[The Pope’s brother,] Georg Ratzinger, 86, said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday that he slapped pupils as punishment after he took over the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir in the 1964. He also said he was aware of allegations of physical abuse at an elementary school linked to the choir but did nothing about it.
Child abuse in the Catholic Church. Nothing new here. But when I was reading the Guardian’s coverage on this story I came across Andrew Brown’s blog, where he rehashes an old argument about child fucking/hitting by priests. Titled “Catholic abuse in proportion,” Brown wonders, “Many Catholic priests...have abused children in their care. But is the church's record worse than the world’s?”
A more absurd or irrelevant question would be hard to formulate. Brown actually attempts to defend the Catholic Church by citing murky statistics on child abuse before concluding, “I think that objectively your child is less likely to be abused by a Catholic or Anglican priest in the west today than by the members of almost any other profession.”
Wow. And to think that for years I have railed against pedophile priests, condemned the Church for covering up their heinous abuses, and have attacked the practice of celibacy for priests, lest their biological urges to engage in sexual intercourse manifest themselves in such assaults. What have I done?
Please. These are priests, not plumbers. If the Catholic Church and its ministers are going to present themselves as the personification of piety and god’s representatives on earth, they ought to expect to be held to a slightly higher standard than the rest of the general population. Indeed, if, “We’re no more likely to fuck your kid than your stockbroker” is the best defense the Church and its apologists have to offer, color me unimpressed. If the leaders of Catholicism are just as moral or immoral as everyone else, which is most certainly the case, what is it for?
Peter Schiff, who is most famous for correctly predicting the housing collapse and subsequent financial fallout (among several incorrect predictions), has something of a cult following on the internet. Oftentimes his fans are younger people, particularly of the Ron Paul fan club variety, which is to be expected because Schiff was an adviser on Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign. Schiff himself has recently entered the political fray, running for the Republican nomination in this fall’s senate election in Connecticut.
As with Ron Paul, I admire Schiff’s candor. He does not kowtow to people by making pleasing and uncontroversial statements. One can generally count on Peter Schiff to say exactly what he thinks. However, this is where my admiration for him ends. I have been following his regular video blogs on YouTube for several months now, and I think I get the economic picture that Schiff would like to paint if it were up to him. It isn’t pretty.
Schiff, like most conservatives, thinks government is awful, and that if it would only get out of the way and deregulate, the markets would be able to function uninhibited and purely, and produce optimal economic outcomes. Everything you need to know about Schiff’s economic philosophy is summed up by the man himself in this video. The relevant portion is from 3:20 to 5:20. Schiff is discussing the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which mandated that U.S. minimum wage laws apply (piecemeal) to its overseas territories.
So Schiff thinks that it was wrong for the government to require that American Samoans be paid more than $3-something per hour because all the law did was prompt Star-Kist to lay off hundreds of workers, and Chicken of the Sea to shut down its tuna canning plant altogether.
Let’s just concede the obvious—that the people of American Samoa are worse off for this minimum wage law having been enacted, at least for now. Schiff and other conservatives would chalk up this episode to another instance of government intrusion in the free market that made most everyone worse off.
Or, one could view this ordeal as indicative of a very serious problem in the modern global economy: that there is an ongoing race to the bottom among countries to see who can have the most business-friendly climate. The United States is no longer considered the ideal place to produce clothes, toys, electronics, etc.; not because American workers have gotten incompetent, but because we have pesky labor laws on the books regulating things such as minimum wage and workplace safety conditions. In the age of mass production and expedient international transport, it is much more profitable for even U.S. companies to set up shop in Mexico or Indonesia to produce their widgets, even though Americans are the most insatiable consumers in the world.
The solution for Schiff and others, such as the like-minded porn-stached John Stossel of Fox Business, is to eliminate the minimum wage altogether.
It appears that Stossel is being serious when he asks, “If a minimum wage really does help workers, why be so cheap? Why only raise it to $14 [as one town has done] or $7.50—that’s the new national minimum [sic, it’s actually $7.25]. Why not a hundred dollars an hour?” He then notes that at that level, everyone would realize that people would be hurt, but that even at the lowly rate of $7.25, “the principle is the same.”
