they were a black family?”



Again,
if you parse this sentence word by word, this seems innocent enough:
simply the sharing of information. The choice to insert an otherwise
irrelevant fact into the conversation, however, carries a clear
message. Translated, it would be something like: “Listen: I didn’t pay
through the nose for my house to live next to people like that. Things
are changing, and not for the better. No sir, I’m not happy about this
– not one little bit!“



Or,



“Hey,
friend: I don’t know for sure how you feel about this, so I’m trying to
be as delicate as I can, but if you don’t like the idea of living next
to a bunch of … well … those people, you can talk freely to me
about it. I’m on your side. I won’t turn you in to the P.C. police.”



Both Hyman and the hypothetical bigoted neighbor cover themselves with plausible deniability.
Challenge them to explain the meaning behind what they said, and
they’ll respond, “Whoa! Hang on there – you’ve got me all wrong! I was
just pointing out a fact, nothing more. Heck, some of my best friends
are (black, Hindi, Catholic, etc.)”



But their message and intentions are clear enough. They’re speaking in a code,
feeling us out to see if we feel the same way they do and, if so, to
commiserate with us on this clear sign of our collective slide toward
Gomorrah.



The NORC
is in the business of gathering information such as this, and there' s
no reason to see their reporting of this fact as having an underlying
message anymore than there is to see unspoken racism in a Census Bureau
chart that documented more African Americans moving to the suburbs. In
both cases, it's the speaker and the context (or lack thereof) that's
crucial: “Say, did you happen to notice . . . .”



And if
there’s any doubt about the “us/them” aspect of Hyman’s comment, note
the telling bit of historical ignorance: Hyman claims that Protestants
have been in the majority since “colonial times.”  . . . Did the
issue of [the existence of] Native Americans [and their own systems of
spirituality] not occur to Hyman, or did he consciously decide to
ignore it? Perhaps, in Hyman’s world, this is a distinction without a
difference.



We’re just wondering.



And that’s “The Counterpoint.”