Limbaugh spent most of the rest of his show, which runs from noon to 3 p.m. EST on weekdays, as if it was any other day — claiming that the wealthy carry too much of the tax burden, chastising Howard Dean, and reading an advertisement for the analgesic cream Thera-Gesic. “Nothing’s better for pain,” he announced. Then, as the show wound down, he began to explain how his addiction to painkillers began. He told his radio audience that he first started taking the medication “some years ago,” after undergoing spinal surgery, and “It turned out to be highly addictive.”

But what, ultimately, do we know about Limbaugh’s situation? He was essentially forced into today’s admission after the National Enquirer ran the accusations of Limbaugh’s former Palm Beach maid, Wilma Cline, who charged that he had used her to tap into an illegal drug ring to feed his addiction. Several other newspapers then confirmed that the Florida state attorney’s office is conducting an investigation into the alleged activity.

He said nothing about his innocence or guilt, stressing only that the stories in the press have contained “inaccuracies and distortions.” He said nothing about Cline and her allegations, such as that the drug he was addicted to was OxyContin, hydrocodone and Lorcet. He also said nothing about speculation that his recent, highly publicized hearing loss may have been caused by his addiction. He said he had to wait until the investigation was over to correct the record once and for all.

On the live Webcast of the show, there was something solemn about the occasion — something surprisingly human. He never looked up once from the statement he read. At the end, he looked weathered, beleaguered. Then he stuck his trademark cigar in his mouth, looked up at the camera one last time, waved for it to be shut off, and winked at the crowd.

So, should we feel sorry for Rush?

It’s impossible not to feel for someone forced into such a public, and humiliating, confession. But it’s equally impossible not to consider his own record of spouting off against other people with drug problems. Below are some examples [as discovered by, among others, the blogger Atrios] from his now-defunct TV show, transcripts of which are easily attainable — as opposed to the thousands of hours of his radio show, beamed to millions daily for the past 15 years.

On Sept. 23, 1993: “If there’s a line of cocaine here, I have to make the choice to go down and sniff it … If there were a gun here, it wouldn’t fire itself. I’ve got to reach for it and pull the trigger … we are rationalizing all this irresponsibility and all the choices people are making and we’re blaming not them, but society for it. All these Hollywood celebrities say the reason they’re weird and bizarre is because they were abused by their parents. So we’re going to pay for that kind of rehab, too, and we shouldn’t. It’s not our responsibility.”

Jan. 15, 1996: “… there were a couple of drug convictions out in — I think it was a Colorado court. And these guys had — had done some really bad stuff, and there were mandated federal sentences for the crimes they had committed. And the judge apologized to the criminals while sentencing them because he thought it was too severe. He apologized and the community was outraged. So we’ve gone from a judge sentencing a mother who makes her child beg six months in jail, to judges apologizing for getting dope dealers and crack dealers and drug salesmen off the streets with too severe a sentence.”

Dec. 16, 1994: “So we’re not going to get on — we don’t fault these animals for a lack of discipline, but we get on human beings who are fat for lack of discipline and you know it and I know it. But here’s the thing that struck me about this. We have alcoholics and drug addicts in our society, don’t we? And what do we say about them? Well, they can’t help it. Why, it’s genetic. Why, they have a disease. Why, put one thimbleful of scotch in front of them and they can die.’ We totally exempt them from any control over their lives, do we not? Some athlete will spend two years snorting lines of coke. ‘He can’t help it.’ You know, it’s — it’s just — it’s not — it’s — it’s genetic. These people — they’re predisposed to having this addictive syndrome. They — they can’t help — yeah, like that line of cocaine just happened to march into the hotel, go up to the athlete’s room and put itself right there in front of him on his blotter.”

Kates’ father is a truck driver, her mother is a bank teller and her brother is a U.S. marshal. Sbaihat’s father and uncles have all done time in Israeli prisons for civil unrest, and his religious Muslim mother will only leave the house if wearing a scarf on her head.

Kates speaks English with a typical East Coast twang. Sbaihat still rolls his R’s a little bit, and his H’s come from somewhere deep in his Semitic throat.

Both Kates and Sbaihat are college students in America. But only one of them is a radical pro-Palestinian activist who says that Israel has no right to exist. Only one of them advocates Palestinian resistance “by any means necessary” to liberate all of the land “from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea,” land currently under the control of “Israeli oppressors.”

Guess which one of them it is. Here’s a hint: This one often wears a red kaffiyeh, or Arab headdress, as a clothing accessory, and also liberally sprinkles his or her speech with Arabic catchphrases like “nakba” — “the catastrophe” of Israel’s creation in 1948. Still not sure? Fine, one more: This person is a leading member of the organizing committee of a national Palestinian activism conference slated for this coming weekend near Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, N.J. The forum has been the subject of intense criticism from figures like New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey and Rutgers University president Richard McCormick, who called the group’s views on Israel “reprehensible.”

