• You may remember him for his later, lush 'n' luxe blues stuff, and that's all very fine. I love B.B. King, now passed, for his slightly cheesy "B.B. 'Blues Boy' King" stompers from the 50s like the one above. Sure sounds like him and the "Orchestra" are having a good time. I expect some of my readers have their own favorites to recommend.
• Many conservatives, even ones who are not Rod "The Get-Ready Man" Dreher, are bitching about that poll showing a slightly smaller percentage of Christians in America than once there was. At National Review David French knows why: "Why Does ‘Organized Religion’ Get a Bad Rap? Because the Elite Lies About It." Evil liberals say Jesus people are obsessed with cultural issues like gay marriage, but the truth is Christians contribute heavily to charity. Yes, it's the old "society claims I'm a pedophile, but I bought twenty tickets to the Policeman's Ball" argument. More interesting to me is this claim:
Sexual politics is simply not a dominant topic compared to scriptural study, discussions of family, or exhortations to serve the poorest and most disadvantaged members of the community. If I were to critique the church, I’d say we need to discuss the sexual revolution issues a bit more — to equip kids and families to face the cultural onslaught.Don't talk about it enough, huh? Let's look at the past few examples of French's own writing at National Review. What picture of Christianity do you get from it? There's not a lot about charity in there -- in fact, I found no David French posts at all promoting alms to the poor. (Come on, it's National Review!) Here's what I did see:
"The Clintons, Tom Brady, and the ‘Scoreboard’ Life" (Shorter: Libtards cheat because they don't have Jesus);Etc. And here are the records from the other times we've caught French's culture-war act. (This one will do if you can't read them all.) All told I'd say the biggest PR problem Christianity has isn't "Elite Lies About It" -- it's people like David French.
"When Crusades Meet Courtrooms" and "Three Recent Lawsuits Challenge the ‘Rape Crisis’ Storyline" (Shorter: Rape is not the fault of the men lying bitches falsely accuse of raping them, it's the fault of the sexual revolution);
"Why a Huckabee Loss Would Be a Win for Religious Conservatives" (Shorter: Because all the other GOP candidates hate gays and fornication as much as Huckabee does. Eat it, libtards!);
"Obama’s Crackdown on Dissent Has Made Conservatives a Little Paranoid — and Rightly So" (Shorter: If Ted Cruz was President libtards would so be just as paranoid about Jade Helm as we are, except we aren't paranoid because Obama really is a monster);
"Comedy, Cowardice, or Both?" (Shorter: SNL libtards didn't draw Muhammed! Sure, it was funny, but what's that got to do with anything?);
"Liberals Peer into Your Heart and See the Darkness Inside" (Shorter: Libtards are mean and hateful. Not like us!)
• OK, here's the advertising portion of the program: A friend of mine in New York is between freelance gigs DON'T RUN AWAY SHE DOESN'T WANT A HANDOUT only another freelance gig. Métier includes branding, marketing, research, strategy, communications, social media, digital product development, content and product creation, etc. Drop me a note if you've got something for her.
• Melissa Langsam Braunstein of The Federalist testifies to "listening to a panel at AEI on Monday night, during which several contributors to The Dadly Virtues: Adventures from the Worst Job You’ll Ever Love discussed their take on fatherhood." Sounds like a corker:
I cannot imagine a similar panel of mothers laughing as they described purposely breaking their child’s leg, as P.J. O’Rourke’s son believed he did, while regaling the audience with the saga of teaching that young son how to ski. The experience taught O’Rourke that he’s better off being the breadwinner who can afford ski lessons.And this:
Tucker Carlson’s presentation may have been the most different from what a panel of mothers might offer. Amidst his lighthearted remarks, Carlson repeatedly mentioned that he’s not reflective about his parenting and takes no responsibility for any of his four children’s failings; he believes any mistakes his children make are strictly their own, and he does never holds his wife or himself liable.And this:
Jonah Goldberg sounded endearingly clueless...Stop to take a breath here.
.... – since we gather his daughter’s alright now – as he described a fall she took during toddlerhood that resulted in a sizable forehead gash. Apparently, Goldberg was still new enough to parenting that he didn’t realize his daughter’s bloody face needed to be stitched up professionally. Luckily, his sister-in-law was able to advise via telephone and pass along the good advice to wait for a plastic surgeon at the hospital.Braunstein's conclusion:
This is all to say: fatherhood sounds rather liberating. Whatever our cultural expectations of men, it seems our standards for fathers are less exacting (and crazy-making) than those for American mothers. Having listened to the fathers on this panel, I dare say that difference is largely driven by the fact that men aren’t critical of one another’s parenting in the same way that women can be...Either than or these guys are just a bunch of fucking idiots.
Bohica!
ReplyDeleteSad to see another great go. Just lucky that I got to see him, along with so many of the other blues greats, in my youth. I still go in for the classic.
ReplyDeleteI just found out there is a concert film of BB King and Joan Baez at Sing Sing. I need to watch that asap.
ReplyDeletewww.youtube.com/watch?v=LWLAAzOBoBI
ReplyDeleteIt's really important to have preachers tell us what to do, unless they disagree with us: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/israel-hawks-to-pop-francis-stay-out-of-politics-117929.html
ReplyDeleteI am genuinely looking forward to Popey's address to Congress in the fall, invited by Boehner.
"I’d say we need to discuss the sexual revolution issues a bit more — to equip kids and families to face the cultural onslaught."
ReplyDeleteWasn't the sexual revolution, like 50 years ago? Or if he is talking about the other sexual revolution, Lawrence v Texas is a mere dozen years old... anyway, the point is that cruise has long since sailed.
And whatever this current era is, it's got nothing to do with a sexual revolution, and everything to do with ending the treatment of gays as second-class citizens. Or has David French not realized that, with his mind so distracted by thoughts of buttsechs?
"The church gets a bad rap because the elite lies about it, claiming it is like me, when it is not. Therefore the church should be more like me so that the things the elites say to drive people away from it will be true. I am not a crackpot."
