Yesterday was Yom Kippur, the highest of Jewish Holy Days, yet in was all Pope all the time, as the Pontifex visited Washington DC for the first time ever.
As I was a bit over-loaded on Pope-worship, I was flipping the TV channels looking for something other than coverage of the Pope’s visit. I noticed a that the channel JLTV was showing “Temple of the Arts Yom Kippur Service,” so I figured that, in the interest of equal time, I should check it out. It turns out that JLTV stands for “Jewish Life TV.” Who knew?
It was awesome! Beautiful voices harmonizing over the harsh glottal Hebrew sounds, gorgeous instruments backing the voices and even nice graphics and set design to complement the usually boring and seemingly interminable service made me almost want to stick around. But five minutes was about all I could handle.
I went back to the DirecTV channel guide and saw that three channels down was another channel offering “Yom Kippur 2015” so I thought I should check out the competition. But it was a televangelist in the tradition of Pat Robertson shouting at the shut-ins who watch that shit to send money as the Jews are paying atonement…. It was all I could take before deciding to celebrate the autumnal equinox and the birthday of the one true boss, Bruce Springsteen!
Today, we started the show just as Pope Francis began addressing a joint meeting of Congress. I couldn’t bear to run in for any longer than we did, even though I appreciate much of this current Pope’s attempts to bring the church into the 21st century. So, we cut away to get on with the show, but you can read the entirety of his comments, without the difficult to decipher accent, here.
Instead of listening to the Pope speak, we decided to go back a few years to hear a previous Pope sing (courtesy of the former Mark & Brian Show at KLOS/Los Angeles, the show I produced from 1990-1994)…
Today on the show, I welcomed back Harvey J. Kaye, professor of Democracy & Freedom at University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, and Howie Klein of DownwithTyranny.com and the Blue America PAC.
Today’s preshow music playlist is here:
And I’ll be back tomorrow to stick a fork in this week, hopefully with Congressman and Senate candidate Alan Grayson, radio or not!