No it isn’t. That’s like asking why we don’t have a taxation rate of 90% across the board to increase government revenue. Because it wouldn’t. When it comes to taxation, the idea is to set a rate that will generate enough public revenue to cover operating costs, but not so much as to destroy supply and demand and all means and incentives to produce goods and services. Think of the Laffer Curve. Somewhere between 0% and 100% lies the ideal rate at which to tax people (and businesses). Is there such a thing as the “ideal minimum wage?” Many conservatives would say, “None.” While everyone can agree that if raised to a certain point, the minimum wage would inflict great harm rather than providing an overall benefit, I do not believe $7.25 is that point. Not even close. In fact, in inflation adjusted dollars, the minimum is right where it was in the early 1980s, and we’re still lagging behind the 1950s. So even though people like Peter Schiff and John Stossel talk about the disappearance of entry level jobs such as movie theater ushers and gas-pumpers, the fact is that back in the 1970s, those workers were making more money in real dollars.
For a guy who went to Princeton, Stossel often uses arguments so specious that one wonders how he could think them valid in the first place. Stossel is an unabashed apologist for outsourcing because, he says, that means lower prices for American consumers. Of course, he doesn’t address the issue of the millions of jobs, and billions of dollars in wages lost in America as a result of this. If your job has been outsourced, you may not have the kind of money you used to with which to buy these wonderful, now foreign-made products.
Then there was Stossel’s argument against sharing he once made in a 20/20 episode when he was with ABC. His argument—and I’m not making this up—was essentially:
The refrigerator in the staff room at my work is “shared” and the inside is gross and unclean.
Public restrooms are “shared” and they are also gross and unclean.
Sharing/socialism is bad.
Therefore, private ownership is the answer to everything.
Just as frightening as the undying faith that Schiff, Stossel, and other prominent conservatives have in corporations to collectively run the markets effectively and fairly, is that their message is resonating with people. Sure, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates irresponsibly low for way too long in the early 2000s, leading to a nationwide lending spree, but Schiff wants condemn the bartender who kept on serving the alcoholic. Yes, some fault lies with the barkeep, but ultimately it’s on the drunk to clean up his act. And sometimes, an intervention is needed.
But this isn’t how Schiff sees it. He is an enabler of financial terrorism. We ought not to tax the banks that were bailed out, Schiff and many Republicans say, because they will simply gouge their customers to compensate for the lost revenue. This is likely correct, but what does this say about our financial system? What they’re saying is that we can’t enact financial reform that could cut into banks’ profits because the costs will be passed on to the consumers.
Excuse me, but what the fuck? The idea that we shouldn’t attempt to reform financial services institutions, or energy companies, or HMOs because they’ll take it out on the customers is a very dubious and dangerous rationale. This is financial terrorism straight up: threatening a country or a people with economic harm in order to attain a desired (profitable) outcome—in this case, the maintenance of the status quo. Imagine if after 9/11 America had said, we’re not going to go into Afghanistan because that will only make al Qaeda angrier. What would we think of someone who made that argument? I mean, it’s one thing to make a case against war on the grounds that we shouldn’t do it for moral or practical reasons, but it’s quite another to make that decision based on whether you think your adversary will be pissed off or not.
The fact is, the financial services sector of this country needs serious reform. A year and half after the onset of the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, fundamentally, nothing has changed. The “too big to fail” problem has only gotten worse; and over-the-counter derivates, which are an integral part of our casino economy, are very badly in need regulation in the form of a central clearinghouse responsible for approving such transactions.
But incredibly, Americans don’t give a shit about the banks or banking reform. They’re worried about socialism. They’re worried that whatever wealth they have left will be distributed to poor blacks and Mexican immigrants. They’re for some reason worried about their taxes that have either gone down or stayed the same under the present administration. This country may be unreal, but it unfortunately doesn’t surprise me when a guy such as Peter Schiff develops a huge following for his market-knows-best-philosophy, even right on the heels of the real estate bubble burst where the market clearly did not know best. As with government, the fundamental problem with markets is that they rely on human decision-making. By definition, that makes them inherently flawed.
