L.B.: Late-night phone calls

Left Behind, pp. 288-292

Rayford Steele is regretting his bizarre behavior on the phone with Hattie Durham.

If only he'd been more suave or more subtle in his seduction proselytizing, "She'd have been none the wiser and he could have eased into his real reason for inviting her to dinner." And then two sentences later: "His real motive, even for talking with Hattie, was to communicate to Chloe."

There's something odd, and maybe a little creepy, about Rayford's notion of evangelism. It seems to involve a lot of making sure that his "real" motives and reasons are kept hidden so that others are "none the wiser." Kind of the Amway approach.

Rayford can't sleep, so even though it's after midnight he calls up the Rev. Bruce Barnes to vent. Here's another inadvertent bit of realism: Even when 99 percent of the congregation has been raptured, the pastor is still going to have to deal with phone calls in the middle of the night from the remaining 1 percent.

"It's really hard when it's your own daughter."

"I can imagine," Bruce said.

"No, you can't," Rayford said.

Rayford hangs up, and since he's no longer on the phone, we return to Buck & Nicky.

It's well after 1 a.m. in Chaim Rosenzweig's "beautiful suite of rooms" at the Plaza. "You do not mind my calling you Buck, do you?" Carpathia says. "They call you that because you buck the traditions and the trends and the conventions."

This repeats, nearly verbatim, the explanation of Buck's nickname from way back on page 6. He's the Dirty Harry of journalism, the renegade maverick who plays by his own rules, etc. In the intervening 280+ pages we've seen little evidence to support this characterization. Ignoring his deadline for the cover story on a global cataclysm might technically count as "bucking" journalistic convention, I suppose, in the same way that his craven willingness to drop his story in order to save his own hide bucks the conventions of "crusading journalist" stories, but I doubt that's what the authors had in mind.

Buck and Carpathia begin their late-night conversation in this hotel room and it reads like, well, like a late-night conversation in a hotel room:

"It is amazing, is it not, that all those different international meetings right here in New York over the next few weeks are all about the worldwide cooperation in which I am interested?"

"It is," Buck said. "And I've been assigned to cover them."

"Then we will be getting to know each other better."

"I look forward to that, sir. I was most moved at the U.N. today."

"Thank you."

"And Dr. Rosenzweig has told me so much about you."

"As he has told me much about you."

There was a knock at the door. Carpathia looked pained. "I had hoped we would not be disturbed."

Phew. Was it getting hot in there, or was it just me?

The interruption occurred because the president of the United States is on the phone, calling for Carpathia. The president apparently spent his day the same way everyone else did -- watching CSPAN coverage of Nicolae's U.N. speech and then watching the Nightline interview. And at 1:30 in the morning, he decided to call the Romanian president. Carpathia puts him on speaker:

"Mr. Carpathia, this is Fitz. Gerald Fitzhugh."

"Mr. President, I am honored to hear from you."

"Well, hey, it's good to have you here!"

"I appreciated your note of congratulations on my presidency, sir, and your immediate recognition of my administration."

"Boy, that was a heckuva thing, how you took over there. I wasn't sure what had happened at first, but I don't suppose you were either."

"That is exactly right. I am still getting used to it."

"Well, take it from a guy who's been in the saddle for six years. You don't ever get used to it. You just develop calluses in the right places, if you know what I mean."

When introducing the president as a character in a work of fiction you have to decide whether or not to base the character on a real-life person. LaHaye & Jenkins opted not to -- probably due to the fact that in order for him to still be in office their president would have to have missed the rapture. Even so, it's interesting that they did not base "President Fitzhugh" on the man who was in office in 1995, Bill Clinton. Even though Clinton is a church-going, Bible-quoting Southern Baptist married to a church-going, Bible-quoting United Methodist, I'm pretty sure L&J wouldn't consider either of them to be genuine, rapture-eligible Real True Chrisitians.

"Fitz" isn't based on Clinton, or on any of his immediate predecessors. But with his desperation to project an air of cowboy manliness and his folksy pretension ("that was a heckuva thing") he does almost seem to foreshadow the man who succeeded Clinton.

