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Back in my post college days watching David Letterman was a religious experience. I still feel delight in my belly every time I recall this exchange. The camera cuts to bandleader Paul Schaffer after the musical opening. Paul casually shouts, “How ya doin’ babe?!” With his trademark playful, satirical style, Letterman thunders, “Don’t call me babe!!”

December is the traditional Christian holy season celebrating the birth of Jesus. We will be saturated with sappy images of the “babe, wrapped in swaddling clothing.” Once again the prevailing storyline will sentimentalize the righteous holiness out of Jesus, reducing him to a cutesy babe whose cheeks we want to pinch.

Most folks will never allow the prophetic zeal of Jesus to permeate their being. The grown up Jesus disturbs us with teachings like this, which foreshadow those who wade in the shallow end. “The road to life is crooked and winding, and those who find it are few.”

I got to know Jesus as a radical prophet by reading the gospels like I had never even heard of this Jesus guy. I tried like heaven to strip away all of the hearsay about him in an effort to uncover the soul of the upstart Rabbi. I was frankly bewildered to hear the “Song of Mary” when John the Baptist’s mom testified about the babe in Mary’s womb. “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior… he has scattered those who are proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.”

Jesus turned out just like his Dad. He emerged from his wilderness temptations to preach his first sermon, fittingly in his hometown. The Nazareth old-timers synagogue society discounted him. “Isn’t this the kid who grew up down the street?” Jesus answered sharply, “Don’t call me babe!”

The sacred work of Jesus has not changed one mouse click. Let us grow up with Jesus, radiating this living testament to corporate and government halls from Washington to New York, from Bentonville to Islamabad, from Moscow to Rangoon.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me…he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

“Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly, as the owner of the world.

As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.

They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that’s their democratic model. It’s the false democracy of elites. What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy. What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?”

What true patriot, what defender of our constitution, what champion of human dignity delivered these insightful salvos? Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela last September before the United Nations. If you edit the feel good “devil” hyperbole, a truer word has never been uttered.

In soul sickening fashion the well-worn reliable adage, “it takes one to know one” is being born out. The Austin American Statesperson writes; “On Sunday, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez expects to become president for life through a referendum revising his country’s constitution.

That vote is a breathtaking grab for absolute control by an autocrat who already commands most of the levers of power. If the constitutional changes pass, Chavez will have dictatorial power rivaling that of his hero, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Since being elected president in 1998, Chavez has steadily eroded the checks and balances on his office. He has shut down media outlets, taken control of the courts and the legislature, and now controls the petroleum industry.

But that was just a start. The Dec. 2 referendum includes 69 articles that, if passed, would abolish term limits on the presidency, grant the president control of the central bank and give presidential appointees power over locally elected officials.

The changes also allow Chavez to declare a state of emergency in which he can suspend the right to due process of law and freedom of information. The president also would be able use to the military to maintain order.”

These developments are particularly heart breaking because our world needs high profile leaders and heads of state that have earned the moral authority to confront the American Empire. Our imperialism has existed before Shrub and will continue after he slithers out of office. President Chavez had that potential, but he has sold it out for his own narcissistic tyranny.

Jesus warned us of the George W. Chavez’s of the world, “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” A capitalist pit is no better than a socialist pit. A white pit is just as perilous as a black pit. A patriarch pit and a feminist will both wreck your hybrid in the bar ditch. A ditch by any other name is just as foul to the sniffer!

The Tao Te Ching offers an alternate way; The Tao is like a bellows: It is empty yet infinitely capable. The more you use it, the more it produces;

Hold on to the center.”