ReplyDeleteAll told I'd say the biggest PR problem Christianity has isn't "Elite Lies About It" -- it's people like David French.
ReplyDeleteAnd people like Fred Phelps, Pat Robertson, Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker, Billy Graham's spawn, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, Focus on the Family, Michelle Bachmann, Pope Benedict, Joel Osteen--basically, every public faced of organized religion that people in this country might recognize. Every time the average person sees one of these people on TV, there are only two possible messages coming through: 1.) hate the homos and the sluts, and 2.) give me money.
For some reason, those two messages seem to have lost a lot of their charismatic appeal.
As Zhou Enlai didn't say, it's too soon to judge.
ReplyDeleteObamacare Slut Pills / Hobby Lobby was only last year.
ReplyDeleteI guess so. Waging a proxy war for sexytime-regulation by fighting healthcare reform, all under the umbrella of Religious Freedom...
ReplyDeleteThank you for the reminder.
Tom Brady is a godless liberal? The Catholic Tom Brady who met W several times including going to a State of the Union speech but pointedly snubbed Obama? The Tom Brady who says his favorite president is Gerald Ford(!!!)?
ReplyDeleteWow, Americans are pointing out that Christianity doesn't look like fun? As a recovering Catholic who was raised on Lives of the Saints, bleeding crucifixes, and Offering It Up to the Souls in Purgatory, I cannot imagine how they arrived at that conclusion.
ReplyDeleteMétier includes randing
ReplyDeleteAyn or Paul?
If I were to critique the church, I’d say we need to discuss the sexual revolution issues a bit more — to equip kids and families to face the cultural onslaught.
ReplyDeletei am all in agreement here: the churning cultural foment as capital seeks out more and newer and more novel niche markets to exploit can---wha--hey, david, man, where are you going??
Very funny, typo fixed, thanks.
ReplyDeleteFavorite president is Gerald Ford? I assume as a fellow Wolverine?
ReplyDeleteIt kills me that Zhou didn't say that. Such a brilliant thing to have said.
ReplyDeleteAnd that new pope, the commie one who seems to think life is mainly about sharing and love, not about following detailed rules? You don't hear a lot of these guys rushing to praise him in their PR releases.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine why otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI saw him ca. 1980, and boy was he an entertainer. Two-thirds of the crowd seemed to be middle-aged black women, and they loved B.B.
ReplyDeleteIt hard to image the world of music if he hadn't existed. He taught least two generations of guitarists how to play. A few took what he did to another level, but they never could have done it without Mr. King's shoulders to stand on.
"Liberals cheat because they don't have Jesus. Pay no attention to the Newt behind the curtain."
ReplyDeleteWhy Does ‘Organized Religion’ Get a Bad Rap? Because the Elite Lies About It
ReplyDeleteUhhhhgh. This again, huh? Okay, here's what you need to do: Get rid of Bryan Fischer. And I don't mean "He's technically not our spokesman even though we still print everything he writes." I mean dump him entirely. And get people to quit listening to him on the radio so he can't keep that up either. Once you're done with that, see what you can do about Tony Perkins and Matt Barber and all those other people who don't represent evangelism even though they have millions and millions of followers each.
Seriously, it's not like the "Elite" are digging a bunch of fuckwit bloggers out of the depths of the internet and putting them on TV. Hey, you're tired of people assuming that hating on queers is the cornerstone of Christianity? So am I. But maybe instead of pissing and moaning about the media, the actual solution is to do something about all the gatekeepers who keep trying to kick people with "liberal" views out of the faith in order to make it as narrow as possible.
Maybe he's a huge Presidential pardon fan?
ReplyDelete"I just really love his cars, man!"
ReplyDeleteIt's always a little sad to see them still fighting a rear guard action (as it were) so long after the fact. I think the fight is now a kind of ritual or cultural marker. The fighters are all using birth control and having sex like everyone else. (Except maybe for the wetsuit/dildo thing... maybe not like everyone else?)
ReplyDeleteFirst heard him on the juke in 1970 at our favorite breakfast stop at Lowry AFB, Colo. Along with "I'm Down," my reaction was "WTF?" Don't get no better.
ReplyDeleteI know someone who's ex-Catholic and, several decades ago, was told as a kid in his Catholic school that anything he suffered was deserved - and this was a kid who was badly abused at home. He was also physically abused at his school by the teachers, because this behavior was still permitted at the time...
ReplyDeleteThe anti-gay thing is going to be a new southern strategy. Like clockwork, every four years, we'll hear GOP candidates calling for "religious freedom"; in dogwhistle terms, it's an anti-gay rallying cry to the religious fundies.
ReplyDeleteThese ahistorical narratives are wonderful, like the one about rape being the fault of the 'sexual revolution.' Because clearly before that we didn't have any problems with rape or sexual abuse. (And not-so-coincidentally, the people who cling to these narratives often have a difficult time understanding the concept of consent.)
ReplyDeleteOnce you're done with that, see what you can do about Tony PerkinsYeah, that would be the same Tony Perkins who just snapped his fingers and imperiously summoned Scott Walker to a confab about his evangelical bona fides. I presume that sexual politics will simply not be a dominant topic compared to scriptural
ReplyDeletestudy, discussions of family, or exhortations to serve the poorest and
most disadvantaged members of the community.
I cannot imagine a similar panel of mothers laughing as they described purposely breaking their child’s legAt an AEI conference? You should easily be able to imagine it, Melissa.
ReplyDeleteApparently, Goldberg was still new enough to parenting that he didn’t realize his daughter’s bloody face needed to be stitched up
professionally.Is "new enough to parenting" really an excuse for this? I know, let's give Jonah a bloody face and see if he thinks a doctor needs to get involved then.
he believes any mistakes his children make are strictly their own, and he does never holds his wife or himself liable.In unrelated news, African-American parents need to start taking some responsibility for a change.