We get a few more paragraphs of Fitz's backslappin' bonhomie -- "I want you to spend a night or two here with me and Wilma. ... Right here at the White House" -- and the president signs off.

Buck was only a little less overcome than Carpathia and Rosenzweig. He had long since lost his awe of U.S. presidents, especially this one, who insisted on being called Fitz. He had done a Newsmaker of the Year piece on Fitzhugh -- Buck's first, Fitz's second. On the other hand, it wasn't every day that the president called the room in which you sat.

It may seem strange that this is the first, and only, mention of the American president in this book. The Fitzhugh administration's response to The Event and its aftermath are never discussed. Nor is there any mention of the American president's reaction to the divine obliteration of the entire Russian arsenal and air force, which also occurred during Fitz's time "in the saddle."

The problem here, for L&J, is that the PMD End Times master plan has very little to say about America's role in the final days. This is the source of endless hand-wringing on the part of Bible "prophecy" enthusiasts. Variations of "What does the Bible say about America's role in the End Times?" are among the most frequently asked questions at LeftBehind.com.

Their answer, such as it is, seems to be that America's only role is maintain loyal support for Israel (the political state, not the people). Just like God, they say, we must stand by Israel, ensuring that it prospers right up until the end of the world (at which point, of course, it will be utterly destroyed because, you know, they're Jews and not RTCs).

One byproduct of this answer is the unlikely alliance of America's Christian right with the most hawkish Israeli factions. CBS News' Bob Simon provides a good rundown of this dynamic in his report, "Zion's Christian Soldiers."

Simon, unfortunately, repeats unchallenged L&J's indefensible claim that their complex and selectively allegorical interpretive scheme is based on reading the Bible "literally." He characterizes the plot of Left Behind as "ripped from the pages of the Bible." It's nothing of the sort. The authors, instead, have ripped up the pages of the Bible and then reassembled some of the pieces to form an arbitrary, convoluted and internally inconsistent timeline.

Apart from that regrettable lapse, Simon's report is an excellent summary of how the World's Worst Books are influencing American foreign policy, and of why America's rapture maniacs may not really be the best "best friends" for Israel to rely on. On the latter point, Simon quotes Gershom Gorenberg:

“The Jews die or convert. As a Jew, I can’t feel very comfortable with the affections of somebody who looks forward to that scenario,” says Gershom Gorenberg, who knows that scenario well.

Gorenberg is the author of The End of Days, a book about those Christian evangelicals who choose to read the Bible literally. “They don’t love real Jewish people. They love us as characters in their story, in their play, and that’s not who we are, and we never auditioned for that part, and the play is not one that ends up good for us.”

“If you listen to the drama they’re describing, essentially it’s a five-act play in which the Jews disappear in the fourth act.”

Comments

[cjmr]

WILMA????

[Richard Hershberger]

Oooh! Fred dissed Amway. He's in trouble now!

[cjmr's husband]

I can only assume that "Gerald Fitzhugh" is their play on "Hugh Fitzgerald". Unfortunately, the only one I found in a cursory search is NOT someone that LaHaye & Jenkins would know anything about.

[Daniel]

WILMA????

Seconded. Seriously. WTF.

Anyway, happy Friday.

[Bugmaster]

I want you to spend a night or two here with me and Wilma. ... Right here at the White House

Gentlemen, start your slash fanfics !

"If only he'd been more suave or more subtle in his seduction/proselytizing,...."

Chris Hedges, in the third chapter of his book American Fascists, makes the claim that most forms of Evagelical proselytizing are indeed a form of seduction.

[cjmr's husband]

"Vader was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force"

[Dahne]

Heck of a job, Nicky.

Nor is there any mention of the American president's reaction to the divine obliteration of the entire Russian arsenal and air force,

You forgot Ethiopia.

[aunursa]

President Fitzhugh has a slightly larger role in the sequel, Tribulation Force. According to the story, our intrepid reporter tells the president that he voted for Fitzhugh's opponent six years ago, but switched his allegience to the Democratic incumbent for his reelection.

