Oscar Wilde once said that life imitates art far more than art imitates life. Case in point is a frothy 1994 romantic film comedy called, Speechless. It’s about two speechwriters (Michael Keaton and Geena Davis), working for rival Senate candidates, who fall in love despite their loathing for each other’s politics.

One of the issues in the campaign, which takes place in New Mexico is, not surprisingly, illegal immigration. Keaton’s candidate, the Republican, wants to solve the problem of illegal entrants by digging a ditch along the border with Mexico. The trouble is, his Democratic rival (scripted by Davis) is making political hay by lambasting the ditch as a second “Berlin Wall.” So Keaton’s job, as a Hollywood screenwriter turned speechwriter, is to apply a little positive spin to the idea.

Keaton (who must be the only Republican screenwriter in Hollywood) obliges by dubbing the proposal the “Friendship Ditch.” He writes his candidate a speech arguing that far from being a source of contention, the ditch would in fact cement good relations with Mexico by relieving American anxieties about our porous border. “Because it ensures our security,” intones the candidate at a rally, “it also ensures our friendship.” And, yes, the speech also quotes Robert Frost’s famous line, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Hollywood fantasy? Not anymore. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is seriously proposing the erection of a 2,000 mile long, state-of-the-art border fence with Mexico that would run from San Diego to Brownsville. No word yet on whether he plans to call it a “Friendship Fence.”

I wouldn’t advise naming it after Robert Frost either. Allegedly, Frost’s famous line is widely misunderstood. He did not mean, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Rather, he meant, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

For an artist’s conception of what the finished fence would look like – a Maginot Line some 12 to 15 feet high and 40 to 50 yards wide – click on www.weneedafence.com. Then ask yourself if you really want this grim-as-a-gulag fortress to replace the Statue of Liberty’s torch upraised in welcome as a symbol of America.

Mark Twain once wrote that he took up lecturing in 1886, "and from that day to this, I have been able to gain my living without doing any work."

Lecturing can be an easy way to make money, especially if you're a "motivational" speaker. Steve Salerno, author of the book, SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, maintains that corporations waste a lot of money bringing in sports heroes, pop psychologists and other high-priced cheerleaders to instill a more positive attitude in their employees.

In an interview in the current issue of Across the Board magazine, Salerno argues his case with with all the passion of the hucksters he condemns. "Where," he demands, "is the demonstrable proof that having a good attitude translates to better performance?? Prove it! It sure sounds like it ought to, and we want to believe that it does, but so far, it's not really been measured. How do you measure whether someone's pumped up or not?"

And suppose a motivational talk really does fire employees, demands Salerno. "If you pump someone up with tremendous enthusiasm, but you don't give him the skills to translate that into something productive, you have a loose cannon on your hands."

Unfortunately, says Salerno, most motivational speakers make money by doing exactly that -- firing people up without providing them with the practical skills they need to achieve real-world results. They are really being paid for the emotional high they give their audiences.

Salerno offers a case in point: "Take a guy like Beck Weathers, who got stuck on Mt. Everest and lost his nose and his hand. He comes down from from a mountain that many people say he had no business being on in the first place, and now he's a motivational speaker? Excuse me? What am I supposed to learn from this guy? Don't get stuck on Mt. Everest? And yet people queue up to hear him."

According to Salerno, people should stop buying self-help books altogether: "It's like living in a world of unending New Year's resolutions: I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. Instead of saying what you'll do, do it!"

Ironically, Salerno here is echoing "Dr. Phil" McGraw, one of the self-help gurus he lambastes in his book. Dr. Phil says, "Analysis is paralysis."

Maybe Salerno needs an attitude adustment. Probably, Dr. Phil would be glad to assist. How many of the rest of us do you think would pay to watch?

December 8 is the 64th anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt's "Day of Infamy" speech, in which he asked Congress for a declaration of war against Japan, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The phrase "Day of Infamy" is so vivid and striking, and has become so familiar to us, that it is difficult to believe that FDR ever had it in mind to say anything else. But he did. He received word of the Japanese attack in the early afternoon of December 7. Shortly afterwards, after conferring with his military advisors, he dictated his request for a declaration of war to his secretary, Grace Tully.

Originally, he had begun, "Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in world history ..." But when he reviewed the draft that Tully had typed for him, he altered that critical first line to use the word that would make it immortal.

At least a dozen speechwriters assisted FDR during his tenure in the White House. Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Archibald Macleish and Robert Sherwood contributed to some of his most important addresses. But insiders' accounts agree that that the final products were very much Roosevelt's own. In reviewing speech drafts, he never hesitated to trust his instincts, as he did when he changed "history" to "infamy."

Nearly always, he found the words he wanted and, nearly always, they were the right words. When FDR died, in 1945, an unknown GI spoke for millions of his countrymen when he said, "America will seem a strange, empty place without his voice talking to the people whenever great events occur."

