I just sent this letter to my local fish wrapper. I've included a link at the end to my most recent Huffington Post essay:
I just read the AP story about Conservapedia.com, the Bible rewriting project proposing to erase the effects of "liberal academics" who have "watered down" Jesus by studying the ancient languages of the Bible. The linguists, one supposes, are all secret Satanists and cannot be trusted.
The group's founder, Andy Schlafly, is the son of Phyllis Schlafly. The apple has not fallen far from the tree; these are the same John Birchers and reactionary right-wingers of yore. Conservapedia is just a new offshoot of that poisonous tree, and Schlafly is the fruit of fringe insanity. The poor kid was raised to believe this gorp.
Over the decades, a nebulous root-system of direct-mail lists fed the paranoia of the stupid and "informed" the world of AM talk radio. Toxic to democracy, this monster has flourished in the age of the internet and media consolidation. Its tentacles pull the mixing-board levers of Fox News Channel, where Glenn Beck spews that same pollution into the mainstream of public opinion.
Birthers, death panels, black helicopters, lizard people, secret UN armies in Nebraska...where do you think these idiots come from? A majority of Republicans today actually believes the president was born in Kenya. How do you think that happened?
Now they want to turn the Bible itself into a weapon of culture war. This was exactly what Jesus meant when he said there would be many who cry "Lord, Lord!" that are too wicked for him to recognize.
But what I want to know is: given their long record of tinfoil-hat bizzarro fearmongering, how do these wackaloons and hoopleheads still merit the fair-handed attention of "liberal" media?
I would like to see journalists call them by their proper names: shills, hacks, and mixed nuts.
I just read the AP story about Conservapedia.com, the Bible rewriting project proposing to erase the effects of "liberal academics" who have "watered down" Jesus by studying the ancient languages of the Bible. The linguists, one supposes, are all secret Satanists and cannot be trusted.
The group's founder, Andy Schlafly, is the son of Phyllis Schlafly. The apple has not fallen far from the tree; these are the same John Birchers and reactionary right-wingers of yore. Conservapedia is just a new offshoot of that poisonous tree, and Schlafly is the fruit of fringe insanity. The poor kid was raised to believe this gorp.
Over the decades, a nebulous root-system of direct-mail lists fed the paranoia of the stupid and "informed" the world of AM talk radio. Toxic to democracy, this monster has flourished in the age of the internet and media consolidation. Its tentacles pull the mixing-board levers of Fox News Channel, where Glenn Beck spews that same pollution into the mainstream of public opinion.
Birthers, death panels, black helicopters, lizard people, secret UN armies in Nebraska...where do you think these idiots come from? A majority of Republicans today actually believes the president was born in Kenya. How do you think that happened?
Now they want to turn the Bible itself into a weapon of culture war. This was exactly what Jesus meant when he said there would be many who cry "Lord, Lord!" that are too wicked for him to recognize.
But what I want to know is: given their long record of tinfoil-hat bizzarro fearmongering, how do these wackaloons and hoopleheads still merit the fair-handed attention of "liberal" media?
I would like to see journalists call them by their proper names: shills, hacks, and mixed nuts.
Those ancient languages are foreign - why should we, as Americans, trust them to convey what God was thinking?
ReplyDeleteNever mind that we've found so many versions of certain books - have irrefutable evidence of redaction and insertions, never mind the tendentious, speculative and highly creative translation of certain words -- the King James crew had it right and as Americans we can say that with the authority that only militant ignorance provides.
Captain, wingnuts choose the simpler version because it is how they WISH the world worked. The actual universe is so difficult and complicated that explanations grounded in reality make them feel like they're those same confused high school kids struggling with science and math classes. Explanations based around the battle of good and evil have easily-understood motivations in their narratives. Facts make their brains hurt.
ReplyDeleteIf those Satanist liberals could travel back in time and insert a forged birth announcement for Obama in a Hawaiian newspaper, they could certainly go back even further and tamper with the Bible.
ReplyDeleteThe loony right has been making up its own reality for a long time. Maybe it was inevitable that they'd eventually want to make up their own Bible.
Perhaps it is fitting and proper to quote the chronicler of the Great Cephalopod, who said:
ReplyDelete“We live in a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
Alas, the New Dark Age has dawned. All hail Andy Schlafly, Glenn Beck, and the Sarahdon.
Ahh, my fresh-brewed morning coffee is ready, and I have not yet dumbed-down enough to greet the new day.