The fish out of water

Last week was my first week at my new job. It started out as expected, the first day was pretty boring, the second a little less and 3rd….you catch my drift. By the end of the week, I had done a personal favor for one of the employees (hacked into the root account on a Mac) and been invited to lunch (free!!) by one of the sales guys for the radio station. So you would think, hey sounds great right! Not so fast…
I work for Salem Communications, a for-profit Christian/ Conservative communications company specializing in Radio, publishing and spreading the “good word.” I took the job because all I do here is fix computer, domain and network problems…no need for a religious creed to do that right? I mean, I figured that since I am going corporate, I would probably dislike much of what any corporation would be doing so what’s the difference between working for a Christian radio company verses some PR firm Red Bull or Real Estate broker who made millions on the housing bubble. It’s all the same to me in that respect. So I took the job, decent pay, benefits and the people seemed nice enough…no complaints
Then on Friday, the sales man invited me to lunch. I was a bit turned off by his demeanor but figured this is how you get liked at a new job; you go to lunch with the veterans. Like all great sales men, he waited till I had said yes to tell me it’s at a church about 45 minutes away, there will be a speaker (there’s at least 30 more minutes at this thing) and then the 45 minute ride back. The whole thing ate 2.5 hours out of my day, got to love a Christian sales man. The food wasn’t anything to write home about, or even here for that matter. But let’s not dwell on such matters let’s focus our attention on the man who spoke, a man named Edward M. Kobel, President and COO of DeBartolo Development; he likes to be called “Ed” by his flock at Calvary Chapel in St. Pete.
First let me tell you the ride over there was the sales guy talking about how he started in business, how much he made doing that and how much money he has right now. I tell you, this guy liked talking about money. Then we got there, we walked in, and again the idea of money struck me none the less due to the 45 minutes of “this is how I became rich enough to live on a golf course in one of the 3 wealthiest zip codes in central Florida.” It was very nice inside, marble floors, a play area for the kiddies, a resting area with wall jacks for laptops, a nice statue… Then we walked up to the sign-in area, where I got a name tag, was asked for my business card and proceeded to fill out a survey. The survey had three questions; I lied about all of them. We sat, we ate and then Ed took the floor.
Ed seemed like a smart guy, energetic but not overbearing, well-spoken but not scripted clean cut but still realistic looking. He seemed like a genuine guy, who just happened to have a lot of money. Nothing to hate the guy for, so he is successful go him! My issue comes with how he got there, the message he delivered and the portrayal of the Christian he says he is.
Ed is the son of Edward J. DeBartolo, Sr. who was pretty much the guy who invented your local shopping mall. I suppose that is a lot to live up to! But his life was estranged from his father; he grew up with his mother, a life that was not easy from the way he made it sound. In fact, it seemed like he and I had something’s in common about how we grew up. He joined the military, he left the military, started working for his former Colonel…and then he branched out on his own. He got into real estate using his GI money to get an initial investment property which he and his military buddies fixed up cheap and flipped in, in his words, a month later for a large profit…this seemed to be his game and he was a self-admitted shallow and greedy slum lord. He met his wife, and at the behest of buddies in the real estate business, he became a Christian, lost a large sum of money and faced bankruptcy, he struggles through it (an admirable quality) and began to rebuild. He then re-united with his father’s other son, who gave him the keys to DeBartolo Development. And that ladies in gentlemen, is how a millionaire is born.
It may shock you that I take some issue with this situation I was in, and this man that was speaking. But let me illuminate my particular view point. I was in this grandiose church, surrounded by a bunch of networking Christian business men and women listening to a guy who says he’s a Christian, is a millionaire, has a lesbian daughter that he says “turned her back on G-d,” and gives to the Christian based charities.
First of all, have you ever been the only person in a room surrounded by a bunch of people that have the same delusions about mythical supernatural beings? I can now say that I have. I was the only atheist in that room. I was a total fish out of water, which I found ironic. Ed told a joke, about his early days in with the other real estate fellows before he was a Christian. He said he used to come up with excuses why he didn’t want to go to church, and one of the things was that he was “caught up on the whole Darwin thing.” Everyone, I mean every single delusional soul, laughed at that one. For a minute there, I thought that Dave Chappell had shown up based on how loud these people got.  Of course, I didn’t get the joke at all, completely over my head. I felt like I was missing out on something really funny having to do with Darwin, I know the Beagle is a funny word but couldn’t account for the laughter I was surrounded by. So, I sat there dumbstruck…I later came to conclusion, they must think that Darwin is as crazy as I think they are!
He talked a little about being a slumlord, and that’s how he got his foot in the financial world. It was like; everyone around me instantly forgave him for how he must have treated his tenants or what kind of code breaking, cheap repaired P.O.S. he sold to some sucker looking to get ahead himself. They instantly looked past the fact that he was a total sleaze who got ahead doing questionable legal and certainly immoral things.
You know, I am not one to judge, I have done things in my past I am not proud of. I should have been in prison a couple times by my count. However, I do not go around portraying myself as a self-righteous business man whose prayers have been answered by the invisible man sitting on a cloud. I am not the one who is granted passage through the pearly gates of life (of course there are not gates in death) because of hypocritical judges who become rich even though their precious bible rich will not go to heaven. Just sayin’…