In the LB movie "World at War", which reportedly deviates somewhat from the Tribulation Force story, Fitzhugh is played by Louis Gossett Jr. And a LB spinoff series considers the post-rapture from the position of the White House chief of staff. (I have not read the political series nor viewed any of the LB films.)

[aunursa]

For another perspective on the Evangelical Christian support for Israel ... and American Jewish suspicions of said support, see Standing With Israel by David Brog

[Drak Pope]

So, uh, when are they going to make out?

[telesilla]

So the President in the LB books is really Fred Flintstone?

Was it getting hot in there, or was it just me?

Oh Fred, you kidder, you. We all know that Rayford/Buck is the real OTP (One True Pairing for those who don't speak slash fluently).

[Rosina]

I can only assume that "Gerald Fitzhugh" is their play on "Hugh Fitzgerald".

Gerald FitzHugh and Hugh FitzGerald? That sounds like an joke I once knew...

[Jos]

[i]"Boy, that was a heckuva thing, how you took over there. I wasn't sure what had happened at first, but I don't suppose you were either."[/i]

Wait, the President of the United States doesn't really get what happens during democratic elections!?

OK, I'm fairly sure that wasn't what was meant, but I sure read it that way.

[Abelardus]

H'm ... this article felt like an awkward segue near the end. Don't get me wrong, Fred, I appreciate that you tore away the veil to show the hypocrisy of PMD support for Israel, time and again I appreciate it; but it feels like there should have been something more -- perhaps a two-parter. Still, every zing is right on the mark: a heckuva job, heh, heh, heh....

[Chris Archer]

President Fitzhugh is extremely folksy. The last president who was that folksy was Lyndon Baines Johnson. "Calluses on your-you-know-where?" These people think that they're right. One factor prevents me from believing in the Rapture: the possiblity of seeing Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins naked. Yeech. I'm really starting to lose track of the story. Why is Rayford distraught about Chloe? Is he afraid she flew the coop?

[cjmr]

It may seem strange that this is the first, and only, mention of the American president in this book. The Fitzhugh administration's response to The Event and its aftermath are never discussed.

I didn't catch that the first time I read through.

I can't imagine an event of such magnitude occurring without a presidential address that evening 'reassuring' the nation that, although the government doesn't have a clue WTF happened, we should all remain calm, duct tape our windows shut, and let them get on with the heavy worrying investigating.

[Redem]

Well Christian Zionist/end timers are right essentially God purposly make people to go straight to hell. Consider this according to the Fundamentalist doctrine everything that ain't fundie christian goes straight to hell or for israel to continue and fufill it's goal in prophecy it oblivously need some jewish population (and the 144 000 evangelist part too). But what about all the generations of Jews that must preced the one of the end of the time. They are pretty much condemn to burn in hell when you think about it, because jew don't have Jesus as messiah, but they need to be be there when end of time come. So according to the fundamentalist doctrine millions of Jews had to be send to hell in order for god prophecy to come to be.

The only way I've found they could have continus Jew without all of them being sent to hell would be for them to become Christian but teach the chidlren in Jewish tradition and later take on Christianity so later day jew know what to do.

[Brian J.]

There's something odd, and maybe a little creepy, about Rayford's notion of evangelism. It seems to involve a lot of making sure that his "real" motives and reasons are kept hidden so that others are "none the wiser."

Being honest about American Christianity would obviate any chance of success in evangelism to anyone not already an RTC.

Kind of the Amway approach.

Not true; Amway at least sells you soap.

[cjmr]

Chris,

Chloe didn't covert immediately the first time he presented her with the 'evidence'.

[Redem]

Suppose to be "Well if" at the start

[Craig]

According to the story, our intrepid reporter tells the president that he voted for Fitzhugh's opponent six years ago, but switched his allegience to the Democratic incumbent for his reelection.

Aha! I'd been wondering exactly why Buck was left behind. The "Buck's a deist at best" explanation seemed sort of reasonable, but voting Democrat? He's lucky God didn't lightning bolt Buck into oblivion.