If you remembered which one lives in New Jersey, that last clue probably gave the answer away, didn’t it? Yes, that’s right: The kaffiyeh-wearing activist is the all-American Kates.

This irony is not an isolated one in what has emerged as the fastest-growing protest movement on U.S. college campuses: Palestinian liberation. But as the movement has expanded, it has developed its own dramatic, internal conflict between white American students, eager to revel in their disdain for American “imperialism” and embrace the most extreme positions, and Arab students, determined to find a sympathetic mass audience through more a diplomatic approach. This battle over the movement’s soul might best be represented by the differences between the American, Kates, and the Palestinian, Sbaihat.

True, Sbaihat is himself a pro-Palestinian activist at the University of Wisconsin, where he is a graduate student. He speaks Arabic, and certainly understands the meaning of “nakba.” He’s also been known to wear a kaffiyeh every now and then, and he’s just as passionate about defending the rights of his people as Kates is about defending the rights of … well, his people.

His experience with his cause also has personal roots; Sbaihat could only watch on television as the Israeli army literally flattened large swaths of his home city of Jenin last year. “It was one of the most horrifying times. Many people I knew died,” he says. “I definitely view the Palestinian cause as more of a personal issue than one of international justice and human rights.”

But compared to Kates, Sbaihat sounds like a virtual peacenik. “I see suicide bombings as a dangerous sign of the grave situation that Palestinians have come to,” he says. “Bombings are an obvious indication of despair and helplessness, but they haven’t been effective. They provide an excuse for the Israeli government to grow more radical, and cause isolation in the already small Israeli peace camp.”

Sbaihat and many fellow pro-Palestinian activists throughout the country recently decided to break off from the New Jersey conference coordinated by Kates’ group, New Jersey Solidarity — in part because they felt Solidarity was portraying its own extreme political ideology as representative of the entire pro-Palestinian movement. Instead, the rebelling activists will hold their own conference the weekend of Nov. 7, at Ohio State University.

The nationwide schism is the climax of long-festering tensions within the Palestinian-advocacy movement, stretching back to the beginning of the Palestinians’ second intifada, or uprising, three years ago. In September 2000, after several years of relative calm under the Oslo peace accords, Palestinians once again engaged in active — and sometimes violent — resistance against Israeli rule. An ocean away, the Palestinian struggle caught the attention of American leftist activists. The same people who pass out neon flyers on every campus calling for the U.S. government to “Free Mumia!” had found a new cause. Well, not exactly a new cause; the plight of the indigenous Palestinians had long struck a chord with anti-imperialists. But an old cause with a new urgency, and a broad national and international appeal.

Enter Berkeley, the unofficial capital of collegiate counterculture and all things anti-.

In February 2002, Berkeley became the site of the first annual National Student Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement, a forum for pro-Palestinian activists from around the country to meet and discuss strategy. The plan was to promote what has become the centerpiece of the Palestinian movement: a demand that American universities divest from all companies with holdings in Israel, to force the Jewish state to end what the activists call its “apartheid-like” policies. The campaign was borrowed from the South African anti-apartheid movement of the 1970s and ’80s — but hasn’t been quite as successful. So far, no universities have agreed to divest, and many have publicly denounced the divestment movement. That, however, hasn’t stopped pro-divestment groups from forming at dozens of campuses, including Harvard, Yale, Penn, Virginia and Duke.

Back in early 2002, though, the movement was still in its fledgling stages, so the conference did not feature many delegations, and the Berkeley students dominated the proceedings. Will Youmans, an Arab-American who had been a leader of Palestinian activism as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan — a school with a large Arab and Muslim student body — was then attending his first year of law school at Berkeley. He helped jumpstart the California branch of the movement and was amazed at how widespread the support was. “But it had its limitations, too,” Youmans says. “People there don’t have much patience for education or actually discussing the issues amongst themselves. It got very frustrating.

“It’s hard to organize people who subscribe to anarchism as a philosophy of life.”

This motley crew of leftists voted, in part, to decry Zionism as “racism” and to “declare (their) solidarity with the popular Palestinian resistance … a legitimate strategy.” Israel supporters instantly condemned these statements for what they felt was tacit support of terrorism.

Then came the second annual conference, at the University of Michigan, in the heart of the most heavily Arab region in the nation. And this time, in addition to cheerily discussing the activists’ resistance tactics, a huge debate erupted over the movement’s stand on the often violent nature of Palestinian resistance. According to sources who attended meetings closed to the public, it was here that a rift first became apparent: Non-Arabs, led by the Berkeley contingent, who fought to keep the incendiary language, versus Arabs, led by the Michigan group, who wanted to drop the issue from the movement’s principles altogether.

After hours of intense wrangling, a decision was finally reached: The endorsement of Palestinian resistance would stay. Suddenly, it seemed that Palestinians like Sbaihat had lost control of their cause to people probably once more concerned with the legalization of pot than the political status of Jerusalem.

Jump forward a year. Instead of one united conference, there are two — both claiming to be the official venue of the national Palestine Solidarity Movement, a loose coalition of organizations in cities and universities across the country. What finally caused the schism? Weeding your way through the many contradictory answers to that question is about as simple as solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself.

