Sunday, October 09, 2016

In which the pond gets out the pitchfork to deal with sundry heretics ... it being the very best scientific method available to the ABC ...


(Above: get more details of your Chris Uhlmann doll at the Canberra Times here).


The pond switched off the lights long ago on the troubled Uhlmann, who clearly had a very disturbed upbringing, ranging from failed seminarian to staffer and candidate for the electorate of Molonglo with the Osborne Independent Group (do the Greg Hunt here, and follow the titillating links - by now everyone should be wary of stray walri).

Of course all the talk of heresy and the pitchfork crowd ...


... is the defensive, simplistic, simpleton mind set of a seminarian. And we know where that led us with the onion muncher ...

It would have been a tad smarter of Uhlmann if he hadn't lashed out in such emotive, and silly terms. Ascertaining the facts isn't a matter of heresy and pitchforks, but invoking that sort of imagery invites a Sunday meditation on Uhlmann's enormous silliness ...

Is there some kind of sign from the heavens that Uhlmann is now knocking around with the wrong crowd?


Ah, with scientific friends like that, no need for enemies ...

Of course the pond isn't going to go over the whole damn thing again, Eltham and others v. Uhlmann, and the twitterstorm that erupted, rather it's to suggest that if an alleged journalist can't tweet sensibly, then better not to tweet at all ...

When anyone, when discussing energy and matters technical, engineering and scientific, reaches for the heresy pitchfork, whether intended as satirical thrust or sublime defence, it's time to turn to reporting on the arts and give Eltham some decent competition...

Or perhaps we should turn to the angry Sydney Anglicans, because this being a meditative Sunday, it usually features the Divine ... but the shockingly slack Miranda the Devine is once more missing in action, with Peta and the drunk driver to do all the heavy lifting at the Sunday Terror ...

Oh sure, it's an epic yarn, another example of the former chairman at his finest ...


But the pond was over the former chairman long ago, without benefit of colonial jokes of the Joseph Conrad heart of darkness kind ... and so the pond perforce felt the need to turn back again to Elizabeth Farrelly's piece about the angry Sydney Anglicans ...

The set-up is here ...

...Two years earlier Newcastle's charismatic ex-dean Graeme Lawrence had been defrocked after a series of dramatic child-sex allegations. The new bishop, after a series of "listening" meetings across the diocese was, he says, shocked that people seemed more concerned for the disgraced abuser than his victims.

And so:



Naturally the pond headed off to read David Ould defend himself here, which saw the pond follow an Ould link to here

Ould's pleas of context and defence would have been better served if he hadn't felt the need to head that latter piece Royal Commission Evidence Claims Wide Concerns about Greg Thompson's Leadership.

In its defence, it's illiterate gobbledegook, but it clearly conflates and confuses Royal Commission Evidence with Wide Concerns ...

Still, confusion and conflation seems to be the angry Anglican style.

But at least that post contained a copy of the letter, which inter alia, is an angry Sydney Anglican ripper, albeit in the outer Sydney suburb of Newcastle ... (we keed, we keed Noveauxcastrians) ...


This is a classic "when did you stop beating your wife" routine, with some legal eagle helping out with the drafting, but without a nanosecond's thought as to the nature of the conflicting charges.

If he's making unsubstantiated charges, bummer dude, and if he's making substantiated charges, then he was an adult and asking for it ...

By golly, they're a mean and surly bunch, these angry Anglicans, and then the conclusion was - if the pond can't use 'Orwellian', perhaps we should mention Ken Kesey and a flight over the Cuckoo's Nest - unnerving to say the least, suggesting a trip to the shrink as the ultimate solution ...


Once again, the pond has to thank god for being an atheist and bless Her for Her infinite wisdom.

It seems, in angry Anglican la la land, if you can't get 'em by the usual means, you get 'em certified and sent off to the mad house ...

That story and letter did produce a little hand-wringing in Ould's comments section ...