[the opoponax]

"he could have eased into his real reason for inviting her to dinner."

wait, didn't Hattie keep asking him what his real reason for inviting her was, and he kept being all weird about it?

if he had wanted to tell her his real reason for inviting her to dinner, why did he act all coy about it like that?

this is junior high girl behavior. "i wanted to tell him i like him, but i didn't want him to know that i like him, so i couldn't tell him the real reason i was calling, which was to tell him i like him."

[Davis X. Machina]

Well Christian Zionist/end timers are right essentially God purposly make people to go straight to hell.

Heaven wouldn't be heaven, unless a lot of people who used to not like you didn't get to go, and had to watch you go instead, and feel bad, or angry.

This is the psychology of a teenage suicide -- "hey'll all miss me, and wish they had been betterto , and treated me different" -- elevated to an eschatology.

[Redem]

Yeah that "mentality" was adress in the early issues I think it's goes "I told you so" thing

but it was essentially to show a profound flaw in logic (although I guess Jews for Jesus might another loophole)

[Ursula L]

Aha! I'd been wondering exactly why Buck was left behind.

As with all the other characters, God has read the back cover. Therefore he knows that Buck has to be left behind.

[Sean]

Oh my. That was a really bad stretch.

We're supposed to check our quotes, so once I looked through LB to see if it was really, truly, that bad. It was.

Thanks for reading it so we don't have to, Fred.

[Mnemosyne]

“They don’t love real Jewish people. They love us as characters in their story, in their play, and that’s not who we are, and we never auditioned for that part, and the play is not one that ends up good for us.”

For some reason, that made me flash on The Wicker Man. The good one from the 70s, not the crappy Nicolas Cage remake.

[Mouse]

So many homoerotic overtones...I think my head exploded. Seriously, I could not keep a straight at this line--He had done a Newsmaker of the Year piece on Fitzhugh -- Buck's first, Fitz's second.--never mind the other parts of the story.

[Steve]

...and let them get on with the heavy worrying investigating.

You mean "...and let them start bombing somebody, somewhere, because that always makes us feel better."

[Alex]

"You do not mind my calling you Buck, do you?" Carpathia says. "They call you that because you buck the traditions and the trends and the conventions."

I shriveled up like a dying insect when I read that line. Let me see if I can top it:

"You do not mind my calling you Cueball, do you? They call you that because while you are not always at the center of the table you remain the center of the game, no player able to afford dropping you in the side pocket."

Or this:

"You do not mind my calling you Sara Lee, do you? They call you that because you are so delectable yet ultimately deadly to the heart, and yet no person does not, in fact, like you."

This is loads of fun. Just imagine Carpathia saying it in a Bela Lugosi accent.

[Steve]

"You do not mind my calling you Buck, do you?" Carpathia says. "They call you that because of your insanely large front teeth."

[Jonathan Edelstein]

"You do not mind my calling you Sara Lee, do you? They call you that because you are so delectable yet ultimately deadly to the heart, and yet no person does not, in fact, like you."

Monty Python still did it best:

"Your Highness is also like a stream of bat's piss."

"What?"

"I merely meant, your Majesty, that you shine out like a shaft of hold when all around is dark."

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Oh, for pete's sake, "shaft of gold."

Damn Blackberries.

[Steve]

"You do not mind my calling you Buck, do you?" Carpathia says. "They call you that because I hear you'll do anything, and I mean ANYTHING, for a dollar."

[Jonathan Edelstein]

"You do not mind my calling you Buck, do you?" Carpathia says. "I think your head would look excellent mounted over my mantelpiece."