Organizers of the breakaway conference to take place at Ohio State say New Jersey Solidarity, the sponsor of the Rutgers conference, hijacked what was supposed to be a democratic movement. Before the split, at a Chicago meeting of the participating groups in July, the leaders of Solidarity allegedly refused to reach decisions about the conference democratically, and instead claimed veto power over every vote.

Among those attending the July meeting was Sbaihat, who says, “We were very reluctant to break off — we knew that we risked a lower turnout for our own conference. We wanted to find common ground.” But the New Jersey Solidarity leaders, he says, “just said, ‘This is how it’s going to be.’ They refused to compromise and walked out of several meetings.”

So in August, groups affiliated with the national Palestine Solidarity Movement — including Sbaihat’s — voted 29 to 13 to change the official venue from the Rutgers campus to Ohio State, meeting the two-thirds requirement stipulated in the principles laid out at the first conference at Berkeley.

Or, to put it another way: A group of students led mostly by Arabs and Muslims revolted against an organization led by white Americans in an effort to salvage the principles of democracy. It’s a striking role-reversal, considering the time — and money — the United States spends these days lecturing the Middle East on how a real democratic government should be run. “But we Arabs appreciate it more than anyone else because we don’t have enough of it,” Sbaihat says.

It’s also better politics. The Ohio State organizers contend that the issue of proper democratic procedure motivated their decision to disassociate themselves from the Rutgers conference. They insist that the split was not the result of any disagreement over ideology concerning the cause itself; in fact, organizers still refrain from taking a definitive stand on Palestinian attacks on civilians. They also point out that many of the groups endorsing the Ohio State conference espouse relatively radical political beliefs — a “one-state solution,” for example, that would call for Palestinians and Israelis to live as equals in one nation, essentially meaning the dissolution of the current Jewish state.

“This is not at all a situation of a left-right divide,” says Fatima Ayub, a recent graduate of George Mason University and member of its campus group Students for Justice in Palestine. “[Solidarity] just completely refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the vote.”

Kates, a second-year law student at Rutgers and Solidarity’s most high-profile member, has embraced Palestinian activism as one of several venues in what she calls the “global struggle for self-determination.” She says she first started “doing anti-racist things” when she was still a student in junior high school in New Jersey. Her initial education on “racism, oppression and exploitation” had begun several years earlier, however, when she was just 10 years old. It was then that she first began checking out books from the library about the history of the Soviet Union and Marxist struggle.

“I was a kid who liked to read,” she says.

Now she finds herself at the center of a controversy that she says is mostly just “political.” Beyond that, she and the other members of New Jersey Solidarity refuse to comment on the split, other than to express their support for any venue that furthers awareness of the Palestinian cause. (Her group has done its best, however, to create the perception that its conference is the only legitimate one. When the Ohio State conference adopted the Web site www.palestineconference.com, Solidarity quickly bought the rights to palestineconference.org and palestineconference.net.)

“The struggle for Palestine is the cause of the Palestinian people,” she says. “But it’s also the struggle of oppressed people everywhere.”

Kates’ group has managed to create a fairly high profile, and quickly, including coverage the New York Times. In the articles, Solidarity’s views — that Palestinians should fight Israel “by any means necessary” — were conflated with those of the national movement, which surely only built resentment among its detractors.

In April, months before the nationwide schism, New Jersey Solidarity faced similar tensions within its own ranks. Seven members of the group’s executive committee — the majority of them Arab — split from Solidarity and formed their own organization. The seven wanted Kates and the other leftists, who represented a minority of the executive committee, to moderate their tone on Israel. That meant getting rid of the controversial statements calling for resistance by any means and saying that Israel had no right to exist.

Kates and her allies refused. The seven — including Summer Sharaf, an Arab-American and Rutgers alumnus — resigned in protest, taking 30 members of the group with them.

“We don’t support any violence against civilians,” Sharaf says. “It’s against international law, and it’s immoral. Most of the Arabs I know genuinely do not believe in using violence.”

“I think it’s funny how the people running the Rutgers conference are all non-Arabs,” Sharaf says. “It makes me wonder why they’re here, why they’re doing what they’re doing.”

New Jersey Solidarity seems to fall into the same category as the career activists of Berkeley. In fact, according to the Rutgers conference Web site, the Berkeley delegation still endorses the New Jersey conference and plans on attending — an endorsement conspicuously missing from the Ohio conference’s site. Organizers of the Ohio conference also link New Jersey Solidarity to the group ANSWER, an international anti-imperialist group known for its antagonistic tactics. Members of Solidarity admit that ANSWER has been supportive of their efforts, but deny any official connection between the two organizations.