Catholicism’s bigotry reared its ugly head once again last week in two high profile reprehensible decisions by Catholic officials. First, in anticipation of WashingtonD.C.’s allowance of gay marriage which went into effect last week, Catholic Charities in D.C. announced that it would no longer provide health insurance to spouses of new employees or spouses of employees not currently enrolled in a plan with the organization. The reasoning is clear enough: gays are second class citizens and must be denied health coverage–even if it means denying straight employees insurance as well. Second, a Catholic preschool in Boulder, Colorado told a lesbian couple that their child may not re-enroll when next school year’s classes start because of their sexual orientation. As the abominable Archdiocese of Denver put it, “Parents living in open discord with Catholic teaching in areas of faith and morals unfortunately choose by their actions to disqualify their children from enrollment.”
Well fuck Catholic teaching.
I wonder if the Denver Archdiocese also checks public records to ensure that their schoolchildren’s parents aren’t divorced. I doubt it. And if they did, that would also be ludicrous.
It will be a cold day in hell when I take love and sexual advice from an institution comprised mainly of crusty old virgins. The preachers of the Catholic Church have no idea what it’s like to be married. They have no idea what it’s like to raise children; they only know how to fuck them. The ones who aren’t pedophiles still live in a celibate fantasyland—a very unnatural place where the biological urge to copulate is suppressed and labeled evil (but a necessary evil for the laity when procreation is the motive.) Hence the Church’s absurd position on contraceptives—that they are immoral—and Pope Ratzinger’s criminal assertion that condoms will only make the AIDS epidemic in Africa worse.
This transparent bigotry from the Catholic Church is astonishing given the dwindling number of church attendees in America and Europe. My late Catholic grandmother viewed the Church as a source for good for most of her life. But when a series of scandals involving pedophile priests hit the news in the early 2000s, even she was incredulous at the behavior of the molesters, as well as the Church officials who either willfully ignored the reality, or actively helped cover it up. Many Catholics like her put their hands up and finally said, “No thanks.” And yet, at a time when we’d think that the Church would be doing all it could to increase its ranks, its leaders cannot help but revert to their hateful ways, which is what the aforementioned incidents are: hate.
Religious bigotry is often excused because it generally has some biblical or koranic justification behind it. Let’s look at the Denver Archdiocese’s statement once again regarding the lesbian parents:
“Parents living in open discord with Catholic teaching in areas of faith and morals unfortunately choose by their actions to disqualify their children from enrollment.”
Translation:
“We hate fags and anybody else who violates our antiquated notions of morality.”
For those who do not think that this blacklisting is grounded in hate, then what do you call it when one group punishes banishes a child for who his parents are? Just because there is an emotionless, bureaucratic-sounding excuse behind the bigotry does not make it any less hateful or disgusting. In fact, it makes it worse. At least people with irreligious prejudices do not hide behind the dogmas of the bible or the koran to attempt to vindicate their Neanderthal worldview.
While I have a hard time understanding why any adult would ever call himself a Catholic, I particularly will never understand why any adult would ever call herself a Catholic. Women are, after all, second class citizens in Catholicism. The Church teaches that women are deficient because they cannot serve as ministers. It’s a total sausagefest. (Should it really surprise us that priests used helpless children as an outlet for their repressed sexual urges?) In the United States, the Catholic Church boasts the largest female membership of any officially sexist organization. Millions of women regularly attend mass, tithe, and count themselves among the faithful. How is this possible? Imagine an American or European political party of which anyone can be a member, but only men may run for office. The party would be a laughingstock, if not a reviled assemblage of chauvinistic buffoons.
The Catholic Church would be a laughingstock were it not for its sizeable following. But as mentioned, thankfully Church attendance is on the way down. The percentage of self-identifying Catholics in America has been stagnant as the Church remains unable to adapt to the changing social landscapes because of its rigid dogmas. In 2009, only 45% of Catholics said they went to church at least once a week (and even some of those were probably overstating), down from 54% in the mid-1970s, and 75% in 1955. The number of priests in America has gone down steadily since 1975. All signs point to a terminal Catholic decline. Although the Church has been making inroads in Africa, its power is waning. The once mighty institution that tortured and murdered those who dared to hold differing religious opinions, has been reduced to a shell of its former self; a curious novelty act in which the main players wear flamboyant attire and practice pagan rituals such as flesh-eating and blood-drinking.
