It’s been entertaining watching American public “discourse” since the election. (I use that word in its broadest, most ridiculous sense, since nothing that hinges so completely on self-absorption, rank ignorance and pathological dishonesty can be accurately characterized by such a noble word. But indulge me. I’ve been working on my irony lately.)
On the one hand you have conservatives fainting dead away that we’re now in the clutches of a “socialist” president. Never mind that these folks wouldn’t know a real socialist if he was gnawing their balls off. Never mind that most of these folks think “socialist” is the French word for Negro. Never mind that Obama demonstrably is to socialism what Joe the Plumber is to brie-sucking Northeastern intellectualism. As arch-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert says, “this is a fact-free zone.”
On the other you have the righteous outrage of the progressosphere, which feels six different kinds of betrayed by a president who promised them the moon and stars and has now left them to what looks like at least a four-year walk of shame. If I might borrow from an old fraternity joke, imagine the following scene from the Oval Office: Full Story »
Orson Scott Card is a barking fascist asshat. Let me illustrate.
I always marveled at how some of my friends worshiped the writing of Orson Scott Card. Maybe, I thought, it’s because we’re North Carolinians and he’s from Greensboro. From my perspective he was nothing special, at best, and has in the last couple of decades evolved into perhaps America’s most overrated science fiction author. Ender’s Game was prescient in its way - in a world where weaponry is so technologized that war is a video game, of course kids can be uber-warriors. But when the boy is made into some kind of equally uber moralist and philosopher (or whatever the hell Speaker for the Dead was about) I smelled the pungent aroma of self-indulgence that so often attends SF writers of a certain stripe.
The Alvin Maker series was even less bearable. We were doing fine in Seventh Son, clipping through an interesting enough little story (assuming you could get past the inexplicably patronizing treatment of Native American names) and then - the damnedest what the fuck passage in all of known literature. Full Story »
Dr. Slammy was kind enough to put up a post earlier today that shows just how un-Christian people who call themselves Christians can actually be. And then I happened to be listening to my favorite Goth crooner, Voltaire, when one of my favorite songs came on: “God Thinks”, from Voltaire’s Almost Human album. Enjoy.
God thinks all blacks are obsolete farm eqipment
God thinks the Jews killed his son and must be punished
God thinks the white man is Satan
God, they know what God thinks
God thinks we should all convert to Judaism
God thinks we must all be Christians and
God thinks we should all embrace Islam
God thinks the only true religion is Hinduism
And I
I know what God thinks
God thinks you’re a waste of flesh
God prefers an Atheist Full Story »
33And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
- Matthew 25: 33-40
I was reminded of this little passage today as I reviewed these numbers: Full Story »
Gay marriage will open the door to incest, to polygamy, and every conceivable marriage arrangement demented minds can possibly conceive. If God does not then punish America, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.
Well, here’s a fine howdy-do: Rick Warren, pastor of the mother of all mega-churches, has been tapped to channel Jesusconduct a seancedeliver the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration. Because Warren is, you know, a “moderate.”
…in 2004 Warren declared that marriage, reproductive choice, and stem cell research were “non-negotiable” issues for Christian voters and has admitted that the main difference between himself and James Dobson is a matter of tone. He criticized Obama’s answers at the Faith Forum he hosted before the election and vowed to continue to pressure him to change his views on the issue of reproductive choice. He came out strongly in support of Prop 8, saying “there is no need to change the universal, historical definition of marriage to appease 2 percent of our population … Full Story »
By Jeff Huber William S. Lind, co-creator of the Fourth Generation Warfare concept and director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism, says a lot of smart things about national security, but he doesn’t say any of them about the issue of gays and women in the military. My admittedly limited experience of the gay lifestyle hasn’t endeared me to it: my older male dog humps my younger male dog, my younger male dog humps my leg, and I pay all the bills; an arrangement, come to think of it, not so different from my experience of marriage. So I don’t, so to speak, have a dog in the fight over whether gays or women should be “allowed” to serve in the military, but Lind makes such a cock and bull argument against it I feel obliged to apologize on behalf of the entire heterosexual male community.
In a pair of recent opinion pieces, Lind asserts that we shouldn’t let women and gays in the armed services because if we do, “men who want to prove they are real men will not join.”
Lind’s relative manliness doesn’t necessarily add to or subtract from his opinion’s validity, but unnamed sources who knew him when assure me that the closest he ever came to wearing a uniform was Full Story »
A person consists both of their being and of the works that their being produces. Whether those works are physical or as intangible as the time spent on a particular task.
A traditional Westminster approach to politics, with a typical Left / Right political duopoly, has become the gold standard of democratic representation. It is also conflicted and inherently incapable of resolving its core contradiction. Full Story »
2 Timothy 1:7: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
James Dobson and the Christian Right activists at Focus on the Family seem to have forgotten that scriptural promise. Then again, there is a great deal of the Bible they seem to have forgotten, or chosen to blatantly ignore. Their real “focus” is on scare tactics to frighten conservative evangelicals away from any flirtation with voting for Barack Obama, who may as well be the devil incarnate masquerading beneath a veneer of seductive charisma.
The latest instrument in this campaign of emotional intimidation is a “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America,” [download PDF at website] produced by Focus on the Family Action, the PAC arm of Dobson’s organization. Full Story »
DNC08, day one observation: there’s just way the hell more going on that we can cover. There are 11 of us, and I’m not sure we could do what we feel like we ought to be doing if we had 111.