While there are obviously many differences between the two wings of the Palestinian activism movement, it would be a mistake to dismiss the Rutgers conference as a fringe movement — even though people have tried. Many Israel advocates jumped on the split in the national pro-Palestinian movement as a way to marginalize the New Jersey activists as extremists. Rutgers University officials cited the formation of the Ohio conference — as well as a missed application deadline — as reason to cancel the October conference. (“If they were working through a hotel, it wouldn’t be acceptable either,” Rutgers spokeswoman Sandra Lanman told me, failing to note the several not-insignificant differences between the guiding missions of a university and a hotel.)

If anything, though, the controversy has gained New Jersey Solidarity more sympathy and support throughout the activist community.

Solidarity has vowed to hold the conference, and has moved the event to a nearby Ramada Inn. Kates still says she expects between 300 and 500 attendees. Plus, many pro-Palestinian groups, including some from the West Bank, continue to endorse the Rutgers conference, despite the schism.

What’s more, despite their personal differences with New Jersey Solidarity, the organizers of the Ohio conference continue to support the Rutgers venue simply because it increases awareness about Palestine. And especially because they sympathize with the many attacks from the Israel camp that Solidarity has had to endure.

Nahla Saleh, an Arab-American graduate student at Ohio State and a member of the campus Committee for Justice in Palestine, says she considered traveling to Rutgers for the competing conference, just to express solidarity against the “Zionists.”

“The fact that the university there could shut things down is absurd,” she says. “I’m afraid it could have an effect on the movement elsewhere.”

Perhaps, then, when it all comes down to it, the ideological differences between the two groups are more aesthetic than anything else. In many ways, the Ohio conference’s decision to play down its position on suicide bombings is more a matter of public relations than of conscience. Saleh herself says she remains personally conflicted about Palestinian resistance tactics. But one thing is clear to her: what sells better to the broader public.

“You have to get to mainstream America,” she says. “I would love freedom for the Palestinians to happen immediately, and maybe in my heart I’m a radical because I want it now. But there’s strategy. We have to win over the hearts and minds of average people, and maybe that can’t happen now. Some people think you’re selling out, but really I think we’re just being smart.”

The pro-Palestinian movement’s politically correct strategy mirrors and even mimics the public relations tactics of the pro-Israel camp.

To counter the Palestinian activism movement that’s blossoming at campuses throughout America, the forces of Israel advocacy have developed their own attack. The latest and most forceful salvo is set to take place at Rutgers — at the same time and place as the Palestine conference sponsored by New Jersey Solidarity.

The pro-Israel conference, innocuously titled “Israel Inspires,” will feature big-name speakers like Israel Minister Without Portfolio Natan Sharansky, as well as a large pro-Israel rally, a pro-Israel “block party,” whatever that means, and even performances by a few pro-Israel bands.

Unlike the leaders of the Palestinian movement, Stephanie Schwartz, the president of the Rutgers Hillel, the umbrella organization of campus Jewish groups, knows how important it is to maintain a unified front in the face of enemy forces. Of course, the pro-Israel movement has its fair share of extremists as well — people who don’t think a Palestinian state should ever exist, even people who believe that Palestinians in the West Bank should be forcibly transferred to other countries to make way for Jewish settlers. Thankfully, though, Israel activists have taken care of their pesky radicals by uniting around a nifty little slogan, one that’s as vague and elusive as an honest intention: “Wherever we stand, we stand with Israel.”

When she talks about her work as an Israel activist, Schwartz repeats this phrase like it’s a personal mantra. While blatantly patriotic, the statement’s political meaning — if there is one — is blatantly unclear. That was done on purpose, Schwartz says, to make sure it includes everyone, no matter what his or her political persuasion. In fact, the pro-Israel camp refuses to condemn any of the oft-dubious military campaigns of the Israeli army, saying it’s not their place to criticize the tactics Israel decides to use. (Sound familiar?)

“I think people in the Jewish community at Rutgers are smart,” she says. “If they support population transfer — and there probably are people who do — they don’t say it, because it’s not smart. But I would still want that person to be part of Israel Inspires, because that’s not the message being spread.

“The message we want to spread is: wherever we stand, we stand with Israel.”

So in the end, it seems that a generation of Arabs and Muslims born of immigrant parents or themselves from foreign countries are quickly learning the importance of that most all-American of virtues: good marketing. They’re learning how to be American so well that they’re quickly outgrowing their alliance with the antiestablishment whites who spend all of their time wishing so badly that they were anything but American.

The result? The same kind of bickering and political infighting that has plagued the Palestinian cause from its inception in 1948 is now here. What has long characterized activism in the Middle East is now just as rife in the American branch of the movement.

“Throughout Palestinian history, this has always happened to us,” Sbaihat says. “Division has always killed our momentum; one group would always try to impose its own way on a national umbrella organization, whether it had the best idea or not. But this time, it will be different. This time, not a single group will be above our guidelines.

“Forming our own conference will be a good direction for us.”

“It’s the Dalai-fuckin’-Lama, man!” she yelled at Sara.

So just after 10 a.m. they grabbed a couple of friends and piled into a cab and headed down to the park entrance on East 90th Street. Except that the line to get in already snaked down the avenue and into the 70s, before whipping back up until it finally ended at 96th Street, which is where I find them when I arrive after 11.

