UPDATE. Our commenters are carrying the freight to a greater extent than usual. "I normally ascribe Peggy Noonan's incoherence to the fact that she's plastered," says sharculese, "but I'm pretty drunk right now and I'm still not getting this." smut clyde noticed something in the Longer:
words like “gender” and “celibacy” and “pedophile” and phrases like “irrelevant to the modern world.” But when they just prattle on with their indignant words—gender, celibacy, irrelevant—
One of those words in the first list has disappeared from the second! How can this be?A couple of folks also notice Noonan's surly reference to the Mohammedans, in which she complains of the media-that-is-not-Peggy-Noonan:
They think they’re brave, or outspoken, or something. They don’t have enough insight into themselves to notice they’d never presume to instruct other great faiths. It doesn’t cross their minds that if they were as dismissive about some of those faiths they’d have to hire private security guards.I thought the whole you-don't-have-the-guts-to-make-fun-of-Mohammed thing had long since passed into wingnut oblivion, along with "Democracy Whiskey Sexy" and "That Andrew Sullivan is one of the good ones," but I guess under stress these guys tend to revert.
Imagine my surprise that Our Lady of the Magic Dolphins likes her religion like she likes her politics: all this worked fine before you yokels got here and in my day people like you kept their politely kept their fucking mouths shut. Hope she likes her compromise-Italian pope.
ReplyDeleteRoy, can I put in a personal request for a post on Nooners losing her shit and blaming Obama because her hotel didn't have a doorman? It's a doozy of privilege. The WSJ should send her to a Motel 6; I think she might call for a military coup.
It seems to me the absence of mourning has left things strange, and contributed to the air of Anything Can Happen. Which also prompts the question: Is it good that anything can happen?
ReplyDeleteSure, she's nuts and is completely converted to magical thinking, but at least she didn't say it begs the question.
The world I came up in had some virtues, and one was that we gave each
ReplyDeleteother a little more space, a little more courtesy both as individuals
and organizations, never mind faiths
Y'know, unless they were queers.
Also: I'm very sad that the latest pope didn't croak in office!
ReplyDeleteNot getting out of the boat, but, since Noonan writes for the WSJ, which church is she talking about? The Church of Predatory Priests, or the Church of Predatory Mammon Worship?
ReplyDeleteI wouldn’t presume to tell Baptists or Lutherans or Orthodox Jews how
ReplyDeletethey should interpret their own theology, what traditions to discard and
what new ones to adopt
Y'know, unless they were queers.
Eh, some of her observations in that column are actually fair, although like most conservatives she dives straight for "it's the black guy's fault." "Gas almost 4 dollars?! THANKS OBAMA. Ewww, a fly on my windshield. THANKS OBAMA."
ReplyDeleteStill, companies are cutting back on employees, to devastating effect. I certainly don't think Peggy Noonan deserves a doorman, but I do think that that potential doorman deserves a paycheck.
The one fair observation is that we're in a jobs crisis. The rest is incomprehensible. No wonder she needs someone to open a door for her.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering about that - it might have been an editor replacing the word.
ReplyDeleteIf you have a taste for grotesque logic, her severed head closer is almost worth wading through the fetid swamp.
ReplyDeleteI once read an account of Anne Boleyn’s death. In the moments after she was beheaded her head was held aloft by her executioner, to show the crowd. Her nervous system was shocked, her neurons misfired, her head didn’t know it was severed from her neck. Her eyes blinked, her mouth moved crazily. Those critics who go on TV now to tear down what they don’t even understand: they are removed and unknowing. They are Anne Boleyn’s head.
ReplyDeleteI just... I don't know what the fuck. I'm not sure what confuses me more, the incredibly detailed description of the scientific processes of an ancient beheading, or the broken ass metaphor.
Seriously, I normally ascribe Peggy Noonan's problem to the fact that she's plastered, but I'm pretty drunk right now and I'm still not getting this.
But when they just prattle on with their indignant words—gender, celibacy, irrelevant—well, they’re probably not trying to be constructive. One might say they’re being vulgar, ignorant and destructive, spoiled too.
ReplyDeleteSpoiled: pointing out problems with the Catholic church
Not spoiled: Sneering indignantly from it via your prime media real estate
Uh huh.
They don’t have enough insight into themselves to notice they’d never presume to instruct other great faiths. It doesn’t cross their minds that if they were as dismissive about some of those faiths they’d have to hire private security guards.
I mean, it's not like they're Muslims or something. Now there's a religion you can lecture condescendingly to.
Peggy Noonan is the thing that Megan McCardle is the larval stage of.
