The Opinion "While American Christians continue to struggle to come to grips with their rampant homophobia, hypocrisy, and constant judging of their fellow human beings, the real menace to a world that needs aid and assistance is liberal snootiness and snobbishness" has died as a result of a backhanded bitch-slap, also known as Collateral Smashness.
The Opinion was believed to have been born at the first Council of Bishops in Nicaea in A.D. 325 (where it was decided that god must be kept distant and outside of the world, lest the people get any funny ideas about an immanent experience of the ineffable) where it lived an idyllic childhood awaiting the discovery of the Americas some eleven hundred and seventy years later. With the New World offering excellent opportunities to prosper in the sugar cane, tobacco and cotton industries, many Christians came on board and participated in the enforced slavery of Africans, who laughed and sang all day in the serene Eden that was the New World. Through human ownership Christians could bond even closer with their lord and savior, who had taken the whips (and much scorn) on his march to Calvary much the same way the brutalized human property of American Christians had themselves enjoyed.
The Opinion's final years were bittersweet as church attendance dropped while self-described believers increased in number: more and more people came to believe that god loved them and wanted them to have lots of guns at home and in the campground, also allowing that their heavenly father wasn't keen on them being treated for pre-existing conditions by their healthcare provider. The creeping suspicion that True Believers were being played for saps by wealthy, vested interests was stymied when it was reported that atheists were snooty and snobby, global warming was a fiction and that dinosaurs had walked the earth with Barry Goldwater. To have suggested to True Believers that the world was not a child's nursery, a madly littered garden filled with the toys of a personal creator god, would have made you a spoilsport poopy head and doo-doo butt nose. Don't smirk, asshole.
In lieu of flowers the family of the Opinion ask that you consider walking the streets of America with hot branding irons, burning them into the blasphemous flesh of those who dare not to believe (literally!) the Levantine variant of the dying and resurrected hero-god myths. And make that branding iron stick out by having it transfer the letter "A" onto the skins of the snooty, snobby minority. If you can keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you then you are probably one of those stuck-up, elitist liberal types. Should our Lord Jesus Christ offer you a tumbler of Sangria don't start blathering about bouquet or how it would go well with the right Camembert. Just down it quickly and shut up before it turns back into blood.
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The Opinuary Column appears most Fridays at Jesus' General.
No Middle Eastern Gods were harmed in the writing of this Opinuary Column.
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ReplyDeleteMr. mjs, Sir:
ReplyDeleteThese guys:
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/03/04/texas-taliban/
have not gotten the morning paper as yet.
S'okay, though. You can fuck with them Texicans to a certain point (they're good natured ol' boys, after all) but you start loppin' off folks' heads at the local HS football emporium and your ass is grass. Do not fuck with Texas' REAL religion.
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ReplyDeleteI always thought snootiness and snobbishness rank up there with 'miffed' and 'phlegmatic', and should have easily earned anyone a summary biblical stoning, at least.
ReplyDeleteNothing worse than attitude from smart-assed knowitalls...
You know, I have a great deal of admiration for Nick Kristof, but that was one of the worst columns I’ve ever read. First and most obviously, who ever said that “liberals” and “Christians” – or even Evangelical Christians – are mutually exclusive groups? The fact is, a significant percentage of Christians who donate to or get involved in international aid organizations are liberals, regardless of their religion.
ReplyDeleteThis is the same bullshit Republicans have been pushing for years – you know, how Democrats voted against the Civil Rights Acts, even though they know damn well that liberals of both parties voted for the Civil Rights Acts, and conservatives of both parties voted against them. Meaning, one’s support for or objection to the Civil Rights Acts had nothing to do with being a Republican or a Democrat and everything to do with being a liberal or a conservative.
The same is true here: Liberal Christians are, by and large, the ones who support international aid, while conservative Christians are, by and large, far less enthusiastic about it. And to the extent some conservative Christians are willing to help the poor and displaced in Haiti or in Africa, what Kristof should be saying is: “It’s about damn time!” We’re supposed to be impressed because a handful of conservative Christians aren’t raging hypocrites on this one issue? Really?! Give me a fucking break.
