After every gun-related massacre in the United States, there's always a gaggle of voices saying it's too early to have a conversation to discuss gun registration and licensing, gun checks and procedures to keep automatic and semi-automatic weapons out of unsafe hands.
The pond doesn't intend to go there - it's a conversation Americans need to have amongst themselves, and whether they'll ever manage it is likely a losing proposition - but it is possible, especially on a meditative Sunday, to discuss the obscenity of Mike Huckabee's early shoot from the hip contribution to the conversation.
If you've got nothing useful to say, it's better not to say anything, but Huckabee decided to stick his foot in it, in a way that he's done before, as reported under the header Mike Huckabee: Newtown Shooting No Surprise, We've 'Systematically Removed God' From Schools.
It's impossible to imagine anything more deliberately provocative, and offensive, and downright stupid that this sort of twaddle:
"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News. "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"...
... "We don't have a crime problem, a gun problem or even a violence problem. What we have is a sin problem," Huckabee said on Fox News. "And since we've ordered God out of our schools, and communities, the military and public conversations, you know we really shouldn't act so surprised ... when all hell breaks loose."
The home for this twaddle? Naturally it has to be Fox News ...
For a moment, the pond thought it was a spoof, but here it is, recycled at the Daily Mail, with video, and with Huckabee preaching the need for fear of eternal damnation.
There's no point in arguing with twaddle - better to just note it, and move right along, because if you feed the trolls they just keep on trolling.
The truly astonishing thing is that Huckabee was once Governor of Arkansas, and a credible Republican candidate for the presidency, and remains a huckster employee for the Fox network, with his very own shucks gee Huckabee show (nauseate yourself here).
What the tone-deaf Huckabee will never understand is that from the outside looking in, he doesn't sound much different to the Muslim Brotherhood prescribing the need for sharia law in Egypt, or the mad mullahs of Iran explaining how you need to systematically install their god in every school, factory, home and dress code ...
Ah well, he made it into Hollywood Reporter, where light-weight powder puff thinkers, actors, entertainers, tap dancers, publicity seekers and clowns in the television circus are always given a little space.
But it does help generate a little perspective on the local scene. Even your average angry Sydney Anglican wouldn't manage to be so obtuse.
But hang on, what's this on the Sydney Anglican site?
Yep, top of the list today in News from around the world is a connection to ... Fox News ... and the latest scandal, the latest shocking outrage in the never-ending war on Xmas.
Here's the link, and here's the message:
That's better. Now it's just another advertising banner. Would you like your atheism regular or 32 ounce, would you like some extra cinnamon on your atheism, can we upsize you to our pox on all religions special?
And while we're at bizarre moments in life, second on the angry Anglican 'world news' list was an odd-spot about a migrant Australian being kicked out of a television darts match because he looked like a stereotypical Jesus, and the crowd's chanting of Jesus got the organisers offside (true, and with accompanying video at the British Daily Terror, here).
Third on the angry Anglican world chart is a story on the England census: Why have the ranks of the religious declined?
That's in the good old US of A Christian Science Monitor, which raises a whole new Mary Baker Eddy level of madness to the discussion, since her use of "science" gave a whole new level of weirdness to the world.
But if nothing else, mention of Eddy and Christian Science might at least lead you to Mark Twain's satirical twist on the topic, here at Project Gutenberg, in which he proposes that the religion take on the monumental task of introducing the Congressional Blush.
No doubt these days Twain would be calling for the Huckabee Blush.
What do we learn from this?
Well it's clear that the angry Anglicans love to link to every hint of Xian persecution they can dredge up on the world wide web ... and perhaps it's just as well because their new site interface is as dull as ditchwater:
Lordy, lordy, a jacaranda tree in flower as the featured visual item, and never mind that we're now into summer, and ye ancient management cats and training support dogs, there's Moore College talk of performance strategies and results orientation, and scalps on the door.
Relax, we're here to help you "do better". Or else ...
But overlord, we converted ten people to Jesus this week oh dear sweet overlord ...
Yes but did you close? Do you know how to close? Did they sign in blood?
Did you upsize them to the Trucoat? Which reminds the pond of a favourite scene in a favourite movie
Jerry is sitting in his glassed-in salesman's cubicle just off the showroom floor. On the other side of his desk sit an irate customer and his wife.
Customer: We sat here right in this room and went over this and over this!
Jerry: Yah, but that TruCoat -
Customer: I sat right here and said I didn't want no TruCoat!
Jerry: Yah, but I'm sayin', that TruCoat, you don't get it and you get oxidization problems. It'll cost you a heck of lot more'n five hunnert -
Customer: You're sittin' here, you're talkin' in circles! You're talkin' like we didn't go over this already! Jerry: Yah, but this Anglican TruCoat -
Customer: We had us a deal here for nine-teen- five. You sat there and darned if you didn't tell me you'd get this car, these options, eternal salvation, a preferred pew, without the sealant, for nine-teen-five!
