Further adventures in anthropology. I have complained endlessly that I’ve got something like six TV preacher channels on my cable system here in Dallas, but no Fox News. Well, just now I was trying to find a news channel, and surfed past several TV preachers along the way. I stopped on one for a moment because the preacher was so striking. He was a late middle-aged man, a little puffy, with a pock-marked face and wearing a cheap suit. He was standing in front of billowy blue curtains, on a small stage. His voice was the eeriest thing. It was an insistent, monotonous, coarse growl. He spoke in a tense, angry monotone, as if he were reciting an incantation. His accent was so backwoods I thought at first he was praying in tongues. Then I understood he was praying. He was repeating, over and over, “Lord, bind those who oppose this Iraqi war. Bind those who oppose this Iraqi war.” I swear, it was straight out of a Flannery O’Connor story.