I’ve never cared for cannibalism, or sexism, or homophobia for that matter. If you are a person who calls himself or herself “a Catholic,” then I strongly urge you to consider what that means. I personally know many Catholics who do not share the abhorrent views of their Church, but nonetheless continue to identify with it. How much disagreement must there be before there is a clean break? How many others must be discriminated against before Catholics across America and the world declare, “I no longer want anything to do with this organization”?
Hopefully not many. It is high time for a mass exodus from the Catholic Church, leaving behind only the most hardcore haters. As I see it, the main element that lends respectability to the Church is the laity, who collectively do not care much for doctrine, but describe themselves as Catholics merely out of habit. That pattern must be broken as soon as possible.
The specter of death forever lurks in the shadows of the human psyche despite the fact that we seldom allow ourselves to be fully conscious of its presence. This is because, for us, death is usually conceived of as little more than an intellectual abstraction. What then would it actually look like to fully contemplate the ending of our existence free from such abstraction? To answer this question, we must turn to the phenomenological method used by existentialist philosophers. This is a method of analyzing our experiences by describing them accurately, sensitively, and perceptively, which is aimed at understanding “what it means to be alive or to exist as a human being in the world.” (Koestenbaum, 139) In other words, “the phenomenological technique prefers the more immediate and direct analysis of experience to account for life’s situations.” In order to describe an experience by this method, we have to bracket, or remove, as much as possible that we project onto the experience itself. In a sense, this allows us to reflect on what is normally pre-reflective. The descriptions we give when contemplating our own death exemplifies how we are accustomed to using projection to dilute the essence of our experience. By using the phenomenological method to analyze our conceptions death, we can get a clearer picture of what the prospect of death actually means and/or feels like to us as human beings.
From a phenomenological standpoint, there are two different meanings of the word “death.” There is the death of other people and our own death. The death of others—as seen from the perspective of our own subjectivity—is an occurrence that takes place within the world; we are still there to observe the world when another person dies. The death of the other is seen as just one possible event that can occur in this world of ours. Baring witness to this type of death is rarely accompanied by any overwhelming feelings of terror or dread. If it is someone close to us who dies, for example, we may think of making funeral plans, how we will cope with the loss, etc. The important thing to recognize is that, if examined closely, the death of the other “involves the elimination of an object within the world, and not of the observing ego or subject.” (141) In contrast, when subjected to the same kind of analysis, the conception of our own death means the total disintegration and annihilation of our subjectivity, or observing ego. Thus, the death of the other means the world still goes on and my own death means that the whole universe goes down with me.
When examining conceptions of our own death, we often confuse this with the dramatically different death of the other. This linguistic and semantic confusion serves the valuable psychological function of protecting us from the dangerous amount of terror and anxiety that naturally comes from confronting a phenomenologically accurate recognition of the meaning of our own death. In effect, “we hopefully maintain that the death of another is the only kind of death there is. In fact, we think of the death of myself as nothing worse than the death of another.” (145) For example, when contemplating my own death, this type of confusion may lead me to take comfort in the “fact” that, although I will perish, life will still go on without me. Although I know in a conceptual sense that it is “true” that life will continue without me, to entertain a picture of the world spinning after I am gone is adding something unnecessary to the concept of my own death. It is really implying that, in some sense, I will still be around to look down on this spinning world that keeps on trucking in my absence. From a phenomenological standpoint, this is considered no more than meaningless projection. This is but one common way that people confuse their own death with the death of others, and this confusion is no more than an escape from the reality of our fate. Again, when we die, so does the universe.
Just as some people often confuse the death of themselves with the death of others, many experience the reverse confusion of seeing the death of others as the death of themselves. A parent losing a child is perhaps the most powerful example of how this loss of the other can be experienced, phenomenologically, as the death of one’s self. “Since the death of myself is the disintegration of my world, the death of loved ones—who make up the world of mine—has many of the disintegrative features of the death of myself.” (144) This helps to explain how some people completely “fall apart” when the most important people in their lives pass away. Unfortunately, since we humans are a notoriously neurotic lot, this same “falling apart” in response to the death of a loved one also frequently occurs when the loss one experiences merely represents a symbolic death (i.e., the person lost is simply no longer present in one’s life).