You catch the drift. You can read the rest of the screenplay here - the Coen brothers have great fun with the Trucoat, and the scene also turns up on YouTube here (in unfortunate 4:3 with bathtub sound, but without an ad).
Now all we need is a results orientated website for upwardly striving, results delivering Anglican ministers along the lines of the exam-measured My School TM site, and all will be well in the world, with Sydney Anglicans leading the world in converts and tithers curriculum performance (though strangely it seems we can't say the same for the school children of Australia, who are collectively a bunch of losers, fops, and no hopers, and should live with that guilt and sense of failure for the rest of their unpleasant, unhappy, dismal lives).
Okay, okay, the pond is a little light-headed in the rush to Xmas, so let's just take in a Pellism or two and call it quits.
Oh dear last week's rant for the Daily Terror is just a puff piece for the church, Christmas and the King, and a plug for St. Francis:
Francis has fed the Christian imagination for 800 years. He followed Christ in abject poverty and sparked widespread reforms. His love for nature and animals is famous. He taught that peace and goodness go together. He also made the first Christmas crib.
Eek! Poverty! No wait, it's worse, it's Abject Poverty!
Abject:
1. Brought low in condition or status.
2. Being of the most contemptible kind: abject cowardice.
3. Being of the most miserable kind; wretched: abject poverty.
Most miserable and contemptible poverty!
My good fellow, I feel the urgent need to put on a decent frock.
Please, spare no expense, make it of the very best and brightest materials. And can you arrange some adoring manservants to handle it, in a way that might send the late Princess Di red with envy? And can we have some dutiful worshippers looking suitably gob-smacked and impresssed?
That's better, there's nothing like a cappa magna to put all this idle chatter about abject poverty and cribs into perspective.
And while we're at it, could we dwell for a minute in a little unpretentious home, a kind of Roman shack near the Tiber? Perhaps we could borrow a little marble from the pagans?
Oh that's nice, St Francis should feel right at home.
Which reminds the pond that on the recent trip to New York, there on the taking of Pelham 1 2 3 seat were a couple of magazines from the Jehovah Witnesses, along with a booklet on what the bible really teaches.
They do that sort of thing, as a kind of outreach program, and the pond immediately confiscated them, as you'd do for any terrorist literature left on a train seat, which might influence the addle-brained or Mike Huckabee.
Towards the end of the pamphlet, the anon author clearly demonstrates that Jesus wasn't born in December and that the Christmas celebration is a complete fabrication, and it also goes about the business of explaining that great harlot and world empire Babylon the Great.
It doesn't name names, but the implications are pretty clear:
... this woman named Babylon the Great clearly represents the world empire of false religion, which includes all religions that stand in opposition to Jehoval God.
Can you think of a world religion, a great religious empire inclined to frippery, marble, frocks, demonic activity and the persecution of genuine prophets?
Phew, waiter, bring me a frock and some more marble, and please let's not mention St. Francis again, at least in polite circles, and certainly not to Tony Abbott, because his business and mining friends might start to worry ...
And yes, let's get this Xmas season over so everyone can relax on the beach, and forget Mike Huckabee exists ...
Dorothy, here's a good Sydney Anglican publication that Huckabee could recommend as a mandatory text for schools.It would surely be his answer to the push for gun control.
ReplyDeleteWell Huckster if god is so powerful and good why didn't he/she stop this fucking carnage? Rupert's Fox News are as evil as the person who committed this atrocity.
ReplyDeleteAn impeccable link as always first Anon. Medievalism and demonic possession and the science of biblical demonology are extremely useful guides to the modern world and the need for handguns - and not just as an episode guide to Supernatural...
ReplyDeleteAmazingly Sam Freney describes himself as sceptical, which shows that the abuse and misuse of language remains commonplace.
As for JC defeating the evil powers of the universe, the way the pond sees it, Sam and Dean never seem to sort out anything at all from episode to episode ... 7 seasons and a 100 episodes and they're still looking down the barrel of the apocalypse, not seeming to understand it's only a few days away ...
I have quite a lot of time for Huckabee. He was on Colbert's show and he came across as quite reasonable. I did some research on him (ie read about him on wikipedia) and found much to like. As governor of Arkansas he commuted far more death sentences and gave clemency to more prisoners than was wise for a Republican candidate, such that it became an issue for him in his nomination for president. He has a good record on the environment and is a strong supporter of alternative energy production. At one time he supported a CO2 cap-and-trade scheme.
ReplyDeleteBut there's no denying his Christianity, or at least his interpretation of it, and it does make him believe, do and say bizarre things. He is one of the most anti- of anti-abortionists, opposing it even for cases of rape and incest. He's an anti-evolutionist. And he says dumb, stupid, offensive things like how mass-murder of children is because they didn't say enough prayers.