By a delicious stroke of irony, Walt Disney Pictures' new film, Narnia, opened the same week that fundamentalists were fulminating against the White House for sending out cards inscribed with best wishes for the “holiday season.”

A White House spokesman replied, reasonably enough, that since the President and Mrs. Bush send cards to both Christians and non-Christians at this time of year, they chose to use a non-sectarian greeting.

But the fundamentalists are on a crusade to “Keep Christ in Christmas.” When I heard about their attacks on the White House “holiday” card, I wondered, “What kind of cards do those people send to their own Jewish friends at this time of year … or don’t they have any?” And, besides, what does the picture that adorns the front of this year's card -- two terriers and a cat frolicking on a snowy White House lawn -- have to do with Christmas?

Narnia, I suppose, offered the fundamentalists some consolation, since the movie is based on C.S. Lewis’ beloved classic, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Lewis (1898-1963) was one of the greatest Christian apologists of the 20th Century, and his Narnia stories have a profound Christian subtext.

But Lewis, who had a rich sense of humor, also had something to say about the practice of sending cards at this time of year. In a wickedly funny essay, “Exmas and Chrissmas,” which purports to be a missing chapter from Herodotus, Lewis describes the winter customs of the people of Niatirb (Britain spelled backwards).

Among these customs is the following:

“Every citizen is obliged to send to each of his friends a square piece of hard paper stamped with a picture, which in their speech is called an Exmas-card. But the pictures represent birds sitting on branches, or trees with a dark green prickly leaf, or else men in such garments as the Niatirbians believe that their ancestors wore two hundred years ago riding in coaches such as their ancestors used, or houses with snow on their roofs. And the Niatirbians are unwilling to say what these pictures have to do with the festival; guarding (as I suppose) some sacred mystery. And because all men must send these cards the marketplace is filled with the crowd of those buying them, so that there is great labour and weariness.

“But having bought as many as they suppose to be sufficient, they return to their houses and find there the like cards which others have sent to them. And when they find cards from any to whom they also have sent cards, they throw them away and give thanks to the gods that this labour at least is over for another year. But when they find cards from any to whom they have not sent, then they beat their breasts and wail and utter curses against the sender; and, having sufficiently lamented their misfortune, they put on their boots again and go out in the fog and rain to buy a card for him also.”

From Exmas cards, “Herodotus” goes on to discuss the custom of exchanging costly Exmas gifts -- gifts, very often, that the givers cannot afford and that the recipients don't need. When he asks a priest at one of the temples why the Niatirbians put up with the stress and expense of the Exmas Rush, the priest informs him, “It is, O Stranger, a racket.”

“Herodotus” then explains that Exmas is the principal winter holiday of the Niatirbians, since it is kept by the great majority of the people. But there is also a smaller festival, called Chrissmas, that is kept by very few:

“And those who keep Chrissmas, doing the opposite of the majority of the Niatirbians, rise early on that day and go before sunrise to certain temples where they partake of a sacred feast. And in most of the temples they set out images of a fair woman with a new-born Child on her knees and certain animals and shepherds adoring the Child. (The reason of these images is giving in a certain sacred story which I know but do not repeat.)”

Lewis wrote this essay some fifty years ago, and the slogan “Keep Christ in Christmas” has been around for about the same length of time. But the slogan has not stopped some of the nation’s megachurches from canceling their services because Christmas falls on a Sunday this year.

Irony upon irony.

It seems to me that if certain Christians really want to “Keep Christ in Christmas,” they should not start by protesting the White House's choice of holiday greeting. Nor should they start by demanding that their local department stores wish their Jewish customers a Merry Christmas. They ought to start by picketing the churches that are going to close on a Sunday so that their worldly congregations can celebrate what Lewis called “Exmas.” That is a real sacrilege.

Former Senator Eugene McCarthy, who died last week at the age of 89, belonged to a breed of politician that has become increasingly rare as our public discourse has become increasingly polarized. He was a true maverick.

McCarthy achieved national prominence as the anti-war candidate who forced Lyndon Johnson to withdraw from the presidential race of 1968. But he went on to back Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter in 1980, and to endorse President Reagan’s strategic defense initiative at a time when liberals were widely deriding the proposal as the “Star Wars” defense.

Senator McCarthy’s independent streak was also evident in his strong opposition to the campaign finance amendments enacted after Watergate.

Does that mean that “clean” Gene was in favor of letting “dirty” money corrupt politics? Not at all. He merely recognized that restricting campaign contributions would, paradoxically, make American politics less participatory and less democratic.