Having worked in a psychiatric hospital, it never ceased to amaze me how many patients were admitted to my unit subsequent to attempting suicide after the breakup of a serious romantic relationship. Psychology provides us with many possible explanations for how such people can completely lose their shit when relationships end. For example, if a guy’s mother abandoned him at the age of three after running away with the Crystal Meth cooker down the street, he will likely experience a reopening of that wound in his adult romantic relationships; particularly when a lover breaks up with, or abandons him. Without even knowing the origin of this man’s dependency on his love interests, however, most psychologists would assume outright that somewhere along the line he has come to identify himself as worthless, and as a defense against such feelings, has sought a sense of self-worth through passionately (neurotically) identifying with his romantic partners. Although there is no doubt some truth to these explanations, a phenomenological analysis reveals a clearer picture of what this man is actually experiencing in response to the lost object; it shows us that the experience of being left by someone who has comprised an enormous chunk of one’s life-world (identification) is much akin to the disintegration we feel when confronted by our own death. Thus, it can be said the anxiety surrounding an accurate conception of our own death is the primary cause underlying the pain incurred by the loss of another.
Now that we realize how much of human suffering stems from a fear of self-annihilation, we can begin to see how important it is that we confront this specter of death in order to live life in the fullest way possible. When we adequately confront our own death there is no more room for self-delusion; “the immediacy of death leads to honesty with oneself.” (157) Ancient Stoic philosophers recommended that we detach ourselves to a healthy degree from others—“to avoid excessive projection onto them or ego-involvement—so their death can be accepted with equanimity.” (144) Speaking to this point, the Greek philosopher Epictetus went so far as to suggest that a father whisper into his beloved child’s ear upon leaving in the morning the sweet nothing “you may be dead tomorrow.” This illustrates how excessive attachments to that which we do not have total control (e.g., other people) can lead to despair and thus should be avoided.
A former professor and mentor of mine was diagnosed with prostate cancer about five years ago and was told that, with treatment, he would be lucky to live another ten years or so. Upon learning this upsetting news, he quickly reevaluated the priorities in his life and began making significant changes in accordance with this new shift in his perspective. Had it not been for the diagnosis, many of the important changes he subsequently made may never have been accomplished, or they would have at least been put off for some time in the indeterminate future. My professor was experiencing what Nietzsche called a “transvaluation of values;” in a sense, he saw things more clearly. One of the things he did in order to keep this change of values fresh in his mind was religiously play the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas every day just as he rolled out of bed in the morning. He wanted every single day of his existence to start with a reminder that someday soon he would cease to exist. Most people would say that such a practice is morbid, or at least quite depressing, but for him the experience was extremely uplifting. In fact, the act of confronting and accepting our own deaths is perhaps the most “therapeutic” endeavor we can engage in as human beings.
Confronting our own mortality is uplifting because it puts things into the proper perspective. It helps us to realize on an almost visceral level that we have but one life to live. If done effectively, procrastination loses its appeal and a determined, courageous spirit takes over. I remember reading once of a Buddhist monk in training who was instructed to care for dying people on a daily basis in order to fully get in touch with the reality of the impermanence of all things. Most of us may agree that this is a fine thing for a masochistic religious person to do, but would see no use in engaging in such a practice ourselves. We tend to view this type of action as depressing and therefore consider it something to be avoided.
Indeed, many of us can “get by” just fine in life without resorting to seemingly extreme practices like that of the Buddhist monk who surrounded himself with the specter of death. Furthermore, when discussing the topic of death and its impact on human existence, most of us vehemently proclaim that we are under no illusions about the fact that we and everyone else we love will someday die. Because we believe ourselves to fully accept death as a part of reality, we see no reason to dwell on such a morose topic. However, I do not think I have ever encountered a person (other than a psychotic) who is so much in denial of reality that they do not accept, on a conceptual level, the fact that human beings are mortal creatures. But seeming comfortable with the intellectual knowledge of this fact is not the same as being in touch with and really tasting the full flavor of death. Sometimes life forces us to taste this experience, but we can always choose to school ourselves by snacking on it a little more. Hell, give it a try. Becoming intimate with your own death might just save your life.
References
Koestenbaum, P. (1964). The Vitality of Death. Journal of Exisistentialism, 5, 139-166.
Just another day at the office at the WWE, which bears great responsibility for the scourge of reality television.
