'Can't let New York win'

A New York teacher lost her memory and disappeared for three weeks before being fished out of the river near Staten Island. Tempted to start her life afresh in another city, she decided instead:

"I didn't want my life to change in such a way that the things I enjoy I couldn't enjoy anymore," she said. "It was just, I can't let New York win."

So while she suspects that some aspect of her life in New York triggered the "dissociative fugue state" she suffered, she feels that leaving the city would equal a sort of defeat. I understand her completely.

Focus on the Fundies: Ted Haggard is preaching again

For some reason, disgraced, defrocked religious leaders always seem to be able to attract new or old followers by allowing the suckers to "forgive" them and thus feel virtuous. And in America, there has never been a shortage of either. Disgraced Colorado Springs megachurch leader Ted Haggard, whose outing as a meth-snorting, gay prostitute-paying hypocrite played a role in 2006's Republican election debacle, and in the disillusionment of right-wing Christians with the Republican party, is preaching again, appearing at a rural Illinois church.

Then the 50-year-old president of the National Association of Evangelicals and a symbol of the relationship between the Christian Right and the Republican Party, Haggard was outed by the male prostitute whom he had patronized and bought drugs from over several years in Colorado. His very public fall, coming just days before the 2006 election, was preceded a month earlier by the fall of Mark Foley, and marked the beginning of the end of Republican domination of electoral politics in the U.S. for several years.

Be sure to read to the end of today's story where an elder of Haggard's former church compares him to a "mouse" in his present state.

Update: Courtesy Jeff Sharlett, here's an ABC News story -- with audio excerpts from Haggard's sermon if you play the video.

technorati: Ted Haggard, Christians, televangelists

Restructuing, layoffs at Haggard's former church

Staff layoffs are ahead for the former church of exposed Big Gay drugs user and hypocrite Ted Haggard, the Colo. Springs Gazette reported today; the layoffs amount to between 30 and 50 people, according to local TV station. Contributions are no doubt down at New Life CHurch, Haggard's former fief.

This gives me an irresistible opportuntiy to quote from Jeff Sharlett's 2005 profile of Haggard and New Life Church.

New Lifers, Pastor Ted writes with evident pride, "like the benefits, risks, and maybe above all, the excitement of a free-market society." They like the stimulation of a new brand. "Have you ever switched your toothpaste brand, just for the fun of it?" Pastor Ted asks. Admit it, he insists. All the way home, you felt a "secret little thrill," as excited questions ran through your mind: "Will it make my teeth whiter? My breath fresher?" This is the sensation Ted wants pastors to bring to the Christian experience.

Now that we know more about Pastor Ted's "secret little thrills," passages like that one are priceless.

technorati: Ted Haggard, New Life Church

Haggard's hooker doubts '100% heterosexual' claim

Mike Jones, the rent boy who exposed Ted Haggard and recently visited Haggard's former church, said he doubts Haggard's claim that he emerged from a counseling program "completely heterosexual." Quoth Jones:

Give me a break. He's been performing oral sex on me for three years. You don't change that in three weeks.... I know him well enough by now, and you know what he's doing when those letters come out? He's playing the sympathy card. He's saying, 'Please feel sorry for me.'

Jones went on to display some of the insight into human psychology that Haggard claims he wants to learn: "Until he's honest with himself, he'll never be happy."

Snap! Jones also said that Haggard's communiques just gave him more material for the book he's writing: "Every time he opens his mouth, I have to add another chapter."

technorati: Ted Haggard, Mike Jones, New Life Church