ReplyDeleteNot spoiled: having the entire country's media drop everything and pay attention to which wrinkled old bastard your coreligionists decide to give a golden crown and gleaming white robe and install in a palace.
ReplyDelete"Spoiled: pointing out problems with the Catholic church"
ReplyDeleteHmm. So the Catholic hierarchy goes from choosing a closet Nazi to lead them to a collaborator with military death squads, and we're spoiled children for noticing?
Bloody hell, when does PBS start airing "Mister Cheney's Neighborhood?"
The second is that there’s a lot of ignorant, tendentious and even aggressive media chatter about the church right now, and it’s starting to grate. Church observers are blabbering away on cable and network news telling the church to get with the program, throwing around words like “gender” and “celibacy” and “pedophile” and phrases like “irrelevant to the modern world.”
ReplyDeleteI wouldn’t presume to tell Baptists or Lutherans or Orthodox Jews how they should interpret their own theology, what traditions to discard and what new ones to adopt, what root understandings are no longer pertinent. …
But when they just prattle on with their indignant words—gender, celibacy, irrelevant—well, they’re probably not trying to be constructive. One might say they’re being vulgar, ignorant and destructive, spoiled too.
I'm, uh, skeptical she "wouldn't presume," (or that she didn't just do so – doesn't "spoiled" give away the authoritarian game, even before the beheading?). But let's pretend for a moment. If it were true, it would make her much more tolerant than Ratzinger, since he was (like K-Lo) extremely clear on "what traditions everyone should discard and what new ones to adopt." We'll see about the new guy. Hey, it only took the Catholic Church 44 years to admit they shouldn't have burned Joan of Arc alive, 350 years after his death to apologize to that Galileo guy, and 44 years to "forgive" the Beatles, so they're quick to recognize their mistakes.
Meanwhile, "interpret their own theology" is a weasel/straw man, since the criticisms have centered on 1) specific precepts of the Catholic Church (every sperm is sacred, force a woman to bear a child against her will for Jeebus, etc.), and 2) the worldly institution itself (raping children, covering it up, obstructing justice, and then still having the gall to lecture others about sex). None of that denies that some self-described Catholics are decent people, nor does it infringe on any Catholic's personal religious freedom – just privilege over others. (Much of the criticism on points 1 and 2 has, of course, come from current of former Catholics, as Peggy knows quite well.) Plus, given tiny events, like, oh, the Reformation, and the birth of certain denominations in express opposition to Catholic Church (and corrupt practices such as papal indulgences), there's kind of a looong tradition of criticism (and criticism is far tamer than all those holy wars between faiths).
But how dare anyone say "pedophile"? What a "spoiled" thing to say! Peggy's right, just as she was when she said we had to "just walk away" from those icky reports on torture Рthe real sin of child rape isn't committing it Рit's being d̩class̩ enough to discuss it.
Harumph. As if a mere editor would be allowed to sully the wordcraft of Lady Noonington.
ReplyDelete'Tendentious' is to pundits as 'tropes' is to the internet, in that they are both words that the respective parties should be banned from using until they agree to be more responsible about it.
ReplyDeleteThat one was like a softball pitched directly to Alex Pareene, and he pretty much knocked it out of the park.
ReplyDeleteThis is just fabulous. Anything could happen!! The old Pope isn't dead so the cardinals are all sassy still. But don't criticise them, impolite poltroons!!
ReplyDeleteThis can only be Mai Tai inspired.
Are you looking through your persecuted right-wing reconstructionist goggles? It's a little more coherent when filtered through Catholic dogma. Basically, humans are incomplete creatures unless they open their hearts to Christ's love, surrender their pride, and submit to his will. Detailed instructions* for submission are available from the nice gentlemen in red beanies, or their chosen subordinates. Cutting one's self off from God is like being a severed head!
ReplyDeleteThis is the same pitying condescension you'll get out of the nastiest of any religious wackadoodle**, and it's set up precisely so they can feel superior to you no matter what you do. If you don't share their beliefs, you're a misguided fool, and damned to boot. If you're rude enough to point out they're being a judgemental shit, then you are attacking their religion. You brute!
Peggy Noonan is a nasty authoritarian creep.
*Keep your mouth shut about the bloodstains in your kid's underwear. Bitch.
**There are billions of sweet, dedicated folks who believe all kinds of crazy religious stuff. They're not wackadoodles because they're polite enough to not pester you with 'em.
I need more than to just give this comment an "up" vote. I need to shout my praise and adoration to the rooftops!