It just so happens that Sara is an old friend of mine from college in Michigan whom I haven’t seen or spoken to in about a year. Considering the mile-long line of people waiting to get into the park, it is an extraordinary coincidence that I locate Sara in the throngs, a meeting I can only attribute to the miracle of karma. With the Big D.L. himself set to speak in less than an hour, to me this means one thing, and one thing only: God wants me to cut.

“Dude,” Rachel says, peering at me from behind a pair of silver, mirrorlike shades. “You can totally cut. It’s the Dalai Lama.”

- – - – - – - – - – - -

I first read about this massive spiritual shindig in two articles in the New York Times, both of which talked in somewhat derisive tones about what a pop phenomenon D.L. has become in America. This is the Dalai Lama’s first talk in Central Park since 1999. In the meantime, he’s written a few warm and fuzzy books, even had a self-help-style bestseller, “The Art of Happiness.” You can find the picture of the red-robed, bald-headed, bespectacled monk on everything from Free Tibet literature to advertisements for Apple Computers.

But it wasn’t until I saw his mug on the cover of this week’s Time Out New York — “Dalai-Rama! Start chanting: The Dalai Lama’s coming to town!” — that I realized this guy’s for real. If he’s significant enough to be featured in the same magazine as Heather Graham and the city’s “new superclub,” he must have something good to say about the meaning of life.

Like most other people, I can’t really explain who the Dalai Lama is, or what exactly he does, but I know he’s some kind of spiritual big dog, the 14th reincarnation of some, uh, guy or something. And not only was he plugged on the cover of Time Out, but there was a whole page devoted to him in the Chill Out section of the magazine, and really, who among us couldn’t use some hard-core divinely inspired chilling out these days? I figured, what the hell, why not go?

So I’m standing in the gargantuan line with my fellow dharma bums. Throngs and throngs of people, plenty of piercings, plenty of dreadlocks and tie-dye and tattoos, plenty of paisley bandannas wrapped around sweaty white, middle-class foreheads, young and old. There are also gaggles of Tibetans milling about, the women in foot-length traditional dresses, some shiny and metallic, some faded and soft, the men in loose-fitting slacks and shirts bearing delicate designs, or perhaps draped in magenta robes like the D.L. himself. There are a lot of Caucasians dressed like the Tibetans, too.

The line still isn’t moving. Rachel and I decide to go for another blessed cut, this time to the front of the line. We slip by a cop and make our way with hundreds of other people who decided to transcend the rules. Solemn chants boom over loudspeakers and fill the air as we and a dozen robed Tibetans twist our way through a tangle of weeds and wild plants.

Event volunteers wearing official Dalai Lama Tour ’03 shirts direct us to the front of the line. Apparently, cheating a little bit is OK as long as your ultimate goal is seeing His Holiness.

“Oh, I want one of those shirts,” Rachel sighs.

Through the trees we finally see the Promised Land, guided by a beacon of bright blue porta-potties that stretch across the green grass like tiny sacred shrines to the God of Human Waste Disposal. Our path opens onto a hilly field that is blanketed with, well, blankets, and about 65,000 people sitting on them, munching on picnic lunches, laughing and chatting with each other, making hats out of newspapers to protect their heads from the sun’s rays. There are lots of very average, very normal-looking people here, the kind who eat cornflakes for breakfast instead of granola, who prefer lunch meat to hummus, and who enjoy washing their bodies, hair and clothing on a regular basis. But there’s also plenty of the other kind.

Or, as Rachel puts it, “Look at all the hippies!”

Yet as I look over the masses of people who all traveled here for a common cause — even if they’re not sure what that cause is — I can’t help thinking that this must be close to what Gandhi or Jesus inspired. What we tend to forget is that beyond their specific messages, the great gurus of the past were able to connect to the average Joe on a very visceral level. That’s what made them so subversive to the ruling powers. Reading the Bible, you quickly find that most people who went to hear Jesus preach didn’t really know a thing about his philosophy — they were just curious. They wanted to be cured. In some way, on a spiritual level, so do many of the people who are in Central Park.

Then I see the stage. It’s flanked on either side by twin giant televisions like something out of a U2 concert, and I realize that things have indeed changed since Jesus’ time. Sure, technology is a convenient way to get important ideas across. But how much of this is just spectacle? Just meaningless titillation? Would Jesus have used giant TVs to broadcast his message? Would he have allowed corporations to use his image to sell products? What would Jesus do?

Thankfully, he’s sitting right behind me, so I can ask him. I turn around and talk to Jesus, actually Jordan Smith, a senior in college, and a guy who looks an awful lot like the Son of God. Smith made the pilgrimage here with a group of spiritually minded people from Drew University, a small college in New Jersey. In fact, he is so spiritual that he actually lives in a co-op-like place called “Spirituality Home,” for — not surprisingly — spiritual people like himself.