This is all to say: fatherhood sounds rather liberating.Well, it probably can be, if one is a lazy, morally-bankrupt monster.
Jesus Christ--O'Rourke, Goldberg, AND Carlson are reproducing? How am I not supposed to get depressed by this news?
ReplyDeleteJust do what I do, and think about the impending meteor.
ReplyDeleteJesus. I'm a slack dad (in the sense that I try not to give my son too many hangups as we do things like homework and sports together), but if I were anything like how Braunstein describes the conservative panels, I'd be in fucking jail. The casual cruelty and chummy stupidity she "laughs off" (I'm convinced this was more of a passive-aggressive shiv) reads like an indictment of these fucking dickheads.
ReplyDeleteRand Paul's presentation drew guffaws when he described teaching his son how to drive with a hand over one eye, and how to tell a flight attendant to "stick those sealtbelts up your ass."
ReplyDeleteThe surprise bit at the end was the best, though.
"Actually, I've never spoken to the little bastard after he watered my scotch and keyed Ron's BMW. Anybody here seen him?"
Not to get all Drehery, but least my Catholicism gave me the guilt that prodded me to good works (well, not now, but once). Beyond social justice and spiritual nourishment, I don't know what else religion should be for. The religion that people like French demand is so utterly foreign to me, it's completely alienating and makes my secular humanism far far far more compelling.
ReplyDelete"And they call me a cockeyed optimist..."
ReplyDeleteWe're just thinking you people are all about Teh Ghey because you can't fucking shut up about it.
ReplyDeleteGosh.
ReplyDeleteThose charming stories remind me of my own Dad, specifically a fun incident when I was young where we were having tacos for dinner and he thought it'd be the height of yuckitude to put the "all-the-way-up-the-thermometer" hot sauce he liked on my taco, then encourage me to eat it. Whee! (I don't let him edit my food any more). Har! Har! Oh, the laughs we had, or, rather, he had at my expense.
Having listened to the fathers on this panel, I dare say that difference is largely driven by the fact that men aren’t critical of one another’s parenting in the same way that women can be...
ReplyDeleteI agree. For example, there is no male equivalent to someone like Melissa Braunstein to breathlessly berate any man who continues to have a career after becoming a father.
Beyond social justice and spiritual nourishment, I don't know what else religion should be for.
ReplyDeleteAnother difference between conservatives and liberals - liberals think religion should be a tool for social justice and a form of psychological help for individuals when they need it. Conservatives think that religion should be a tool for upholding tradition and enforcing conformity on a community.
And that's the real root of the "problem" French is seeing with young people leaving their religions behind - they're rejecting the tradition that conservative religions are there to enforce on them. You can save Christianity for younger people by adapting it, but that would destroy the whole purpose of religion as far as conservatives are concerned.
I enjoy NPR's Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me! The major downside is that they occasionally have PJ O'Rourke as a panelist.
ReplyDeleteWhen they introduce him it's always as a "humorist", which ought to get them sued for journalistic malpractice.
One can simply imagine (and shudder) at what the offspring of Goldberg, Carlson, et al. will be like when they reach adulthood. Perhaps we'll all be lucky and they will notice that their fathers really are colossal dicks, and thus choose to live lives that are honorable, decent, tolerant, and generous.
ReplyDeleteMore likely, though, each and every one of them will be attached lips-first to the wingnut welfare machine. And each will be told how they earned there positions, how the world rewards merit, and how they are just naturally superior for having won the only race that ever mattered in their lives--to be the lucky sperm that got into mommy's egg.
I remember hearing once from someone who attended a live taping of a panel that included O'Rourke that they had to cut a huge chunk of his material because it wasn't so much jokes as mean-spirited broadsides, and that the audience would audibly groan after a lot of what he said.
ReplyDeletehaha tucker carlson has a wife and kids?
ReplyDeleteneat!
Is "new enough to parenting" really an excuse for this? I know, let's give Jonah a bloody face and see if he thinks a doctor needs to get involved then.
ReplyDeleteWas he raised in one of those bubbles so he never experienced a scalp/head injury as a child? I think I had at least 4 trips to the doctor as a kid for stitches.
The sneaky Musilmy Communist kind, of course!
ReplyDeleteYeah, my dad used me to perform heroically by proxy one time when we were visiting our grandparent's rented cottage at the lake. I was wading near the shoreline in the bushes and somehow came up with about ten leeches biting on my little legs. So he took his cigarette and burned them off one by one, because that's how they did it in WWII, which was his favorite time. It hurt a lot and I felt like a coward and a traitor for crying because they didn't cry in WWII.Later I heard that just pouring salt water on 'em makes them fall off. Hee, dads do the darnedest things.
ReplyDeleteThis whole "the elites lie about the church" thing is predicated on the canard that the people leaving the church are unfamiliar with it. Uh, hello, these are church insiders rejecting religion, not potential members choosing not to join.
ReplyDeleteOh, and since when are the clergy not considered an "elite"?
Sexual politics is simply not a dominant topic compared to scriptural
ReplyDeletestudy, discussions of family, or exhortations to serve the poorest and
most disadvantaged members of the community. If I were to critique the
church, I’d say we need to discuss the sexual revolution issues a bit more — to equip kids and families to face the cultural onslaught.
Oh, fuck me...
Since you and your buddies are actually doing your damned best to do the opposite, feel free to blow it out your ass.
Oh, they're just plain folks, who you'd like to have a beer with if, you know, they didn't scream and wave crucifixes at you if you did.
ReplyDeleteIs "new enough to parenting" really an excuse for this? I know, let's give Jonah a bloody face and see if he thinks a doctor needs to get involved then.
ReplyDeleteI've spent a bit of time caring for a small child who is not my son, and I can tell you that if he started gushing blood from his face, we'd be at the fucking hospital ASAP. "Hey, I'm new, I didn't know any better." Take a wild guess, dipshit.
Apparently, Goldberg was still new enough to parenting that he didn’t realize his daughter’s bloody face needed to be stitched up professionally.