ReplyDeleteOn another note, this:
ReplyDeleteI have found myself thinking about that moment during John Paul II’s
funeral when he was carried out to the steps of the cathedral and put
before the people. A big Bible was placed on top of his plain casket,
and a wind suddenly came up and turned the pages—page after page, as if
turned by an unseen hand. The whole world saw it on TV, and no one
could have seen it without having a feeling of the divine, of the
supernatural. It bestowed a sense of Godness, and it would have
reminded every cardinal there of the realness of history and the gravity
of their choice.
I mean, this... just... reads like a rejected draft of American Beauty.
words like “gender” and “celibacy” and “pedophile” and phrases like “irrelevant to the modern world.”
ReplyDeleteBut when they just prattle on with their indignant words—gender, celibacy, irrelevant—
One of those words in the first list has disappeared from the second! How can this be?
Peggy's still an amateur. Why, the Catholic Church has made stacks of documentation, entire priests, and even the occasional cardinal disappear.
ReplyDeleteMuslims, however, need to get with the program or be bombed into ashes ASAP. Peace be with y'all!
ReplyDeleteI get you, Peggy. Some churches hold bake sales, others elevate a guy who's widely believed to have colluded with a military junta to murder their fellow priests. To each their own.
ReplyDeleteThis is basically how it's going to be for the next decade, isn't it? Republicans have screwed every one of us, including themselves, out of the robust and productive nation we once had. They've deregulated and downsized us into a makeshift, jerry-built facsimile of what we used to be, running on spit and fumes and endless underpaid labor by exhausted, desperate 47%ers. And now it's gotten so bad that even they, in their "$250K-is-poor" upperclass bubbles in Manhattan or D.C., can tell that we are fucked. So now we have to listen to them whine about it and blame it on meanie black people.
ReplyDeleteIf it reminded every cardinal there of the "gravity of their choice," then why the fuck did they ever vote for someone like Ratzinger?
ReplyDeleteAnd why did she think a breeze was "a feeling of the divine?" Maybe, due to her overlong stay in the Hollywood version of the White House, she's grossly confused stagecraft with the supernatural. That would be the generous take on that paragraph. The less generous one is that, fuck us all to tears, she's back in magic dolphin mode again.
Funny that Pope Frankie Five-Fingers might have been, shall we say, instrumental in some of those disappearing acts....
ReplyDeleteRELEVANT.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq1LBYQk-rM
The next time someone opens a door for her, I hope they have the good sense to lock her in the room, and nail the door shut.
ReplyDeleteSweet Jesus ( a sincere prayer), this is awful writing. I was marking some ESL essays written by High School Seniors here in Taiwan before reading this, and they were better at putting down coherent thoughts- in a foreign language.
ReplyDelete"I wouldn’t presume to tell Baptists or Lutherans or Orthodox Jews how
they should interpret their own theology, what traditions to discard and
what new ones to adopt, what root understandings are no longer
pertinent. It would be presumptuous, and also deeply impolite in a
civic sense."
Let's make a deal -we won't presume to tell Catholics how to interpret their theology etc. if they won't presume to make laws forcing everyone else to live according to their theology.
It would be presumptuous, and also deeply impolite in a
ReplyDeletecivic sense.
Isn't Peggy a few decades too late for this cultural relativitism, don't-impose-your-western-standards-of-human-rights-on-us non-judgemental stance?
I know the WSJ's editorial and op-ed section has dropped their standards t Murdoch level, but my God, aren't even they embarrassed publishing this drivel? I mean seriously, anyone reading these columns who knows her should be reacting by saying "Y'know, maybe we should talk to Peggy about seeing someone."
ReplyDeleteHe only deserves that check if he's truly and duly obsequious about his position, and offers people like Nooners (who are, after, his betters) the proper amount of deference.
ReplyDeleteWhaddaya mean, he helped them go on plane trips! AND they didn't have to go through customs when they left the plane.
ReplyDeleteyes.
ReplyDelete...and lo, the moon did hide the sun, and there was night during daytime; and she did step on a crack and her mother's arthritis flared; and on the internets, a cat was seen playing piano; and a great metal bird fell from the sky and hundreds perished in flames but one child--showing the miracle of god's love.
ReplyDeleteI'm convinced.
Hey, now, you're starting to sound a bit spoiled.
ReplyDeleteKids these days, huh? They have no gratitude for the Church "voluntarily" giving up torturing and burning heretics.
ReplyDeleteSpoiled. Spoiled rotten, I say.
You seem to have forgotten that the CC was once a catacomb start-up by a handful of plucky and brilliant college dropouts. Only one of the thousands to come out of Theology Valley back in the day.