All this is before we get on to the other matter in Farrelly's piece, which happens to involve Keith Mascord, who dares to show a little tolerance and acceptance. Apparently when he left Moore College they didn't think of keeping up his supply of kool aid.

Naturally Ould was at the gates here with another post ... and it too was a ripper ...

If someone is born with a tendency towards violence, we don’t call that “an example of God’s creative handiwork”. If someone is born with a tendency towards alcoholism (of which there is much greater scientific evidence than any supposed “gay gene”), we don’t call that “an example of God’s creative handiwork”. If someone is born predisposed to certain cancers, we don’t call that “an example of God’s creative handiwork”. No, on each occasion we recognise, as Athanasius puts it, that the image of God is marred, flawed by the outworking of sin in the cosmos. 
This is basic theology, friends. You might wish to concede the point on a global flood (although I wouldn’t personally – the approach itself betrays a certain attitude to Scripture) but that doesn’t mean you have to accept Mascord’s argument. Disagreements about the historicity of the flood are exactly that, disagreements over historical claims. Disagreements over being “born” gay are an entirely different category. That Mascord, who taught philosophy at Moore College for many years, seeks to equate the two arguments is particularly disappointing.


The catch here is the fundamentalist literalism that bedevils the angry Sydney Anglicans ... which comes in that parenthesis ...

You might wish to concede the point on a global flood (although I wouldn’t personally – the approach itself betrays a certain attitude to Scripture)

He wouldn't personally ... Rusty got it dead to rights in that film, except for the singular lack of all the dinosaurs... and so we're on the yellow brick road to Adam, Eve, all the rest of the Old Testament goat and camel herder tosh, and complimentary women ...

This means that, in the end, it's very hard to escape Farrelly's ultimate conclusion ...

It's all part of what Mascord calls "the terrible mistreatment of people who have a different view". Mascord's interpretation of this as "an implicit admission of weakness" suggests a last-gasp-of-the-patriarchy optimism. Or you can just call it bullying. 
Either way, we have a moral institution that punishes public advocates for tolerance and fairness more harshly than those who enact discrimination and abuse. As Jesus accused the Pharisees, "you strain out a gnat but swallow a camel."

Yes, a person who can invoke violence and cancer and alcoholism and cosmic sin while discussing homosexuality certainly knows how to swallow a camel ...and spit out gnats of abuse ...

And so to a few images from Twitter as the pond gives its favourite cartoonists a day of rest ...





Oh and then there's the new way forward to make America great again ...




2 comments:

  1. What!? Trump still there, despite legions of pilgrims clutching at their pearls?
    Maybe a bit of Donald Trump, Shamer in Chief will help.
    In a description of Murdoch’s entry into the British media business in the 1960s, The Economist once credited him with having “invented the modern tabloid newspaper—a stew of sexual titillation, moral outrage and political aggression.” Long before his most famous media property appeared on American cable, Murdoch imported this stew to the United States with his purchase of the New York Post in the mid-’70s. One of the first things he did was to order up a gossip column, the famous “Page Six.” The “heart—and spleen—of the paper,” as Vanity Fair once described it, the column was meant to bring the high and mighty down to the realm its readers occupied by exposing their hidden seediness.
    “Page Six” and the New York Post are what first made Trump famous. As a former “Page Six” editor aptly put it, the column “definitely played a role in helping push Donald Trump to the first round of his never-ending whatever.” An otherwise unremarkable heir of a real-estate fortune, Trump became the subject of a record number of Post covers for his carefully cultivated and basically false image as a Manhattan playboy. His salacious behavior and conspicuous lifestyle sold newspapers, just as they sell cable and Web ads today.


    If pushed on his "salacious behaviour" in the next debate, he could be ready with a line like "Well, why do women parade their sexuality around men?". Checkmate, Hillary. (Please, do not go the shrill.)
    The GOP know already what it would do for their chances if they dropped Trump at this stage. Far better for him to develop a sudden, life-threatening illness.

    ReplyDelete

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