It’s especially tough because S&R isn’t and never has been about being the firstest and the fastest. We rarely scoop anybody. Instead, we like to digest, to ponder, to reflect, to think as thoroughly as we can and finally produce something that takes the reader deeper. But today - there’s so much that the team has covered, so many people we’ve talked to, so many pictures we’ve taken… When it comes to information coming in, it’s been like drinking from a firehose. Full Story »
He maneuvered the sign according to my directions, forgave my lamentable awkwardness with a camera and asked me where I was from. Then he hugged me. I think I felt something wet on my cheek.I’m praying it’s not what I thought it was.
The Catholic League’s request to Leah Daughtry to ban the blogs BitchPhD and Towleroad from the Democratic National Convention came as something of a shock to those of us here at Scholars and Rogues. Frankly, Mr. Donohue, we are hurt. Our offices contain no balloon figures of Jesus, with or without genitalia (you say “apparently albino penis,†I say “loincloth†– oh wait! There’s the penis! Or should it be Penis?). Our site features no links to intensely homoerotic coverage of the hottest Olympic athletes, despite insistent lobbying from at least two of our staff members. Our humble blog, unlike Daily Kos, may never become the Internet apotheosis of evil radicalism. We know our place. We are what we are.
What we are, Mr. Donohue, is a blog at least ten times as offensive to the Catholic League as the so-called “patently obscene†publications to which you so vehemently object.
Her: Why do even the nicest straight guys get weird when you talk about gay sex? Are men just naturally more homophobic than women?
Me: We’re talking gay male sex , right? Her: Yeah, of course. Straight chicks don’t act like that when you talk about lesbians.
Me: Uncontaminated ones don’t. Her: Uncontaminated?
Me: By patriarchal fundamentalist religions… but that’s a whole different can of writhing phallic worms. Her: Oh, right. But what’s the deal with uncontaminated guys?
Me: You mean, why do their anal sphincters snap shut with a faintly audible *pop* right before they remember to mention all their gay friends? Her: Yeah, the sphincter snap.
Me: Let me think about it… Her: You’re going to use this for that Guide thing, aren’t you? It’s about men, not women.
Her: E? E? E?????
Her: Goddamnit. Don’t use my name, for Christ’s sake.
If you’re following America’s electoral theater at all, you know that we have a candidate with a preacher problem. And that the candidate in question has been put in the uncomfortable position of having to repudiate some of said preacher’s remarks (while not alienating those voters in the flock who actually, you know, agree with what the Reverend was saying). In case you haven’t been paying attention, the controversial cleric has pronounced God’s doom upon certain of the nation’s citizens, and the backlash against him and his favorite for the White House has significantly damaged the candidate’s chances.
Of course, I’m talking about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama. Errr, wait … that’s not right. That’s not who I’m talking about at all. Full Story »
NOTE: I reference a rather vulgar article from a recent edition of a publication whose name I have omitted, along with the author and the original name of the piece. I can’t for the life of me shut up completely about it, but at the same time I don’t intend this to be a hit piece, especially with the amazing way in which the issue was handled by the publication after the community gave its input. So, yeah, I’m using my First Amendment right, and being consarned opinionated about it, but with no malicious intent — this ark of snark may well hit an iceberg, but I won’t take anyone else down with me.
Chalk another one up to the gaytriarchy.
Once upon a time, a column in a Denver-area LGBT magazine was met with a brief but pointed shitstorm, prompting a retraction and official apology.
In case you don’t keep up with LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender — just think “gender outlaw” or “it’s those damn queers again”) media, a second-grade Douglas County boy is returning to school presenting as a girl, with the support of her parents and the school, which is going through the trouble to accommodate this change with pamphlets for interested parents and building gender-neutral restrooms…wait for it… Full Story »
Something big happened a few nights ago in Iowa. Barack Obama began the evening as one of the top two contenders for the Democratic nomination and by the time people went to bed he was John F. Kennedy.
This might sound like hyperbole - and to be sure, the race is far from won - but if the results we saw in the Hawkeye State last Thursday are replicated in New Hampshire and beyond, then what we are seeing may be a defining shift in American politics and culture. The key factor is the emergence of the 75-100 million strong Millennial Generation as a political force. Let’s look at some of the evidence.
The Young Voter PAC’s roundup provides ample data for consideration. Full Story »
A modest proposal, perhaps.
Orson Scott Card is a barking fascist asshat. Let me illustrate.
Well, here’s a fine howdy-do: Rick Warren, pastor of the mother of all mega-churches, has been tapped to 
2 Timothy 1:7: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
If you’re following America’s electoral theater at all, you know that we have a candidate with a preacher problem. And that the candidate in question has been put in the uncomfortable position of having to repudiate some of said preacher’s remarks (while not alienating those voters in the flock who actually, you know, agree with what the Reverend was saying). In case you haven’t been paying attention, the controversial cleric 
Colorado’s most infamous asspipe, Douglas Bruce, is at it again.
This might sound like hyperbole - and to be sure, the race is far from won - but if the results we saw in the Hawkeye State last Thursday are replicated in New Hampshire and beyond, then what we are seeing may be a defining shift in American politics and culture. The key factor is the emergence of the 75-100 million strong Millennial Generation as a political force. Let’s look at some of the evidence.
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