Ah, the realm of movable printed (or virtual) type. The blogosphere. The only place other than (insert government bureaucracy here) where everyone is so right and so wrong at the same time. It’s great to be here on Inebriated Discourse.com with my buddies Max and Wolf. I really appreciated the introduction I got from Max for my first submission. It felt like a strong endorsement, although not the ideal intro I was hoping for. I’ve always wanted my introduction to be scripted by Vince McMahon. Say some jackass on a rival “I write while I’m baked” blog starts ripping free speech or wants to end women’s suffrage. He’ll be talking all this shit on YouTube or something, then out of nowhere I come flying in and deck him over the head with the ring bell! Jim Ross would be screaming, “Good God Almighty! Who the hell is this?! This is a HEINOUS attack!” I’d drop a Hogan leg drop across his chest and my music would start playing while everyone went nuts in their cubicles and dorm rooms. I’ve still got the styrofoam Intercontinental Championship belt from like 1992. Don’t think I won’t bust that thing out.
My whole WWF fantasy got me thinking about how much “sports entertainment” has impacted my life. I still call it WWF too, because WWE still doesn‘t sound right. I had mentioned I still have some paraphernalia, and I still watch from time to time when there’s nothing else on. It’s nostalgic. I still occasionally pretend to kick my buddies in the gut and give them Stone Cold Stunners. I had Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase’s entrance theme as my ringtone for awhile. In the 90’s I used to follow this shit religiously. People called it a “soap opera for men.” Essentially it was, but there’s a much better analogy that led me to realize that something I’d loved may be the inspiration to the current bane of my existence. WWF is responsible for awful reality television.
Now, by awful reality television I mean all reality television. I am, however, excluding Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers because they contain little if any douchebaggery and are somewhat educational, therefore making them almost anti-reality TV. Reality shows are actually manufactured to eliminate previously attained knowledge. It’s like chomping ten Klonopins; your mind is being obliterated. I finally understand how my mom felt when she would catch me leaping off the back of the couch to drop an elbow on my Bret Hart Wrestling Buddy. The only thought entering my mind when VH1 is on is, “How can you watch this shit?”
These two entities rope their fans in with the same simple element: conflict. While pro wrestling lures in teenage males with violence, borderline profanity and scantily-clad women, reality shows will hook their female counterparts with chicks yelling at each other, talking about their feelings, crying on the phone with their head in their hands, and faggy blowouts wearing headbands and tight-ass, sleeveless shirts from Express For Men. You can’t blame them for trying to roll everything their main demographic desires into a single weekly show; it just makes sense. The problem is, there are only two wrestling companies. There are like 200 shitty reality shows. Wrestling shows are on once a week, live, with the closest thing to a repeat being a recap show. Fucking JerseyShore is on all god damn day! And if it’s not that, it’s Teen Mom, or 16 and Pregnant, or Dumb Twats Club, or True Life: I’m The Reason The World Hates America.
Cable television has been invaded by reality shows depicting supposed normal shit for certain people. If you’re looking for reality, why don’t you walk out your door and into oncoming traffic. That ought to “real” things up for you. These people aren’t acting normal, they play for the camera. Most of them are hoping for landing an acting gig or recording a cookie-cutter pop album hoping for a quick payday and their fifteen minutes. They’re not real! Why else would they have names like Snooki and The Situation? These even sound like wrestling names! It’s completely fake and all its biggest fans think its real, while outsiders question their mindset and proclaim the truth, “Why are you watching that crap, its not even real!” The fans always reply, “Yes it is! I love this show! You watch, someday, I’m gonna be the BIGGEST loser on The Biggest Loser!”
This epidemic has destroyed TV as we know it. I’m sure you’ve seen previews for new shows and pilots coming out. How many of them have you thinking, “Hey, that show looks pretty good, I could get into that.” I’m sure it’s a number between zero and….well….uhh….probably just zero. As long as these networks keep pumping out the same friggin’ show with a different name every few months, I’m going to boycott them the best way I know how. By suplexing my pillows off the coffee table and illegally downloading Rocko’s Modern Life episodes. Now that is some fucking entertainment!