ReplyDeleteImma trust the shorter.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the teachings of The Bible, Peggy will be roasting in Hell for all eternity (unless she asks for forgiveness at the very last second).
ReplyDeleteThat rooftop should have white smoke coming from a chimney.
ReplyDeleteThe Anne Boleyn thing is kind of a tell, isn't it? Because Anne was murdered by the first Protestant King who rejected the Pope. She thought she'd be Queen but he had her killed--along with others--because she failed him. The Press thinks they're so smart too, huh? They go along with Obama and the Democrats and they intefere with stuff they are not even the right sex/age/station to comment on and one day: boom! Head's will roll.
ReplyDeleteAs Giles would say the "subtext is rapidly...uh...becoming the text.
And now they can't even afford to air commercials during the Super Bowl!
ReplyDeleteThey also publish James Taranto, so no.
ReplyDeleteIt's about what you'd expect to see if Blanche DuBois got a Twitter account and was in the habit of drunk-tweeting. "I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers--but, ever since that awful colored man took office..."
ReplyDelete"I wouldn’t presume to tell Baptists or Lutherans or Orthodox Jews how
ReplyDeletethey should interpret their own theology, what traditions to discard and
what new ones to adopt, what root understandings are no longer
pertinent. It would be presumptuous, and also deeply impolite in a
civic sense."
And if I didn't know my history better I'd think that the auto-da-fe had a blown head gasket.
She throws plausibility out the window in the first couple of sentences, with her claim that usually Catholics have some idea of who's the Pope front-runner, as if they spend time collecting and trading College of Cardinal cards. Really, though, most cardinals nowadays are known outside their dioceses for one of two things: being implicated in one of the numerous child abuse scandals, or demonizing same-sex marriage.
ReplyDeleteAnd thus with the new guy, talking about Argentina's ultimately-successful passage of SSM: "We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the
Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.” Well, at least he probably won't be around for very long (he's only two years younger than the guy who just quit).
Fer cryin' out loud. I happen to take a perverse pleasure in watching or listening to adults, in the 21st century, speak of theology as though the fact of tap-dancing angels was long established, and the only argument was about quantity. So I watched or read a good deal of mass-market coverage of Popeapalooza. Ignorant? Tendentious? The coverage uniformly took the parade of Bronze Age belief seriously, when real, objective news coverage would have demanded at least one person in attendance who did nothing but snicker. At the very least.
ReplyDeleteGender, celibacy, corruption and pederasty? Those are the concerns of actual Catholics, Peg. Consider yourself lucky that's all anyone brought up.
That's a good one.
ReplyDelete... unless the discussion was about birth control or abortion and then the presumption and 'deeply impolite' never stops.
ReplyDeleteMy ungenerous thought was she's unfamiliar with her own church's liturgy.
ReplyDeleteAlso pretty rich considering her long career of indignant, presumptuous prattle.
ReplyDeletePeggy Noonan's suffering from fatwa envy.
ReplyDelete"It's without dispute that José Mario Bergoglio, like most other
ReplyDeleteArgentines, failed to openly confront the 1976-1983 military junta while
it was kidnapping and killing thousands of people in a "dirty war" to
eliminate leftist opponents.
But the new pope's authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin, argues that
this was a failure of the Roman Catholic Church in general, and that
it's unfair to label Bergoglio with the collective guilt that many
Argentines of his generation still deal with."
Jeebus H. Christ on a wheat thin, what the hell is it with the Catholic Church? Are the only people qualified to be Pope ALL fricking Nazis?
A beheaded dung beetle, her head held aloft by her executioner, to show the crowd? Her nervous system-- shocked, her neurons misfiring, her head doesn't know it is severed from her neck? Her eyes blink, her mouth moves crazily as it is dropped in a mason jar of margarita mix and Everclear, the rim of the mason jar coated with Himalayan Pink Salt? That thing?
ReplyDeleteThe second list settled out of court, and the payoff came with a gag order.
ReplyDeleteFuckin' wind, how does it work?
ReplyDeleteWhenever I say the word "gender" it's just to annoy Peggy Noonan.
ReplyDeleteI will stalk this comment, lie in wait for an appropriate moment, and ask it if it might wish to grab a cup of coffee and a bite of lunch, thus laying the groundwork for inviting it to the next show my band is playing, in the hopes that a proper dinner and date might be arranged, leading to the potential of a good night kiss, and then more dates (possibly a nibble on the ear on the second or third, a dry humping on the fourth or fifth) leading to an eventual marriage.
ReplyDelete...