ReplyDelete"Damn, she's really bleeding, but I've been playing WoW for five hours and the Hammer of Thunderbolts is going to respawn in the Caves of Terror. I can't let some smarmy Pajama Boy grab it out from under me. Man, that gash on her forehead looks bad, maybe I should take her to the ER... nah, lotta negroes and gangbangers there. Besides, I'm proof that head injury sufferers can earn a lot of cashola. Ooh, here comes the respawn: 'Leeeeroy Jenkins!!!!' What's that kid crying about? She'll throw me off my game!"
Hint: Blood is supposed to say inside.
ReplyDeleteHey Roy, you left something out of that Federalist piece:
ReplyDeleteJames Lileks was highly entertaining...
Okay, three things:
1.) James Lileks still gets work? Seriously?
2.) No, he wasn't. I wasn't there and I'm still positive of that.
3.) Seriously, is there another guy who writes under the same name or something? I would believe that before accepting that James Lileks still has fans in 2015.
The lazy shit dad is the Jew of injured toddler fascism!
ReplyDeleteRanding does sound like a niche fetish, like frottage.
ReplyDeleteWell...some people didn't have a problem with it.And those were the people who matter.
ReplyDeleteJames Lileks was highly entertaining back when he stuck to retro culture and kept his big mouth shut about his post-9/11 wingnuttery
ReplyDeleteCompleted.
Well...you can burn leeches off. Ideally or rather in reality its not any different from putting salt on them. YOu apply the cigarette or the match to the back of the leech and the leech pulls back. If he managed to burn you at the same time its not because "that's the way they did it in WWII" but because he was probably drunk.
ReplyDeletebecause he was probably drunk
ReplyDeleteOr being an asshole, no offense, Magatha.
"If something goes wrong, bring back the blood."
ReplyDelete'Leeeeroy Jenkins!!!!'
ReplyDeleteMister, we could use a man like Leeroy Jenkins ... to run through the offices at National Review.
He's just teaching his daughter Compassionate Conservatism.
ReplyDelete"'Least I got chicken."
ReplyDelete"Randing" - standing your date up but insisting they send you a nude (or better yet, sexually explicit) selfie, that very same evening.
ReplyDeleteWell, it is Friday so it's not entirely OT, cuz that's when the new moving pictures open. Super-annuated nerd that I am, saw MAD MAX - FURY ROAD and it's chock full o' mythic, over-the-top commentary on the patriarchy, women and warfare. Oh,and righteous car wrecks. One of the three villainous warlords is literally draped in ammunition belts and another looks like a plutocratic fat-cat by Thomas Nast , if Nast had illustrated pulps like Amazing Stories. Yes, the MRA goobers are miffed over Charlize Theron's character but wait 'til they sit through the film and reach the two-thirds point. No spoilers here but those fellows won't know whether to shit or go blind. "What a lovely day!"
ReplyDeleteWell but see, if he hired a hitman to take out Thomas and Alito, then he'd have to hire a hitman to take out that hitman -- otherwise the guy could talk! And then a hitman to hit the hitman who hit the hitman -- it gets complicated fast, and could fall apart and undo him. WHEREAS the Walmart round-up only requires he give an order, and [snap] like that, thousands of American soldiers will start gunning down Texans in the street.
ReplyDeleteA long time ago there was a dude who's opinions frequently came up in discussions about the purpose of religion. What was his name? Doug? Garth? Todd?
ReplyDeleteAnybody remember?
Is that when it is revealed that the protagonist has been Mad Maxine all along?
ReplyDeletePay no attention to the Newt, or Limbaugh, or Sanford, Vitter, or Craig, or any of the dozens of other GOP Family Values crusaders behind the curtain or in the closet.
ReplyDeleteand they kill two people, and they kill two people and so on and so on.
ReplyDeleteY'know how the MRA dudebros are always raving about sitcoms and commercials making men look stupid? Well, now we see AEI's in on the feminist plot to destroy men, masculinity, and peeing while standing up.
ReplyDeleteUntil they kill Sy Hersh cuz otherwise it's all going to end up in the London Review of Books.
ReplyDeleteWow! Thanks for turning me on to "You Upset Me Baby." That's one I've never heard before. I'm adding it to my iPod straightaway. Isn't that band tight!
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I've always neglected B.B. somewhat because of the commercial sound of his later work, but this single makes me want to hear more of his earlier stuff. Really sounds good; really pushes my buttons.
God rest his soul.
At 67, Peej still tries to fall back on his the Brash Young National Lampooner schtick. The Andy Rooney Irrelevant Curmudgeon schtick is apparently beyond his grasp.
ReplyDeleteI like to think they'll rebel as teens -- you know, listen to lots of Pete Seeger, hang Mapplethorpe posters all over their room, wear Winona LaDuke campaign buttons to the dinner table...
ReplyDeleteSaw him down at the courthouse going to alcohol education class the other day...
ReplyDeleteWhat sort of self-respecting tyrant does with the Walmart round-up first?
ReplyDeleteThe lazy and shiftless kind that just never gets around to the important stuff till it's almost too late. If we get to Jan '17 and still aren't under martial law, we would do well to remind the wingnuts of those two facts as often as we can. As 1/20 approaches, the asshole puckerage will be audible on Uranus...
"Damn! If only I had an intern on me right now!"
ReplyDeleteMore likely, though, each and every one of them will be attached lips-first to the wingnut welfare machine.
ReplyDeleteI'd write a couple books about that called The Class Teat and The Other Class Teat, but Harlan would sue my ass...
Don't worry, Rod will sort everything out about his Benedict Option (or, appropriately, Rod's BO) on his upcoming trip to romantic southern France and northern Italy with one of his male buddies. No, I'm not making this up. Check out his post today (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/portrait-of-the-autist-as-a-middle-aged-man/) where he reveals his near-Asperger's in a quest for flattery and praise for his deep courage (I didn't know Asperger's made you wear stupid glasses or make your life sound like an outtake from "The Ambiguously Gay Duo", but hey, I guess you learn something every day).