[Redem]

Doesn't one timeh he insist on being call buck by his college so oblivously he doesn't mind having that stupid nickname

Considering that Carpathia got both Worldwide conspiracy and Santanic power to get info form Buck it's a wonder that the point of trivia he thought the more interesting. Scientologist when they go after someone they make entire accounts of your life in order to dimminish your credibility to the very last bit, too bad carpathia doesn't the witt to do something that nasty. But maybe Buck life incredibly boring despiste some high point (who doesn't seem to affect him overall anyway)

[Erick Oppeen]

Reading this rubbish, I begin to think that eternal damnation wouldn't be so bad if the "Real True Christians" who think this stuff is Great Literature (or even acceptable on a "bad imitation of Tom Clancy" level) were going to be the only ones Saved. Eternity in their company would make Beelzebub and all his hellish instruments of death look rather appealing and friendly.

And I should point out that while Bill and Hill may have talked the talk on Christianity, they didn't walk the walk, not for one second. If there was one of the Seven Deadly Sins that they weren't Olympic-level champions at, I'm unaware of it.

[Jonathan Edelstein]

"You do not mind my calling you Brillo, do you?" Carpathia says. "They call you that because many people find you abrasive, but even they give you credit for scouring the evidence and cutting through layers of muck to get to the story."

[Jeff]

"Mr. Carpathia, this is Fitz. Gerald Fitzhugh."

Mr Atlas knows it's the President calling. The President knows he's been announced. But he still has to make sure that Nicky really knows which "Fitz" it is. CLUNK!

BTW, I too thought of the two gay Irishmen for the President: Gerald Fitzhugh and Hugh Fitzgerald?

BTW: it's after midnight he calls up the Rev. Bruce Barnes to vent.... "No, you can't," Rayford said.

Rude much?

====================================

"You do not mind my calling you Buck, do you?" Carpathia says. "They call you that because you think 8 seconds is a long time, and you don't mind landing in the cow-pies."

[Alex]

"You do not mind my calling you Buck, do you?" Carpathia says. "They call you that because they are compelled to precede every statement to you with, 'Beedy-beedy-beedy . . . '"

[Alex]

Whadaya know, Buck Rogers's co-star on the TV show was also named Wilma. The conspiracy grows . . .

[the opoponax]

"If there was one of the Seven Deadly Sins that they weren't Olympic-level champions at, I'm unaware of it."

hm. Lust, ok. Pride, ok. Greed, perhaps. but Sloth? surely not. also i'd seriously doubt Gluttony and Envy (of whom or what? They seem to have everything they want and no problem achieving their goals all on their own), and can't think of anything in particular where Wrath would apply (unless you really buy all that Vince Foster murder bullshit, and even then i'm not sure that would really be considered "wrath" in the textbook sense).

So, ok, 2 or 3 out of 7. hardly unusual in a couple of federal level politicians.

[the opoponax]

also, ditto on the "It's Fitz. Gerald Fitzhugh." Either use your nickname or don't. I can understand wanting to introduce yourself even though you know you must have already been announced, but that's a particularly clunky way to do it. If "Fitz" isn't widespread enough to be immediately recognizeable, you use your regular name. which seems to be a common problem among LB characters with nicknames. it's like they're all George Costanza trying to get everyone in the office to call them T-Bone.

the writerly way to do it would be for Nicky Adirondac to initiate with "Hello, President Fitzhugh," and then have Fitzhugh reply, "Fitz will do, please."

i mean, can you imagine JFK on the phone, saying "It's Jack. John Kennedy"? No, you can't.

[mcc]

BTW: it's after midnight he calls up the Rev. Bruce Barnes to vent.... "No, you can't," Rayford said.

Rude much?

I think the idea is to demonstrate that Rayford is really distraught over this, enough so that he's being kind of unreasonably rude to Barnes. Such snappy overreaction is a fairly legitimate method of establishing the character's emotional state. Or it would be, if we were actually given justification within the story for Rayford being in such a distraught emotional state to begin with.

Like, this kind of snappy lashing out would ring true if the character in question were reacting this way because they were deeply hurting somehow, say if they had just lost a loved one. Instead, though, we're somehow supposed to accept that Rayford has gotten this worked up simply over failure to immediately convert two women to a religious view he himself has held for less than a week.