Bonus points for the "Evil Dead" ad before the music!
ReplyDeleteHell, Andrew Sullivan is one of those "you-don't-have-the-guts-to-make-fun-of-Mohamed" things.
ReplyDeleteI never thought there would be anything I could agree with Noonan on.
ReplyDelete"Drivel"? You mean like this--
ReplyDeleteI have found myself thinking about that moment during John Paul II’s
funeral when he was carried out to the steps of the cathedral and put
before the people. A big Bible was placed on top of his plain casket,
and a wind suddenly came up and turned the pages—page after page, as if
turned by an unseen hand. The whole world saw it on TV, and no one
could have seen it without having a feeling of the divine, of the
supernatural.
Yes, a) "the whole world" and b) "no one," etc. This is sub-Anchoress-level smugness. But maybe that's the draw. It's a kind of spiritualized sentimentality. "I am pious, and Saved," becomes, "Isn't it great, that I am pious and Saved? And humble?"
Of course she would, or at least the Vatican would. The Vatican's war on modernity has always extended to telling non-Catholics what to do and not to do. Humanae Vita advocated laws against contraception that would affect non-Catholics, and Ratzinger's attack on gays in the early 1990s opposed antidiscrimination legislation.
ReplyDeleteI joke with my friends that calling a Republican a "hypocrite" is like calling Paris Hilton a "sleazy attention whore". It's not an insult, but a perfectly apt description. Since Peggy's a Republican, I understand that she gets upset when people point out the problems they have when an organization that has systematically abused children and then covered up said sexual abuse, and then turns around and lectures the rest of us on topics like birth control or letting priests have normal sex lives. I don't like it, but I understand it. As a Republican, she is simply unable to wrap her head around the idea that most people find that sort of thing repellent.
ReplyDeleteBut damn, the indignation is hilarious. She really is lacking the most basic level of self awareness, both as a pundit and as a catholic.
The WSJ's editorial and op-ed section has always been La-la Land. I used to read the Journal daily when I worked in a company mailroom in the early 1970s, and they haven't dropped their standards at all. The actual news coverage was always good, but the op-ed page was another planet.
ReplyDeleteHe's 76, which is more than "two years younger" than Rat. But according to the global editor at the Atlantic, he also has only one lung. So you're right as far as that goes: he is frail, and probably not serve for long.
ReplyDeletePundits are rhapsodizing about how Bergoglio's choosing "Francis" as his Papal name was inspired by St. Francis, but my sources tell me that, as a huge fan of the movie "Stripes", his inspiration was Francis "Psycho" Soyer. Now, we'll get to spend the next however many years responding to whatever authoritarian weirdness emanates from The Vatican is by gently admonishing His Holiness: "Lighten up, Francis."
ReplyDeleteOh... so Francis is basically a "Go along to get along" kinda guy...
ReplyDeleteI wouldn’t presume to tell Baptists or Lutherans or Orthodox Jews how
ReplyDeletethey should interpret their own theology, what traditions to discard
and what new ones to adopt
Wasn't that sort of the point of the civil war? The Southern Baptists split off because they didn't like people telling them which parts of their theology were repugnant.
I now hear that the Catholic Church is your "parents" church. Hip kids are using the new Korean model. Smart investors would switch.
ReplyDeleteI now hear that the Catholic Church is your "parents" church.
ReplyDeleteThat would explain the huge, easy-to-push buttons...
Well, that is just genius. I genuflect to you, redoubt!
ReplyDeleteSpiritualized sentimentality? There's a name for that: Glurge.http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=glurge
ReplyDeleteIn Noonan's case I think of it as weaponized passive agressive kitsch-think.
Breaks finger hitting like button.
ReplyDeleteWind blows bibles. Bibles blow wind. Day in Day out. No one Knows Why.
ReplyDeletegender, celibacy, corruption, pederasty, perderasty....
ReplyDelete"You said pederasty twice."
"I like pederasty."
Charlie Pierce makes this fairly explicit in his post on the subject. The new motto of the Catholic Papacy:
ReplyDelete"No better than he should be."
You can't explain that!
ReplyDeleteWith Jesus as their Steve Jobs?
ReplyDeleteUt! He's two years younger than Pope Palpatine was when he was elected.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 90's I liked to read the WSJ, even subscribed to it for a while. Its where I read a long and very informative article on the difficulty of AIDS research. But the editorials drove me nuts and I could not bring myself to re-subscribe, no matter how low the telephone-pest set the rate.