McCarthy’s quixotic challenge to Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary is a case in point. It was impossible that a little-known political outsider could have beaten a sitting president in that election. But in 1968, a few wealthy liberals could club together and fund an obscure anti-war candidate as a matter of principle. The result was that McCarthy polled 42 percent of the vote to Johnson’s 49 percent, and two weeks later a humiliated LBJ took himself out of the running.

Had post-Watergate campaign rules – which limited the size of individual contributions -- been in effect a few years earlier, McCarthy’s presidential bid would never have gotten off the ground. How would he have funded his campaign? Johnson and the political establishment controlled the Democratic party’s war chest, so McCarthy would have had to go hat in hand to the political action committees. Had he done so, it is unlikely that he could have raised enough money to run for dogcatcher, let alone for president.

So the American people had more fat cat contributors in politics in 1968 – but they also had a wider choice of candidates and more democracy.

I heard Senator McCarthy speak in person only once. It was in the mid-1970s, at some Washington seminar on the recently-enacted restrictions on campaign contributions, which McCarthy so vigorously opposed. During the Q&A period, McCarthy was asked if he favored public funding of political campaigns as a way of curbing the influence of the special interests.

He replied with a quip that I have never forgotten. “No,” he said. “The American Revolution was not financed with matching grants from the British crown.”

He had a point. The American Revolution itself was financed by fat cats like Robert Morris and Haym Solomon. And a good thing, too. If the Continental Congress had been forced to rely on the PACS for money, we might still be under the Union Jack instead of the Stars and Stripes.

The religious right's current assault on the Bush White House for sending out "holiday" instead of "Christmas" cards prompted me to dig out my own collection of White House cards from the Reagan era.

The earliest, from 1982, wishes recipients a "Joyous Christmas and a Peaceful New Year." But all the others express "holiday wishes" or "holiday greetings."

"Funny," I thought to myself. " I don't remember the religious right accusing Reagan of selling out to the dark forces of secular humanism when he and Nancy switched from 'Christmas' to 'holiday' greetings in 1983. Maybe they didn't expect much from him because he wasn't a regular churchgoer."

But Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter made the same switch in their White House cards in 1978. And there was no furor from the fundamentalists then, either -- notwithstanding the fact that Carter was an open and avowed "born again" Christian, who taught Sunday School at his local Baptist Church. (A fine example to set for the children! Leaving Baby Jesus out of the White House Christmas card!)

And yet I don't recall any protests from Carter's born-again brethren. Nobody bragged, "I threw away my White House card as soon as I got it," as did Joseph Farah, editor of WorldNetDaily.com. And nobody accused the Carters of "political correctness run amok," as did Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association.

The only explanation I can see for the religious right's current chorus of criticism is this: It isn't about "Keeping Christ In Christmas." It's about keeping George W's feet to the fire. The fundamentalists are convinced that they elected him and, because of that, they feel they own him. So they're spreading a little holiday fear to keep him in line -- something they never dared do with either Carter or Reagan.

Happy New Year?

President Bush ended his speech to the nation last Sunday night by quoting the refrain of what he called, "the Christmas carol, written during the Civil War."

Well, it was the Christmas carol written during the Civil War. But I think that this particular carol should be rendered in full, along with the story behind it.

The carol, which we know by its first line, "I heard the bells on Christmas day", was originally a poem called, "Christmas Bells", written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1864.

The Civil War years were a time of great tragedy for America, and for Longfellow, personally. In 1861, a few months after the shelling of Ft. Sumter, Longfellow's beloved wife, Fanny, was burned to death when her dress caught fire in a freak accident. In his frantic efforts to smother the flames, Longfellow himself was so badly burned that he grew his trademark beard to cover the disfigurement. By a cruel irony, his wife was buried on the anniversary of their wedding.

Partly to assuage his grief, Longfellow resumed his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. He had completed the "Purgatorio" before retiring from his Harvard professorship, and he chose to translate the "Paradiso" before turning to the opening section of the poem, the "Inferno." It was as if he had a premonition that he was not yet out of Hell.

He wasn't. A few weeks before Christmas in 1863, he received word that his oldest son, Charles, who was serving in the Union cavalry, had been gravely wounded. Longfellow's journal, which recorded some very sad reflections on the two Christmases following his wife's death, was a blank page on that third December 25th. He could not bring himself to write a single word.

Yet, a year later, he wrote "Christmas Bells" which, when married to a lovely tune by John Baptiste Calkin in 1872, became a popular carol. It's my own favorite, because it shows how the Star of Bethlehem can shine through even the darkest night of despair.

I offer the text to my readers in honor of the season. It's holiday specific, but I believe that all discerning individuals, whatever their beliefs, will recognize in its words a sentiment that is universal:

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play
And wild and sweet the words repeat,
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had roll'd along th' unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bow'd my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong, and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men."

'Til ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

(For the melody, access this web site: http://www.always-safe.com/heard.html)