This is all even weirder when you consider Rayford has just lost a loved one: i.e. his wife. Yet he's not reacting to that, at all as far as I can tell. From what we see in the quotes Fred's given us so far, Rayford is in fact more distraught (and acting in a more legitimately bereaved "I've lost her" manner) over his inability to religiously convert his daughter, than he is at the literal complete disappearance of his wife of many years from the physical plane*.

This is either a really good example of displacement on Rayford's part, or an example of really bad writing on the authors' part. I know which of these two options seem more plausible to me.

--- --- --- ---

* This leads me to something that I noticed as kinda odd in an earlier LB Friday, but didn't get around to commenting on at the time because I wasn't sure if it would have made more sense to someone who'd read the full text. It was this:

All three cars were in their places, but --

Rayford walked around the Jeep at the end. Raymie's stuff was missing!

These two sentences are by themselves not particularly bad writing-- taking what should have been a spectacularly mundane event and suddenly adding an element of unease and alarm to them. But there's a kind of a weird quality to them, because they immediately call to attention something that isn't present in the text. That is to say, Rayford reacts with shock and alarm at the absence of his son's bike. What he doesn't react to in any way is the absence of his son!!!

If Rayford were a normal person these little moments-- turning the corner, wait, where's Raymie's bike?-- would be happening to him over and over, every day, except on a much grander scale because he'd be not reflexively reacting to the absence of his son's bike but to the absence of his actual son and wife, followed by the rush of remembering they're not just missing but gone. You don't get used to the idea of a loved one going away this quickly, especially given Rayford hasn't had the closure of for example a funeral.

But yet, if the text quoted on this blog is any guide, once the day of the disappearances themselves (and Rayford's conversion) were past, Rayford seems to have completely made it all the way through all seven stages of grief and completely adjusted to his new status on Earth as a single father of one. Yet despite now being psychologically okay with his wife and son disappearing, he still freaks out when his wife's and son's things go missing. And as we see in this later passage, he freaks out like a grieving father when the daughter he still has resists his attempts at control.

Rayford's psyche responds to weird things.

[the opoponax]

mcc -- someone in the relevant LB post fielded that question quite well, but to recap, the idea is perhaps that Rayford and/or Chloe are upset because A) they've lost precious things that once belonged to people they love (attachment to a dead loved one's posessions is pretty common in real life), and B) the loss of said items brings home for them the reality that they've really and truly permanently lost said loved ones.

of course, it's handled so clunkily here that we never really get that, and have to assume and invent to make up for it. it really does come off in the text that the issue is that some toys got stolen.

[cjmr's husband]

Bonus points for Buck Rogers references! Can anyone play?

"You do not mind my calling you Buck, do you?" Carpathia says. "They call you that because you have one big fang and carry a beat up satchel."

Re: the Clintons

It is permissible to grant Bill "gluttony", that was the source of most Clinton jokes for the first couple years of his term. Hillary wasn't that big into Big Macs, though. But Hillary has a serious case of presidency-envy.

But anyone who thinks that either of those two goes in for Sloth or Wrath was NOT paying attention. Now W, he's got Wrath. And greed, pride, envy, possibly Sloth, but he claims being Born Again cured him of the other two.

It's so neat seeing a car with a Jesus Fish and a "Power of Pride!" bumper sticker. Cognitive dissonance much?

[cjmr]

"You do not mind my calling you Buck, do you?" Carpathia says. "They call you that because you have interestingly shaped balls."

[SueW]

Why is Rayford distraught about Chloe?

Because for all his great faith, he doesn't believe Jesus can save her unless he personally gets her to convert Right Now.

I'm glad someone explained that "Fitz. Gerald Fitzhugh" line - I kept reading it as a misspelling of Fitzgerald Fitzhugh. (The text I read was a downloaded e-text and seemed to have a lot of errors.)

And by the way - what the heck does Rayford need with four cars??

[cjmr's husband]

Rayford's car, Irene's car, Chloe's car, and The Jeep.

The books were written before the SUV craze hit, so a Wealthy Successful Airline Pilot would have a proper luxury or sport car to drive, plus a Jeep for tearing up forests in.