ReplyDeleteIs it OK with Peggy if we note that Pope Francis seems to have gone above and beyond the call of duty in playing footie with the Argentine military junta back in the day? And that the RCC has a leeeeetle fascism problem that provides a nice counterpoint to its pedophile problem?
ReplyDeleteIt's also interesting that she accepts such a scientific explanation of post-decapitative eye-twitching. Something tells me that if had been the head of a disciple or Jesus, we'd be in Miracle territory.
ReplyDeleteIt was kinda funny to watch Chris Matthews last night waxing rhapsodic about Bergoglio choosing the name Francis, and how he'll be the voice of the poor and downtrodden, and on... and on... Since I'm not Catholic, I don't much care, but I'm afraid Chris is in for some disappointment.
ReplyDeleteI think she has "The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth" mixed up with "The Walking Dead".
ReplyDeleteHang on, are you referring to Benedict or is there something about Francis I don't know?
ReplyDeleteAmid questions of how Catholic leadership will respond to the pro-choice
ReplyDeletesenator, Kerry's archbishop -- Boston's own Sean O'Malley -- has
refused to clarify a statement last summer that pro-choice Catholics are
in a state of grave sin and cannot take communion properly.
Adding
to the fray in February, St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke forbade
Kerry from taking communion while campaigning in the area due to Kerry's
stance on abortion and possibly stem cell research.
The two
archbishops' admonishments shed light on the challenges faced by the
liberal senator, as he tries to woo Catholics, which represent 27
percent of registered voters.
Shut the fuck up, Peggy.
You know, how that Kerry is no longer running for President it might be a good time for him to publicly renounce the Catholic Church and simply move on over to the Episcopalians or the UU. Biden should go to the investiture and lean over the new Pope and say "Call off your fucking dogs if you ever want a Catholic to have a chance at the Presidency in the US ever again. And if you don't, I'm going to have the cardinals register as lobbyists for a foreign power."
ReplyDeleteDoes she imagine that none of the criticisms are coming from Catholics, lapsed Catholics, or ex-Catholics?
ReplyDelete"For the love of God, tony Daniel..."
ReplyDeleteI want to do the kind of things with this comment that you don't confess.
ReplyDeleteMy parents had a copy of the original Broadway recording of Hair. I was familiar with the words Sodomy, Fellatio, Cunnilingus, Masterbation and Pederasty long before I had any idea of their meaning..."Father, why do these words sound so nasty..."
ReplyDeleteI could recite the lyrics before I was ten years old. (fucking brilliant album and one of the few Musicals I could ever stand)
In any event the only things I knicked from the house that did not belong to me when I was kicked out at 18 was that album and my surprising discovery of a copy of Led Zeppelin II.
...
Right now every idiot in town feels free to tell the church to get
ReplyDeletehopping, and they do it in a new way, with a baldness that occasionally
borders on the insulting.
No fucking way, pedophile-enabler!
It remains to explain who is the pupa.
ReplyDeletePerhaps someone should have told Cardinal Borgoglio, so that he could have extended the same courtesy to Argentinean civil society... rather than describing homosexual-marriage legislation as the work of Satan and receiving the proverbial stinging reproof.
ReplyDeleteS.E. Cupp?
ReplyDeleteReplace the Amontillado with Grey Goose and you're away.
ReplyDeletea baldness that occasionally borders on the insulting.
ReplyDeleteBaldness is insulting? Well FUCK YOU TOO.
We are all Sgt. Hulka now...
ReplyDeleteSo, a pizza delivery girl comes up to a house that is completely dark. No signs of life. She checks her address and knocks at the door.
ReplyDeleteAfter a moment, a middle-aged woman opens the door and the pizza gal sees that the interior of the house is dark except for a few candles here and there. After conducting business, she remarks to the woman, "Candles are nice once in awhile, yeah? When I was growing up, we used to turn off the lights once a month and have 'candle night.' I kind of miss that."
"Oh," replied the woman. "We didn't turn off the lights. It was God's will. When we first moved into this house the lights were on all the time. You could just flip a switch to turn them on and off, whenever you wanted. But one by one, over the years, they stopped working. It was God's will."
"It wasn't just burned out bulbs?" the pizza gal asked.
"I'm sorry dear, burned out what?"
So, the pizza gal ventured to explain the basics of the theory of electromagnetism and electrical circuitry.
"Oh," interjected the woman in the dark house. "It's a theory...like Evolution, eh? Well, in this house we trust in God, not the arrogant men of science and their theories."
Thinking the woman might not be pulling her leg, our intrepid pizza gal borrowed a light bulb from the family next door. Replacing the dead (but spotlessly clean) light bulb from the lamp next to the front door, she twisted the light switch to bring forth a 60W tungsten glow to the visible shock of the housewife.