ReplyDeleteI guess Rod and his buddy will both get to thoroughly soak in Rod's BO.
They're just traveling their to sample a selection of French sausages. Ron will rather ostentatiously mispronounce boudin as "butt in".
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh, Aimai, it's like you were there. Alcohol related misconduct. Why do I always forget to remember that this was a consistent theme? (Except for the years that they were on a kaleidoscopic regime of diet pills - some time in the 60s - and they were lean and gorgeous and mean as snakes.) It wasn't because I was especially bad or unloveable. They were just drunk a lot. I had to make it into a tragedy because I was a little kid and they were the center of the universe. It had to be my fault. But they were just drunk a lot.
ReplyDeleteIt was generally acknowledged that he was obnoxious, even by people who kind of liked him.
ReplyDeleteGod, what great stuff he wrote! Time to dig in the bookshelves for them. Thanks for the reminder.
ReplyDeleteFrench really is an odious piece of work. He used to write regular columns demonstrating his Christian compassion by telling us what subhuman savages Muslims are. He proudly told the world that his young son had adopted that American sniper guy as a bedroom wall hero after he saw the movie. He wears his Christian faith with arrogance and contempt for anyone not like him.
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell are they smoking over there at Das Federaliste? Those sentences can't have been put together by a sober person.
ReplyDeleteSaul of Tarsus.
ReplyDeleteMother. Fuck. Now there's a warm-blooded fish? THANKS OBAMA.
ReplyDeleteBrian
ReplyDeleteThe badge of a true Christianist.
ReplyDeletebleeding crucifixes
ReplyDeleteGod, my mother had one of those. I liked gory monster movies even as a kid (well, gory for the '50s) but I always thought that was gross.
Ah, well, the anti-papist contingent (no small percentage of the majority party) will probably do a Joe Walsh on Pope Frankie.
ReplyDeleteHe'll be going back to the Vatican muttering, "and here I thought that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wuz nutz...."
I am hearing Archie and Edith singing this comment.
ReplyDeleteOffering It Up to the Souls in Purgatory
ReplyDeleteWow, I had no idea that was a thing. Thank you for making me look it up and learn something.
These are people who still listen to Hal Lindsey, whose initial claim to fame was predicting that Jesus would return by 1981. Obama's plot to seize Texas and make it subject to the federal government (oh, if only) will go the same place as "Economic apocalypse from hyperinflation is imminent," or "The 'blood moon' of September 2015 signals dire things," or "Al Gore has boxcars ready to remove the 'environmentally irresponsible' excess population if he wins," or "Bill Clinton is going to refuse to leave office at the end of his second term," or the whitey tape: that dimension where missing socks and ballpoint pens end up.
ReplyDelete"Now, Scott, please do a dance for us. Nothing risque, of course, but, amusing."
ReplyDeleteWhich reminds of an exchange I had with a chemical engineer of a somewhat libertarian bent. Someone asked about some scars on my arm (childhood injury due to inherent klutzism), and the engineer began going on about how scar tissue wasn't good for anything. Now, this was simply a reflection of his firm belief in better living through chemistry, that scar tissue was a biochemical inferiority.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, all I could say was, "well, maybe, except for that 'keeping blood from leaking out' business." It wasn't the first time he looked like I'd whacked him in the forehead with a two-by-four.
And it wasn't the last.
Just wait until Dennis Miller gets old. He'll make O'Rourke look like Dave Garroway.
ReplyDeleteAnd, even with that extreme conspiratorial bent, they simply can't bring themselves to even accept the possibility that the Bushies contrived evidence to gin up wars in the Middle East and central Asia, and in the aftermath, when it was overwhelmingly obvious that the "evidence" ranged from outright fabrication at the worst to intentionally misreading intelligence at the least, they just stammered like Ralph Kramden and ran for cover.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that distinguishes their whackfuckery from all the rest that floats around this nation is its partisanship.
Amidst his lighthearted remarks, Carlson repeatedly mentioned that he’s not reflective about his parenting and takes no responsibility for any of his four children’s failings; he believes any mistakes his children make are strictly their own, and he does never holds his wife or himself liable.
ReplyDeleteTucker Carlson couldn't be reflective about anything if you dipped him from head to toe in molten silver. As surprises go, this isn't one.
If you're about to confess to actually hitting him in the head with a two-by-four, you might want to chat with a lawyer first.
ReplyDeleteSee? You can't trust anyone!
ReplyDeleteThat thing reads like some sort of legal disclaimer. He probably actually has one somewhere that he forced his kids to sign. What a prick.
ReplyDeleteIt gets worse, frickin' sharks can be "warm blooded".
ReplyDeleteAs if that weren't freaky enough, naked mole rats are ectothermic mammals.
The author fell down and banged her head, and Jonah was the only person present who could have taken her to the hospital.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't be surprised if he were something like the father in this story.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm sure Francis I will have to do a serious gut-check now that his opinions have been questioned by a bunch of accessories after the fact to corporate crime, most of whom are protestant.
ReplyDeleteFuck, I'm still reeling from the fact that Jonah had a career before he was a father.
ReplyDeleteSo, Patti Davis then.
ReplyDeleteOr before he was even born, if we're being honest.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait for Popey's working lunch with Catholics Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy.
ReplyDeleteAl Gore has boxcars ready to remove the 'environmentally irresponsible' excess population if he wins
ReplyDelete"Hey, we got your Inconvenient Truth right here..."
The story is at a different link now. (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/portrait-of-the-autist-as-a-middle-aged-man/). Speaking as someone who's somewhere on the autism spectrum, it sure as hell didn't take me until my late forties to realize I was socially a little odd.
ReplyDeleteWarm-blooded sharks have been known to man ever since the advent of Wall Street.
ReplyDeleteNah, noting his inability to comprehend first principles was enough for me.
ReplyDeleteTwo words: adolescent rebellion.