I, Wolfgang Spitzer, have just been ordained a minister through the Universal Life Church. My new status as a reverend is something I plan to take very seriously. This means that I will now be available to perform such sacred rites as marriage, baptisms, and funeral services. Hell, I will even do exorcisms if the price is right. I encourage all readers of this post to follow suit by becoming an ordained minister today. You are literally just one click away from being granted the same official status as those who have spent countless years studying useless religious dogma. And why shouldn’t you be a reverend? Give me one good reason.
Here is a quote from my new church’s website:
"The Universal Life Church believes that all faiths are best served by the freedom and choice to become ordained online. This includes the freedom to perform weddings, baptisms or funerals for friends and family, regardless of your spiritual or religious denomination. We believe that you have the right to worship your God without intolerance or antiquated religious dogma."
I will just go ahead and assume that the church’s stated belief in the individual’s “right to worship" any personal understanding of god must also include the right not to worship a god, which means that atheists should be worthy of reverend status as well. Does the idea of an atheist reverend seem like too much of an oxymoron for you? I can already foresee the skepticism of my hardcore atheist brethren out there. They may something like: “But Wolfgang, I am wary of aligning myself with any institution that calls itself a church or a religion.” Well, get the fuck over it. Just think of how fun it could be to remove your “official” ministerial business card from your wallet the next time you find yourself in a heated religious debate with a firm believer.
Seriously though, if enough people choose to become ordained this way, and at least pretend to take their new role seriously, the title of reverend may eventually become completely meaningless. And that is one goal I am happy to work towards.
The latest Islam-inspired violence can be found in southern India, where on Tuesday a mob of Muslims (not pictured) rioted “because a local newspaper published what it said was an article by controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin challenging the traditional Muslim veil as curbing women's freedom.”
Oh the humanity.
Muslims vandalized shops and smashed automobiles, displaying their “religion of peace” for all to see. Two people have died, one of which was shot by police. Although a quasi-democracy, India occasionally curtails freedom of speech to ensure that Muslims do not have to learn to tolerate those who wish to criticize their wretched religion:
Nasrin’s work has sparked trouble in India in the past.
She fled Bangladesh for the first time in 1994 when a court said she had “deliberately and maliciously” hurt Muslims’ religious feelings with her Bengali-language novel “Lajja”, or “Shame”, which is about riots between Muslims and Hindus.
Malaysian authorities...caned four Muslim men and, for the first time, three Muslim women this month after being found guilty of having sex out of wedlock.
The move to cane the women under the country’s Islamic Shariah laws has raised fresh concerns about the growing political and judicial influence of Islam in what traditionally has been one of the world’s more moderate Muslim nations.
The vibrant, resource-rich country came under intense international scrutiny last year after a Shariah court sentenced 32-year-old Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno to be caned after she was caught drinking beer in a hotel bar.
This is what we are up against. And I do not mean “we” as in “Americans.” I’m talking about those of us who are anti-theism, pro-liberty, pro-beer-drinking, anti-caning, and pro-fucking, both in, and out of, wedlock. Islam is a disgrace and ought to be rejected outright by every decent person. While I am aware that most Muslims do not commit violence, the book on which their faith is based teaches that women are inferior and may be struck, that apostates must be slain, and that war must be made upon infidels. Thankfully, most Muslims do not abide by these horrendous commands, which begs the question, why do they continue to identify with a religion to which they are morally superior?
Perhaps another question for another time. Suffice it to say, there are millions if not billions of people around the world who are better than the religions they practice and preach. The problem for unbelievers isn’t so much about getting theists to become less superstitious, but about getting them to realize this simple point: that the “great” religions of our day are relics from antiquity, grounded in bigotry and ignorance, and collectively represent one of the more shameful chapters in human history.
“Waaa. Waaa. You insulted Canada.” - Some politically correct non-Canadian.
Last night, I posted a bit of raillery on this site under the title, “Fuck Canada.” (I have since changed the title to “Fucking Eh!” because I think it’s more apt.) The post was in response to the US-Canada men’s gold medal hockey game, which the US lost in a heartbreaker 3-2. Both sides played impassioned hockey and it was a great game to watch.
Unfortunately, several people—all non-Canadians—did not appreciate my post, which merely consisted of the following paragraph, and a Family Guy clip in which Peter Griffin says, “Canada sucks.”