He majors in religious studies, specializing in Hinduism, but says his spirituality is something that can’t be easily defined or measured. “I was raised Presbyterian,” he says. “I still feel a connection to Christian scriptures, but to other holy works too. Spirituality is just one of those things you have to feel inside.”

This is the first field trip the people of the Spirituality Home have made in quite a while. The D.L. was important enough that many — but not all — of the residents woke up at 7 a.m. for the long haul to New York. Smith sits cross-legged next to another resident of the home, Kelly Mundell, a senior who does not resemble a biblical figure.

“There are a lot of people who just couldn’t make it,” Mundell said. “We woke them up and they were like, It’s just not happening.”

Mundell herself would’ve been sleeping in her holy bed at Spiritual Home now, but she felt this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the Dalai Lama, even though she seems to know less about him than I do.

“I read one of his books for a class,” she says wistfully. “I don’t remember what it was.”

“‘The Art of Happiness,’” Jesus gently reminds her.

“Right,” she says.

The air fills again with the chanting of monks. I look at the stage, cluttered with golden sunflowers. Although I can’t make out the singers, I see their wrinkled faces and shaved heads broadcast on the giant TVs. The pitch of the humming grows higher and higher, reverberates through the air, until the sound is broken by the deep bass voice of a short, squat monk.

“Oy, oy, oy,” he chants. The others slowly join him. “Oy, oy, oyyyy.”

This must be meant for all the Jewish mothers in the crowd. Or maybe not. Still, the vast majority of people here weren’t raised as Buddhists but have found something in the Dalai Lama’s teachings that their original religions lacked.

Gary, a middle-aged high school English teacher from Long Island sitting nearby, traveled two and a half hours to be here. “I grew up Roman Catholic,” he says. “Buddhism just makes more sense to me. I saw the Dalai Lama in 1999, and his voice has such a timbre of love. I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

The New York City parks and recreation commissioner, Adrian Benepe, gets onstage for a few polite, reserved comments.

Suddenly, you can feel the tension building in the air. The anticipation. The knowledge that He, the One we’re all waiting for, is about to speak. Hearts beat, brows grow moist with sweat.

Then he appears.

“It’s now my pleasure,” the park commissioner says, “to introduce … Richard Gere!”

The crowd explodes. Rachel frantically calls her sister on her cellphone.

“It’s Richard Gere!”

Sara, the sorry sap, is still outside. She’s missed it. I feel bad for her.

Then Richard Gere — Richard Gere! — introduces His Holiness — “one of the great beings to perhaps ever walk this planet.” The Dalai Lama appears on the stage to a standing ovation.

He smiles, chuckles embarrassedly. His face is filled with kindness, his whole being exudes patience. He waves for everyone to sit down. Everyone sits down. Well, almost everyone.

“Can you sit down?” a few people call to the remaining standers. They stay standing. His Holiness starts to speak.

“Down in front, please?” Nothing. “Down in front!” What did you say? “Sit down!”

Yes, love and patience, love and patience. But really, can you blame them? After all, they came here to see the Dalai-fuckin’-Lama.

“We are all the same,” the D.L. begins. “There are no different colors, no different faiths. We are all just human beings.”

For all my cynicism, listening to the D.L. is an amazing experience. Not so much because of what he says — honestly, the same basic messages of love and brotherhood I heard from Catholic priests on Sunday mornings throughout my childhood — but of how he says it. His figure isn’t imposing; his voice doesn’t bellow or boom. Rather, he seems very at ease with himself and with the fact that so many people are listening to him. He chuckles easily and often, takes his time as he talks, as if he’s just telling a pleasant afternoon story.

Yet the entire crowd, thousands upon thousands, is entranced by his every word. People take notes. When he laughs, a breathy, staccato chortle, everyone laughs with him. Aside from that, almost every person here is silent, listening. Not a cellphone rings. In New York, this is truly a miracle.

There are, of course, exceptions to the solemnity.

Sky-writing planes fly across the clear blue sky, leaving puffy advertisements in their wake. Hey, anywhere there’s a crowd, there’s a chance to sell, right?

Some people, latecomers or early leavers, seem to never sit down, perpetually winding their way across the fields without listening to a word the D.L. says. He decries the excessive materialism of American society, our overwhelming concern with the physical being. And occasionally, although the D.L. speaks mostly in English, he’s forced to use a translator, leading to a few funny miscommunications. The best occurs when the Dalai Lama tries to describe the intimacy of motherhood, specifically how the baby is always drawn to his mother’s … what’s the word?

“Breast,” the interpreter says.

“What?” says the D.L.

“Breast!”

“Huh?”

“Breast, breast, BREAST!”

My favorite moment, though, comes when the D.L. gives his advice on how to find deeper meaning in life.

“Some people,” he says, “[are] seeking pleasure from animals. But still animals do not provide us with full satisfaction.”

I can only assume the D.L.’s talking about pets, but I have to wonder what’s going through Richard Gere’s, uh, mind right now.