"It's a Miracle!" shouted the woman, falling to her knees.
Well, now, that would be telling. ;-)
ReplyDeleteIs this on behalf of BBBB? Where is he, anyway? Off at the conclave?
ReplyDeleteusually Catholics have some idea of who's the Pope front-runner
ReplyDelete...So the media build up a horse-race narrative, offering long lists of plausible candidates with strong power-bases, and how it's going to be a long battle of attrition like the Republican primaries... but after a day of dicking around, the cardinals opt for the guy who was the runner-up last time.
If Noonan's point is that pundits have revealed themselves (again) to be opinionating wildly and repeating whatever they have heard from other pundits because that's easier than research, I for one am not arguing with her
The whole world saw it on TV
ReplyDeleteSo, "whole world watching papal exequies" = natural.
"People querying agenda of new pope" = PRESUMPTIOUS.
OK.
Ann Althouse?
ReplyDeleteAny of you homos touch his stuff... and he'll kill you.
ReplyDeleteBut the sentimentality is such an important element of Spiritualized!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB7E1D_3Na4
For some reason I'm reminded of Mieville's slake-moths.
ReplyDeletehttp://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationscreatures/fiction/slake.jpg
...So the media build up a horse-race narrative, offering long lists of plausible candidates with strong power-bases, and how it's going to be a long battle of attrition like the Republican primaries... but after a day of dicking around, the cardinals opt for the guy who was the runner-up last time.
ReplyDeleteSo... it's like the Republican primaries?
My sources tell me it's actually because he's a huge Pixies fan.
ReplyDeleteIs that canon? Because I always pictured the slake moths as just like floppy, iridescent shadow things.
ReplyDeletePlenty of choices for fan-art illustrations.
ReplyDeleteSilly me...I've been assuming he was a big Sinatra fan.
ReplyDeleteExcept to your priest, of course.
ReplyDeleteThe epigraph to my dissertation on Family Property Law was Balzac, by way of Mario Puzo who quotes it at the start of The Godfather "Behind every great fortune, lies a great crime." That's really the first thing that popped into my head when I heard "Habemus Papa." There isn't a mayfly's chance in December that anyone called up from the Minors to take the big red beanie is some kind of pure hearted innocent. As much as the next person I'd like to fantasize that there would be an accidental "Being There" or "Dave" like scenario where they accidentally choose a truly virtuous, St. Francis like person and then have to live with the consequences but there isn't any chance that that could/would be true and, if it were to come to pass, they'd kill him as fast as any previous Pope who rattled the cages or didn't pay off the right people.
ReplyDeleteThe stunning corruption of the Church as it currently stands--all the more vile because it includes both embezzlement of the literal widow's mite of millions of gullible believers as well as the rape and abuse of millions of children--just boggles my mind. And all this pope watching and commentary just makes it worse. A corrupt international corporation has chosen a new figurehead? Get off my fucking TV already and let me watch my soaps. At least they are fictional and no one gets hurt.
an accidental "Being There" or "Dave" like scenario where they
ReplyDeleteaccidentally choose a truly virtuous, St. Francis like person and then
have to live with the consequences
Whenever this happens, traditionally the usurper is shot within a year "by a Pope-hating Scotsman".
Allegations about {then} Provincial Jorge Bergoglio:
ReplyDeleteBergoglio has been the subject of allegations regarding whether he had
failed to prevent the torture of two priests during Argentina's Dirty War
in 1976, including a court case in 2005 that was ultimately dismissed. [...] A human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against
Bergoglio, as superior in the Society of Jesus of Argentina, accusing
him of involvement in the kidnapping by the Navy in May 1976 (during the
Dirty War) of two Jesuit priests. The priests, Orlando Yorio and Franz Jalics, were tortured, but found alive five months later, drugged and semi-naked. Yorio
accused Bergoglio of effectively handing them over to the death squads
by declining to tell the regime that he endorsed their work."Provincial," BTW, is apparently an actual title for certain priests.
A dolphin farts in the Caribbean, and pages turn half-a-world away...
ReplyDeleteUntil this column, I did not realize that Noonan is absolutely bananas. Check this out:
ReplyDeleteA big Bible was placed on top of [John Paul II's] casket, and a wind suddenly came up and turned the pages—page after page, as if turned by an unseen hand. The whole world saw it on TV, and no one could have seen it
without having a feeling of the divine, of the supernatural.
Uh, really? It's IMPOSSIBLE to imagine a human being who saw that and just thought "Hey, it's breezy"? That is a colossal failure of her imagination...