ReplyDeleteAnd I thought Scientologists were evil . . .
ReplyDeleteDear 4Bs- I wish to genuflect before this comment, and quote Huxley on evolution: "How stupid not to have thought of that".
ReplyDeleteRod's Benedict Option is to have pancetta instead of Canadian bacon.
ReplyDeleteAss burgers
ReplyDeleteYeah, gets pretty bad when your own damn Pope has to tell you to STFU about the constant contraception/gays/abortions raving.
ReplyDeleteIn French's defense, the old "Stop Hitting Yourself" move is the pick-and-roll of the Alinsky playbook.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you completely about the best of B.B. Years ago, I found five B.B. "race records" from the late '50's in a record store. I think I paid $1.25 apiece for them. These, and records like them, contain, as far as I am concerned, the greatest blues guitar playing ever recorded. A few of the cuts are on you tube today, and they are the most perfect, emotional music you will ever hear.
ReplyDeleteI always tell beginning guitarists to listen to a couple of these tracks, and count the number of notes that B.B. plays. It is stunning how much he could do with so little.
Socks are spin-cycled out of the drum of the washer to the empty dimension inside; I don't want to know where the ballpoints disappear in wingnuts.
ReplyDeleteEven more amazing than people listening to Hal Lindsey: Jack & Rexella Van Impe are still alive& on tee vee! (As of this typing ...)
Hey, Joe Scarborough libel!
ReplyDeleteSince agriculture & the rise of priests.
ReplyDeleteGood one from the Blues Boy via an Oregon Beer Boy.
ReplyDeleteWell, in rudimentary ways, maybe. But, even the best of Egyptian field managers and Pope Urban's clerics are no match for Lloyd Blankfein and his army of quants and dead-eyed traders.
ReplyDeleteOh, let's just say the archetype of "maiden, mother and crone" gets cranked up to '11' in a way you'd only see in a Mad Max film.
ReplyDeleteHe did say it, but he thought it was about the 1968 student revolts in Paris.
ReplyDeleteIt's been 10 years since Leroy let out his eponymous battle-cry. 10 years.
ReplyDeleteI don't speak for other non-believers, but for me, it doesn't matter what Christians are or aren't doing. The whole God story just seems very improbable. It's wishful thinking that there's life everlasting and if you do things right, you'll get a reward. The world would surely be a nicer place if everyone loved his neighbor as himself, but it wouldn't make Christianity true.
ReplyDeleteWell, now we see AEI's in on the feminist plot to destroy men, masculinity, fatherhood, and peeing while standing up.
ReplyDeleteAh! The nefarious Sitzpinkler Conspiracy!
The thing that distinguishes their whackfuckery from all the rest that floats around this nation is its partisanship.
ReplyDeleteNo, the thing that distinguishes their whackfuckery is that the media takes their whackfuckery seriously. Jade Helm is the latest example, but consider Sarah Palin's pronouncement that the ACA had provisions for government "death panels" to eliminate old people. That made headlines and lead news stories, but it wasn't until three weeks after she said it that the NYT finally wrote a piece explaining that, no, there are no "death panels" and what the ACA was trying to do was provide payment to doctors for the time they would put in explaining terminal-care options to older patients.
In a sane world, things like Jade Helm and death panels would never reach widespread circulation, and the media would rightly dismiss such ravings as lunacy. Instead, we now have to take these things seriously because "it's out there" and thus worthy of discussion.
"Please remember: I'm a Ford, not a Lincoln."
ReplyDeleteGerald Ford during his inaugural address.
Even without the inspired internal monolog, it really says something about Goldberg and his utter lack of both empathy and normal human reactions. I don't have kids, but I cannot imagine any circumstance where I see a child bleeding profusely from an open facial wound and don't immediately think, "Wow! This needs professional medical attention RIGHT FUCKING NOW!"
ReplyDeleteI mean, being a new parent has fuck-all to do with it. Being more than 10 years old should teach you all you need to know about how to react to such a thing.
While their parents vote for Jefferson Davis.
ReplyDeleteI would like to sprinkle this comment generously over some sautéed chicken.
ReplyDeleteIs it any wonder why conservatives are always looking for strong daddy figures in their politics and policies? If these clodpates are any indication, basic human emotions like love and caring are completely alien experiences to conservatives, thus putting this emotions beyond the reach of their children.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Lileks has many humorous tales to tell about how little Gnat (his daughter) is constantly trying to smother him in his sleep or poison his coffee.
ReplyDeleteNow that time and thought has allowed me to step back and look at religion as a system for controlling humans rather than a requirement for a purposeful life, crosses really squick me out. It's torture porn.
ReplyDeleteWe shared a similar childhood; their narcissism/alcoholism casting a pall over everything, with that scary sense that some real crazy could break through at any time, usually because one of us kids was taking up their precious time/money or annoying them in some way, you know, by being kids. Two prominent childhood memories: my mother telling me if she had it to do over again she would have never had kids, and that all of us were the results of failed birth control. Imagine my surprise at either of those. That they still see themselves as paragons of proper parenting, even as the ruined lives of some of my sisters is undeniable, is just part of the whole fucked up syndrome.
ReplyDeleteAlcoholism is such a source of mis-parenting, and that sort of mis-parenting takes years to get over, if ever. My youngest sister is now divorcing Alcoholic Asshole #2, who was a carbon copy of Alcoholic Asshole #1, and is of course deep into blaming herself for her failure to keep the marriage alive.
Considering how protective new parents tend to be, not reacting to a bleeding, gapping facial wound by instantly grabbing the car keys is truly the perfect distillation of how unfamiliar with normal human emotions Loadpants and his ilk are.
ReplyDeleteMy apologies, Magatha, I did not mean to presume and tell your story in any way. That was very rude of me. My heart breaks for you. It must have been terrifying. I just assumed alcohol was involved because of the beach scene and the time period. It was a tragedy, it must have been horrible.
ReplyDeleteAnd they've figured out how to reverse SCUBA! EEEEEK!