When the talk ends, the Dalai Lama leaves to another standing ovation. This time, no shouts for people to sit down. Lots of people leave — one budding Buddhist wearing pink velour pants with the word “JUICY” inscribed on her ass is surprisingly among the first to go — but a lot more stay. The result is an eclectic bunch: Tibetans eating lunch mixed with hippies trying to soak up the last remaining positive vibes.

Gary the teacher is elated.

“I think he touched everyone in the audience,” he says. “He really spoke from the heart.”

“Did you feel the energy?” Gary’s tall, thin friend asks me. “Lots of good energy,” he says, shaking his head and grinning.

I stroll a little myself, gazing in amazement at the effect this afternoon has had on people, whether they really know anything about the Dalai Lama or not.

“This is one of those things you do once, and it changes you for the rest of your life,” says Kelsey, a 16-year-old girl from New York City who came with four of her girlfriends. For these girls seeing the Dalai Lama was a way to connect with other people. They had read the articles criticizing the commercialization of the D.L. and his message, but while they disagreed with some of his beliefs — he condemns homosexuality, for example — they felt that embracing the moment was more important. “It’s a community thing,” says Kelsey’s friend Lisa. “He’s very much on everyone’s level. One of the problems I usually have with religion is it’s so serious — there’s no sense of humor. But he laughed so much — he didn’t take himself seriously.”

A few feet away, a ring of hackey-sackers hackey their sack from one foot to another. They’re just as diverse, just as human, as the beginning of the D.L.’s speech hoped. One Asian, one Latino, one Caucasian. A pale goateed punk walks up and asks politely, “Mind if I join?” Soon he’s hackin’ it up with the rest of them, just as a posse of bald Tibetan monks walks by, one of them chatting amiably on his cellphone.

Nearby, two police officers with thick New York accents have a conversation with two young neo-hippies, a girl wearing a paisley skirt, a hemp chord around her neck, and a silver hoop in her left eyebrow, and a pasty, slack-jawed boy, as thin as a bong, a rainbow Bob Marley-esque hat perched on his head. Aha, I think, the forces of establishment and anarchy finally collide. But instead they all smile with each other, laugh at some kind of inside joke.

What is this? The lions lying down with the lambs? The end of New York? The end of the world? Is the Dalai Lama the messiah?

On the bus ride home I sit across from a gaunt white woman, lovingly carrying a picture of His Holiness. Her thumb and forefinger work a small ring of prayer beads; in her other hand she holds a flower the color of burnt umber. She wears a fiery red robe, and her short hair hints of a recently shaved scalp. Her blue eyes bespeak a cool, detached wisdom.

Suddenly, the bus driver brakes hard. We jerk to a halt. A few of the standing passengers nearly fall. They grumble and yell. The car in front of us stopped short unexpectedly. The bus driver lays on the horn, long, hard, thick. Angry.

“Stupid idiot,” he growls.

This is the New York I know and love.

Given his traditional tendencies, it may come as something of a surprise that Aufdermauer is one of three Milwaukee priests who recently sparked a fiery debate in American Catholic thought and theology: Should the church force celibacy on all priests? Aufdermauer and 168 other local pastors who signed his petition say no, and they cite statistics to support their claim: According to the Catholic University of America, for every 100 priests who die or leave the church, only 30 or 40 replace them. Unless the church changes its policy, the Milwaukee priests argue, in a matter of years the Catholic priesthood in America might become an endangered species.

Last Thursday, Bishop Wilton Gregory, the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, turned down the group’s request to begin a dialogue on optional celibacy. But despite the setback, Catholics around the country are taking notice. Associations of priests and laypeople in favor of optional celibacy are popping up all over — in Pennsylvania, New York and Illinois, to name just a few states. And so far congregants have given positive feedback to those groups. In fact, a recent poll conducted by Catholic University showed that 71 percent of Catholics favor optional celibacy.

But resistance within the highly traditional Catholic Church to any kind of change has always been fierce — Galileo, condemned by the medieval church to finish his days under house arrest for sticking to his belief that Earth revolved around the sun, is just one famous example. And regarding the priesthood, sex, or the lack thereof, is one of Catholicism’s most sacred cows, making this kind of reform even more difficult. Although an official papal representative has yet to weigh in on the priestly movement in the States, Pope John Paul II is widely known to be a staunch defender of priestly celibacy.

Salon spoke with Aufdermauer, the 61-year-old associate pastor at St. Matthias Church in Milwaukee, about his reasons for questioning long-held church doctrine and about the chances of igniting what would amount to a sexual revolution in American Catholicism.

For somebody who dreamed of being a part of the priesthood for so long, it seems like a radical decision to promote celibacy as optional.

Last January, at a district meeting [of Milwaukee-area churches], we had to come up with a new five-year plan. Because of the priest shortage, the plan was that we merge parishes; close parishes; and when we didn’t have enough priests, to ask laypeople to be parish directors, ask priests to do more work. We’re all being stretched so thin already. I said to myself, there’s got to be a better way. And that for me was the genesis.