Wait. You know, I had a much longer version of this post but I'm going to stop right there. It sums up all the flaws of conservatism so neatly. "I can't imagine anyone thinking even slightly different from me, even about invisible stuff that by definition requires a leap of faith!"
Not even. There are some things you just don't share with Father McFeely.
ReplyDelete"Mother chants her litany/Of boredom and frustration/But we know all her suicides/Are fake..."
ReplyDeleteIf you google coverage from the time, the wind was so strong it blew the book closed. Supernatural nothing, that's, like, ULTRAnatural.
ReplyDeletePutting Nooners and her usual wacky bullshit aside...
ReplyDeleteSo. The Church hierarchy followed up their choice of a genuine, card-carrying Nazi - or near enough as makes little difference - for their spiritual leader with a man who collaborated with a military junta? Really?
My question: Is it that they couldn't find someone with a background reasonably free of controversy? Just for appearances' sake? Or is it deliberate? i.e. a case of some corrupt, entrenched, evil old bastards giving the enitre world the finger, and saying, "Fuck you. We'll do whatever the hell we damn well please."
Any thoughts?
My favorite part of the papal power rankings were the reports that Bergoglio was perceived by the cardinals to not have the "steel" and the "fire in the belly" for the job back in 2005 (not joking, actual words from the National Catholic Reporter). So... were the cardinals embarrassed when they handed it to the first pope to retire in more than half a millennium?
ReplyDeleteOne thing that would improve the selection of the pope is flying out a group of New York Jets fans to wait for the announcement.
NOBODY EXPECTS THE GIN AND TONIC DISQUISITION!
ReplyDelete"Fuck you. We'll do whatever the hell we damn well please."
ReplyDeleteDing ding ding, we have a winner, by the way, would you toss our fucking salad?
...
Sure, it's deliberate. Ever since John XXIII, who pleaded with the hierarchy to drag the Church, kicking and screaming, into the 20th century, the effort has been to completely undo Vatican II, in theory and practice. That has been the mandate of Paul VI, John Paul II, Ratzo, and Pope Frankie.
ReplyDeleteWhat cannot be forgotten is that this is an institution that is desperate to regain its former glory--and power--and is completely deluded in its estimation that it can and will obtain those goals. To that end, it is just as reactionary and authoritarian and contemptuous of modernity as the most extreme fundamentalist radicals of other religions.
gender, celibacy, corruption, pederasty, perderasty
ReplyDeleteIs that their law firm?
The Lonely Passion of J̶u̶d̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶H̶e̶a̶r̶n̶ Peggy Noonan
ReplyDeleteIs it incontrovertible that "Francis" is a shout-out to "Saint Francis of Assisi"? Because despite the fact that this guy rode buses (Gasp), he's just been made the nominal absolute monarch of a multinational enterprise with a headquarters where the gilding has gilding on it. I still cling to the notion that it's a reference to "Francis Xavier," what with this being the first Jesuit** pope and all.
ReplyDelete**In light of the American Jesuits I've been acquainted with, it's sad but predictable that they'd go "to the end of the world" to find the most reactionary craven asshole of a Jesuit they could.
So that's why "Kermit the Frog" was a write-in for all five votes!
ReplyDelete[Wind ruffles pages of Bible]
ReplyDelete"Truly, a sign from the Lord. The Bible is a book that deserves reading."
[Wind slams Bible shut]
"Truly, a sign from the Lord. Let no one add or take away from His inspired text."
[Wind pushes Bible off coffin]
"Truly, a sign from the Lord. Too many of us are in freefall, yet still arrogantly rejecting the lifeline He offers."
[Lightning sets Bible on fire; proceeds to start striking down corrupt, pedophile-enabling Church officials]
"Eh, coincidence."
I remember that song! Also really liked "Manchester, England England... across the Atlantic sea.."
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful scenario!
ReplyDeleteOr the old story priests used to tell about the man who was standing on his roof because rising floodwaters were swallowing his house. A boat came by and offered to rescue him, and then two helicopters offered help, but he refused them because he was waiting for a sign from God. Finally the swirling waters rose over him and he was swept away and drowned. In Heaven, he met God and asked why he had been abandoned. "But I sent a boat and two helicopters to save you", replied God.
ReplyDeleteFather Duffy playing hide the staff of the Lord again?
ReplyDelete"It's a beautiful day you little mooching bastards"
ReplyDeleteHis very name is a Jesuit in-joke.
ReplyDeleteThere was a talking donkey in a movie once named Francis.
ReplyDelete