ReplyDeleteToo bad most of them aren't even looking forward to heaven, they're looking forward to the rest of us going to hell.
ReplyDeleteAsk any doctor and he or she will tell you: The bleeding always stops. Eventually.
ReplyDelete"We celebrate life by worshipping before an icon of someone being tortured to death."
ReplyDeleteFor most of the Bible bangers, their copy of the book always falls open to the passages about Sodom and Gomorrah, or the one page in Leviticus that holds their favorite verse.
ReplyDeleteI can't stop revisiting that bit about Doughbob's injured daughter... aren't these schmucks the first ones to whine about the "dumb dad" trope in movies, TV shows, and commercials?
ReplyDeleteAlso, if there was a news story about a black father treating his daughter like this, these assholes would be the first ones to bloviate about the "pathologies" inherent in the African-American community.
No, no, you were spot on. And it was actually a good insight, not rude in any way. Your comment was like a Gordian knot sort of thing, even for that specific incident alone. It would have been summer, my grandfather and father would have driven up for the weekend after work, and there would have been drinking. It's a weird thing: my childhood was full of stuff like that, and it has affected me profoundly....and at the same time, some of it wasn't even personal. It makes it both more and less painful at the same time. Now, after all these years, it's the insight that is most important.
ReplyDeleteKarl Marx?
ReplyDeletethey had to cut a huge chunk of his material because it wasn't so much jokes as mean-spirited broadsides
ReplyDeleteWhich goes a long way toward explaining Parliament of Whores.
In fact Zhou and Kissinger were talking about May 68. It was some reporter that got the story wrong
ReplyDeleteShrink the size of government until it is small enough to fit inside a vagina.
ReplyDeleteI think you have a novel in you--or at any rate a great episode of Mad Men. Like the one named Carousel about photographs and memories.
ReplyDeleteThis feeling like you are looking at your own life through the wrong end of a telescope, and then something happens that flips it in your hand and you suddenly see things clearly, is very, very, common. But so hard to communicate to other people and even harder, in some ways, to yourself. Because you've predicated your life on an understanding of your parents as the adults, whose intentions and ideas ruled your world. And suddenly you see that they were helpless, in their own way, to control themselves or the situation. What looked deliberate was only the result of carelessness, stupidity, incompetence.
I'm sorry that this happened to you. Its the opposite of what (your parents) probably would have wanted for you, if they could have envisioned their own lives openly, cleanly, happilly.
Jack & Rexella Van Impe are still aliveSorry, but with a name like that, she's obviously a vampire. Remember, you can't spell "Rexella Van Impe" without "Vampirella."
ReplyDeleteLongworth's Rule #3.
ReplyDeleteOffering It Up to the Souls in Purgatory
ReplyDeleteIYKWIMAITYD.
Alexei Sayle has a routine in which Christ was executed by electrocution, so his devout followers wear little Old Sparky pendants and make the Sign of the Muscle Spasm and Buzzy Noise.
ReplyDeleteAnd all the hymns are in the key of 60Hz.
ReplyDeleteWasn't the sexual revolution, like, 50 years ago?
ReplyDeleteYes, and these assholes STILL can't get laid.
Well that sucks.
ReplyDeleteYou don't wanna know what's between the buns.
ReplyDeleteThat's A♭.
ReplyDeleteReading about the doings of these dads, it almost makes one envious of the (mythological) absent-father plague.
ReplyDeleteB.B.'s best student:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/RtmW2ek7WkQ
If 'Alexei Sayle' isn't a nom de guerre for Lenny Bruce, he didn't invent the Old Sparky pendant.
ReplyDeleteAs I've grown rather too fond of saying, it's a good thing it was the Romans got him, and not Vlad.
ReplyDeleteBut... I think we owe it to him (and Jon Stewart) to try it, once.
ReplyDeleteSometimes, Aimai, I think you are one of the wisest people I have ever known, and we haven't even met. Thank you for that.
ReplyDeletemen aren’t critical of one another’s parenting
ReplyDeleteA guy's criticism of a peer's parenting is usually along the lines of "You'll turn into a pussy if you spend too much time with your family when you could be out with the boys."
They make andouillette as burgers now?!
ReplyDeletewhere he reveals his near-Asperger's in a quest for flattery and praise for his deep courage
ReplyDeleteDreher has no idea what the autistic spectrum is, and doesn't care. He is dumbing down the concept of 'autism' to be a synonym for 'introversion', so he can flatter himself on his focus and self-obsession without the tone of self-congratulation becoming too obvious, much as if he were to complain about his problem with excess modesty.
Good deities, I'd forgotten Van Impe existed. And still running the same grift for new generations (with lots of surgery and some vaseline on the videocam lens, I'll be bound). Nothing succeeds like failed prophecy.
ReplyDeleteSee, I'm socially a bit odd because of being a grumpy sociopath. Perhaps that's what's wrong with Dreher.
ReplyDeleteI know! I know! Call on me! Gotta be either David Brooks or Ross Douthat.
ReplyDeleteMaybe some 10-year-olds. This reminds of a litany of stories told by someone I knew in graduate school about two brothers from his home town who were infamous in the Dept. of Cluelessness. The older brother seemed to use his younger brother principally as a crash-test dummy. Dared him to drink a quart of vinegar, just to see what happened, the kid goes into acidosis and spends several days in the hospital. Shoved the kid into a long-festering cesspool, kid spends several weeks in the hospital with gawd knows how many communicable diseases. Wondered what would happen if he stepped on his brother's head as they were climbing a ladder in some abandoned gas works. Of course, the kid falls off the ladder and cracks his head open. Here there was enough obvious damage at the instant to prompt him to do something. Which was to drag his brother home, plunk him in a chair at the kitchen table and commence to sew him up with his mother's needle and thread.
ReplyDeleteI suspect the older brother is now a die-hard conservative.