What really pisses me off is, I used to consider myself to be a liberal Catholic (still liberal, of course; the Catholic church can go fuck itself these days); and back in the 1970s and 80s when there were priests and nuns working to help the poor in places like South and Central America – at great personal risk, thanks to the right-wing dictators our fucking government supported in those countries – nobody like Nick Kristof gave a good goddam about them. But now that a small number of televangelists get of their fat white asses and dole out a tiny fraction of the lucre they bilk from their flocks, suddenly Kristof comes to their defense against the big bad liberals who are mean to them for, like, hating gays and tacitly supporting terrorists who kill abortion providers. Well, fuck me, Nick. I’m not fucking buying it.
Sorry to hijack the thread, but that Kristof article really got me going this morning. On one level, I suppose I agree that maybe we can find some common ground between liberals and conservatives when it comes to providing aid to the poor around the world; and to that extent, it’s probably a good thing that some conservative Christians have, frankly, become more liberal in their worldview. But the point is, conservatives of all stripes have done far more harm than good to the world as a whole, and they have a helluva lot of ground to make up before they can even pretend to be in the same room with us, morally speaking. In a perfect world, conservatives would first apologize, unreservedly (as John Cleese said in A Fish Called Wanda), for all the harm they’ve done, and then maybe – maybe – I’d be willing to give them some credit for the small amount of good they do.
ReplyDeleteYou forgot to mention how the opinion was brought back from near death thanks to Ronald Reagan and a number of deluded ideologues in the 1980's.
ReplyDeleteDave von Ebers: two years ago I went to a funeral at a Catholic church. While I was there I was told why I (and any lapsed Catholics in attendance) couldn't have a cracker or sip the wine. And the priest spoke about hell for all of those who haven't seen the approved light. I let out a guffaw, an actual guffaw (I hadn't been to a Christian funeral in a while and had come to ponder magical thinking only in the abstract) whereafter my wife elbowed me. The resulting bruise looked just like Edward G. Robinson dipped in grape jelly (that of course is a lie, but one that comforts me).
ReplyDeleteThomas: the gift of St. Ronnie just keeps on giving.
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Counsellor von Ebers:
ReplyDeleteI took off my "agnostic training wheels" a while back. To paraphrase Groucho, I wouldn't want to go to any heaven that would have the kind of GOD the fundieservatives believe in. Who the fuck am I kidding, they wouldn't let the likes of us in, anyway. As John Lennon is purported to have said, "If shit was worth money, poor people woudn't have assholes".
MJS and Demo: As far as the whole theist-versus-atheist debate goes, honestly I’ve just opted out. It’s not so much that I don’t believe as it is that I don’t care. Whichever side ultimately wins that debate matters about as much to me as whoever wins the next World Cup. I respect the fact that it’s powerfully important to some people; it just doesn’t affect my life one iota.
ReplyDeleteI’ve quoted this line before, maybe here or elsewhere where some of us congregate, but David Foster Wallace once wrote, discussing things people learn in rehab, “That God might regard the issue of whether you believe there’s a God or not as fairly low on his/her/its list of things s/he/it’s interested in re you”; which, I think, is probably true; so I’ve decided to return the favor and regard the question of whether or not there is a God as fairly low on my list of things I give a flying fuck about. And life is so much easier as a result.
ReplyDeleteWell said, Dave, well said.
ReplyDeleteAt one of the other blogs I visit, a very nice lady left this:
"That said, democommie's intellectual capacity is vast, as is his capacity for beautifully tended scorn. Like an ice sculpture of righteous snark."
I would be happy to raise her children while she earned a better living than I am capable of doing.
As far as I can tell none of this is about the unprovable--it's been about the behaviors of those who claim a higher truth or moral supremity. Personally, I don't know how to give a flying fuck, but suspect that it involves wings and specially trained consorts.
ReplyDeletep.s. I am rereading Joseph Campbells tetralogy "The Masks of God" and recommend it to anyone who is curious as to how various belief systems relate to one another--also, what are they made of, what's the history, etc. When asked if he had "faith" Campbell replied that he didn't need it: he had experience.
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The resulting bruise looked just like Edward G. Robinson dipped in grape jelly
ReplyDeleteIf you had been a proper religious person, the bruise would have looked like Jeebus! And you could have sold that bit of skin for good money on eBay. Made a lampshade out of it or something...
As reluctant as I am to link to HuffPost these days, this article by Richard Hughes, a religion professor at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, is a nice rebuttal to Nick Kristof’s fluff piece.
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