Well, those filthy Canadians escaped with a squeaker over theU.S.today in the gold medal hockey game. That means the head-to-head is 1-1, but given the fucked up nature of the Olympic tournament, the Canadians win outright, despite being outscored 7-6 in a two game split. Take it away, Peter...
And then something happened. By the time I woke up this morning, several people had commented on the Facebook page. Here’s a sampling:
Nice, you just lost your credibility.
And,
oh Dude....your opening sentence is so ugly...you just freaing [sic] lost me......That's just not right!! Canada, those kids, those Athletes......are amazing......stay in politics where it is slimy...don't mess with the kids who worked so hard and deserve our absolute appreciation...........allcountires [sic].....
And,
And your typical American hatred finally comes out. Too bad, agreed with the others, reputation just went down the shitter.
To which I replied,
People are so funny and thin-skinned. Does anyone honestly think I have anything against Canada outside of this hockey game?
Stephen, your comment is probably the most absurd. Tell me, what is "typical American hatred?" All I said was "Fuck Canada" because they won a hockey game. That was the extent of my "critique." But here you come talking about "typical American hatred." What I said was boorish, but clearly you have real issues with "typical" Americans that you feel necessary to lump together into a negative stereotype characterized by a hateful nature. If I were an American version of you, I'd say you're engaging in typical British snobbery. But because I'm not like you, I don't believe in such things and so I'm not going to say that.
Get over yourselves. All of you.
Then came,
Well congratulations, you just lost a fan. How about thinking about the bile you spew before you commit it to your blog? Take a moment to consider how you come across to people who are not privy to your personal thoughts if you wish to escape the judgement you so vehemently fight. Just a thought.
And,
You never just said "Fuck Canada", if you did I could see you were just slating harmlessly like millions do over other sports. But you took it a step further with the actual content of the blog post. Humour and sarcasm didn't exactly come across in your words.
I can’t believe this is necessary, but it looks like some of you need a lesson in sarcasm/satire/humor.
First off, I will admit that it can be difficult to discern a person’s tone when reading his written words. However, when reading this site (or any other), there are certain cues one should look out for. Let’s start with the (original) title, “Fuck Canada.” Given what the average reader of this site knows about Canada, said reader ought to be struck by the strangeness of such a remark. After all, Canada is a very peaceful country that has a wealth of natural beauty. Relatively speaking, as a nation, Canada has a rather uncheckered past. Prima facie, there seems to be nothing about Canada that would justify such an assertion. So at this point the reader ought to be thinking, “What an odd and perhaps vulgar thing to say” before reading on to see the writer’s justification for his statement.
At which point the reader would read,
Well, those filthy Canadians escaped with a squeaker over theU.S.today in the gold medal hockey game.
“Aha,” the reader should say to himself. “I see that this is about sports, and therefore likely not a serious commentary because sports—though fun—are relatively trivial. I also gather that this is being written by a disenchanted US hockey fan who is frustrated with the outcome of the game.”
Also, some of you have intimated that the phrase “filthy Canadians” is wildly offensive. Really? I mean, I could see if I had said “filthy Mexicans” or “filthy Arabs,” why that would be bad because those expressions have indeed been used by disgusting racists. But “filthy Canadians”? I do not know where you live, dear reader, but let me tell you something about Canada coming from someone who lives in Boston. While we here in the Northeast fully recognize Canadian sovereignty, the fact is, we tend to view Canadians as our international cousins. For my money, when someone says, “I’m from Canada,” to us in the Northeast, it’s not all that different from someone saying, “I’m from Vermont.” It’s not like there’s a huge cultural or ideological gap between the Northeastern United States and Canada. So really, in essence, the phrase, “filthy Canadians” carries the exact same connotation as “filthy Vermonters.” It’s ridiculous terminology, and should automatically convey to any quasi-astute reader that this remark is not at all serious and is meant in jest.
Lastly, the coup de grâce of my post:
That’s right, several people read my words about “filthy Canadians” followed by a clip of Peter Griffin saying, “Canada sucks,” and subsequently reacted as if this were the biggest international insult since the XYZ Affair.
People need to lighten up. I find it telling that none of the complainers are from Canada. They’re from the UK and the non-northeastern United States. And they’re being a bunch of drama queens. But I assure you, Canada will survive with or without these finicky protestations.