What seems to be the most prominent feature of the Rapture? That the "good" "born-again" Christians get a ringside seat to the Apocalypse, where they can watch Jesus smite all the people they hated in life.
ReplyDeleteXtianity seems to be full of passive-aggressive Walter Mittys.
Off topics, I just discovered there is a game aimed at the elusive Ole Perfesser demographic: Drunken Robot Pornography
ReplyDeleteThe 'dad' stories shared here remind me of the depictions in sitcoms and commercials of clueless dads - depictions that I've often seen conservative men criticize as disrespectful to men.
ReplyDeleteMy mom's solution for nearly every injury was butterfly bandages, at least unless she saw a bone sticking out.
ReplyDeleteTwice the beneficiary of a lucky sperm.
ReplyDeleteSure--its a niche fetish but its not uncommon. Name me a woman who hasn't been frotted in a crowded space and I'll show you a woman who either hasn't used the subways extensively or who is so bundled up she hasn't noticed.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't the whole "fight the sexual revolution" thing come with a heaping helping of cruel judgmentalism about other people's parenting? Other father's parenting, for example? I seem to remember hearing some pretty serious talk about "absent fathers" every time a police officer shoots some black kid. Apparently fathers, in an ideal world, double as either a cloak of invisibility or some kind of perambulating bullet proof vest.
ReplyDeleteWith 6 kids my parent's response to bleeding was "Is it arterial?" Even so, I recall each of us visiting the ER from time-to-time. My brother accidentally 'whittled' his finger, sister broke her arm at school playground. In Kindergarten I tripped and gashed my knee with a toy (metal) shovel. STITCHES! I was so proud! The worst injury was another brother who was playing on a decommissioned Air Force jet kindly placed in the kids park for them to enjoy. A heavy hatch was dropped on his head. Woah. But that was the 60s! In theory, parents in 2015 are a bit more aware of the dangers all around us. Right?
ReplyDelete"Now"? I remember Scholander's article on tuna endothermy in the April 1957 Scientific American.
ReplyDeleteMy grass, you kids, get off it.
"...my mother telling me if she had it to do over again she would have never had kids, and that all of us were the results of failed birth control...."
ReplyDeleteThis has been haunting me since I read it, on a bunch of different levels. One thing I'm especially curious about: were you expected to "forget" what she said afterwards? Or was it more like, "Oh, don't be a crybaby, you know mommy says stuff like that when you make her mad"?
Were these always drunken pronouncements, and did that make them "not real", like you were supposed to politely ignore them?
Because when you're little and dependent you have to make it make sense somehow. I mean, your little legs are too short to reach the accelerator, and anyway, those parents are all you have.
And also, it' such such an incredibly devastating thing to say: "I wish you had never been born". I mean, it's different from having them say, "God, I could just kill you, you little brat". Now, that's literally an existential threat, because they really could kill you and probably get away with it, like lock you in the basement and let you starve.
When you get older, you can replay it in your mind, and imagine yourself saying, "Yeah, well, you and what army?" But to hear someone wish that you'd never been born, that your little lungs had never drawn in air, that your little feet had never touched the planet...that's complete pre-emptive annihilation.
With dogs and cats, they can be surrendered to the Humane Society if having them around isn't as much fun as they anticipated. Your odds aren't good in a high-kill area, but at least they try like hell to place you in a good new home.
Just large enough to swallow the woman whole.
ReplyDeleteTRUTH. As the parent of a person who really is on the spectrum, not a self-diagnosed internet attention hog, and who suffers from very real problems having to do with his diagnosis that do not equal being too self-absorbed to acknowledge people at the Chik-Fil-A, I resent his "autism spectrum" nonsense.
ReplyDeleteActually I was an early teen at the time, quoting a Dear Abby article to my mom that said about 50% of parents wish they'd never had kids; I thought it was shocking, until my mom reinforced that she was definitely in the "no kids if I had to do it over" camp. I immediately felt even worse about myself, as if being 14 wasn't bad enough. The "failed birth control" was something she tacked on to make sure I got it, and I heard that more than once; alcohol was always involved of course because it was a day ending in "y". They were/are masters of emotional neglect.
ReplyDeleteWe are good friends with the young couple next door, who have 6 and 3 year old boys that I've been involved with since they were born. I feel like a stranger on a planet I don't recognize being around people who desperately wanted kids and enjoy them completely, plus they have grandparents who visit every 2 months from far away. Who knew such interest in kids was possible?
Of course sometimes the police shoot a father, thus making him permanently absent. Oopsies.
ReplyDeletemeaning nothing in particular.You shut your mouth. How can you say I go about hymns the wrong way?
ReplyDelete"People with weak stomachs should not see laws or wingnut logic made." Zombie Otto von Bismarck
ReplyDeleteIs this good news for crones? As in, yo, crones, go see it cause you will have fun! I am asking for a friend for myself.
ReplyDeleteMine too, but she was an RN and thus capable of recognizing what required a butterfly bandage and what was going to need more.
ReplyDeleteYou know this doesn't go here but I don't have any other place to put it at the moment. Of course everyone is commenting on the scene coming out of Waco where the police basically ordered a bunch of gang banging white guys to sit down and wait to be processed, keep their smokes and cel phones and just wait, off to the side. Meanwhile in Ferguson and Baltimore people who were actually legally excercising their right to protest were manhandled, kicked, tased, beaten, and arrested. At the time we were copsplained by everyone that police officers live in fear of violence from the people they interact with. Nothing racist here but its a scary world and the police literally can't contain the fear they have that they willb e shot or attacked by citizens. And I'm sure thats true. Or True-ish.
ReplyDeleteBut a look at the scene in Waco shows that the cops have some other metric by which to guess which of the people they interact with need to be subdued by force and which can be left to sit quietly on the sidelines until they can be processed and let go. We can't know for sure but...race? Because its pretty obvious that the police weren't afraid of the obviously armed, rioting, and shooting white hordes but they are mysteriously terrified of the unarmed black protestors.
Please imagine this read out loud by someone who is also retching with rage.