First, did the national “Do Not Call” list eliminate your unwanted phone calls? Not ours. In fact, if there’s a single Student Loan profiteer in the United States who hasn’t called us, you can be confident that they will call shortly. The Do Not Call list only gives me something to talk to them about; it doesn’t impel them not to call me in the first place.
They always seem astonished when I ask whether we have an existing business relationship. “What?” So I repeat the question. “I don’t think so,” they answer, “We’re just calling because it’s important that you consolidate your loans before. . .” Un-huh; you’re blanketing the population of student-loan borrowers out of the purely altruistic interest in their getting lower interest rates. Right.
Second, I’m linking again to Fred Clark’s Slacktivist site. I don’t know of anyone who engages popular culture, public policy, faith, and politics with such attention to detail such clarityt, such exemplary strong theological grounding. Updates to his reading of Left Behind come less often these days, but I read them avidly, and his commentary on immigration and legality illustrates his wondrous gifts as an articulate participant-resister to some of the ways America impedes the gospel (often in the name of the gospel).