Plus, I just finished reading Don Cozzens’ book “Sacred Silence.” The basic premise is that we have lots of problems in the church, but everybody is scared silent. Sooner or later, we have to speak out. There’s an elephant in the church’s living room, and it’s the priest shortage. The heart of the Catholic faith is the mass, the Eucharist, and you have to have a priest for that. Without it, Catholic theology falls on its head.

I was taught in Catholic school that the priest is married to the church first and foremost. How do you circumvent that?

The idea that the priest is married to the church is an analogy, a metaphor. Look at any other profession — look at doctors, lawyers, look at the president of the United States, supposedly the most powerful man in the world, and yet he has time for a wife and a family. Many times, having a wife is not a hindrance [for preachers], but [having a wife] can actually enhance the ministry. Everybody seems to say that getting married is very draining, very demanding, and it probably is. But it’s also very refreshing and fulfilling and enhancing. In my own personal life, the one thing I miss after a long, draining day is talking it over with somebody. At my age, I don’t have any illusions that I’m going to be able to get married. But that idea — talking over the day with somebody — is appealing.

Why then do you think there’s so much resistance to moving in that direction?

You’d have to ask the bishops. I’m guessing because it’s such a big change of tradition, because we’ve had celibacy now for almost a thousand years. But during the first thousand years of the Catholic Church, we did not have celibacy.

I don’t think most people know that priests were allowed to marry within the first thousand years.

Is that right? Well, around here, they’re learning fast.

What kind of response have you received from parishioners?

Ninety-nine-point-nine percent supportive. For most people the issue is, “Duh? What’s the problem?” Most people say, “What are the bishops waiting for?” We’re promoting optional celibacy. We respect celibacy. Those who would like to enter the priesthood as celibate are welcome. We’re not trying to rule it out; we’re trying to make it optional.

There has been a mind change over the years, especially with the priest shortage. Here in the Milwaukee archdiocese, we speculate in 12 years, we’re going to lose 50 percent of our priests. Now we’re not naive enough to think that if the pope were to allow married priests tomorrow that we’d have a whole glut of priests. I don’t think that would happen. But I think we’d have a few more, and the priests that are now leaving to get married would stay. We want to attract more candidates, and we want to get back the priests who are leaving. There were two priests in Milwaukee within the last six months who said they decided to leave because they wanted to get married. And they’re good priests. Good young guys.

Some would suggest that that simply shows a lack of commitment on their part.

Yeah, you can speculate. But it comes to a breaking point.

So other American priests support you?

Before our petition hit the news, we had 160 priests behind us who already signed the letter, so that speaks for itself. Since we sent the packet of letters to Bishop Gregory, six more have signed, and there’s a couple more pending. Now I’m getting calls from around the country and letters supporting our effort. I had a call from Illinois this morning. I got one call from a man in Phoenix who was totally opposed to what we’re doing, but that was the only [negative] call that I got.

You must be thrilled that other groups are sprouting up around the country.

I never envisioned it. I’m not a real, what do you call it, expansive thinker. When we did this, and I’m not pulling your leg, I was hoping it would get 3 inches of print maybe in the metro section of our morning paper on page 5. I never dreamt that this would catch fire. But I attribute this to the work of the Spirit. This is not our effort anymore. We’re just a couple little pumpkins here. There is a bigger force behind this than the three of us.

There’s been a lot made of recent problems with sexual abuse in the priesthood. Sometimes people raise the question as to whether the requirement for celibacy is related to that. Do you think making celibacy optional could help?

I do not believe there is a connection. Sexual abuse of children is not related to one’s celibacy or one’s sexual life. The percentage of people who sexually abuse minors is just about the same for priests as for dads. Child abuse is not a sexual inclination; it’s more of a disease. Even though everybody wants to make one, I don’t believe there’s a connection. It never entered our minds.

Would you consider proposing opening the priesthood to women?

We’re not going there. Because according to our Holy Father [the pope] we cannot discuss that issue.

So you aren’t exactly radical.

Not at all. In fact, I’m generally described as middle of the road.

Do you think this debate could lead to a schism similar to the one that the Episcopal Church may now face since they made a gay priest bishop?

No, because most people are in favor of it. National surveys [conducted by the Catholic University of America] show that over 50 percent of priests, maybe more, are in favor of optional celibacy. The only reason we didn’t get 50 percent on our petition is that we were not anonymous.

What do you think it’s going to take for priests to feel more comfortable speaking out on this?

Courage. The more priests who have the courage to speak out, the more who will get courage. The three of us speaking out — that wouldn’t have made a difference. But the fact that we now have 169 [from the Milwaukee area], that’s starting to be noticed.

Was it a difficult decision for you to attach your name to the issue?

Yes. It’s one thing to talk about it, but it’s a whole other ballgame to put your name on the line and send it to the bishops of the country. But I just love our church, and it just pains me that people cannot have the Eucharist every Sunday. I just felt that somebody had to start talking. It’s a sacrifice, but I’m willing to make it. If I get my head cut off, so be it.