The Week That Was 4/3/06
Another week. More preposterousness to report.
Let me begin by apologizing for the belated nature of my weekly written catharsis. I meant to pen this column sooner, but was busy planning an overall schematic for the War on Christians —- you know the greatest threat to the future of the United States other than Republican homeland security, global warming, reporting the facts in Iraq, Bolton & Bolten or the best little political whorehouse in Arizona -— also known as John McCain’s place.
Yes, I was a bit nostalgic this past week. As my first rendition (not extraordinary, mind you) of Cliff’s Corner was written around the time that goofy git John Gibson penned his latest Christian-right-conspiracy rant about a supposed War on Christmas -— something to do with our lack of an Afghanistan-like response to the fact that Jews are allowed two spellings of Hanukah -— I thought I would have to wait a whole year until the loons starting crying persecution again. But luckily they’ve grown restless with their personal vehicle to salvation —- an entirely Republican controlled government —- seemingly in danger due to the very Christian behavior of men like Karl Rove, Ralph Reed and Tom DeLay. So they emerged from perpetual prayer to pray for damnation.
This Christian Posse (Comitus), made up of such luminaries the Box-Turtle Texas Senator John Cornyn who likes to condone violence perpetrated against judges in his spare time and Phyllis Schlafly, whose deplored working women while spending about a week in her own dwelling not lecturing on this evil since 1965, gathered in Washington this past week. They seemed to mainly want to blame DeLay’s prosecution (Ronnie Earle’s a Muslim you know) and every other problem in America from Ken Mehlman’s weaknesses of the flesh to Basic Instinct II on perceived anti-Christian bias. And of course hoot in support of a bunch of frothing second-rate Father Coughlins blather on about how inconvenienced they are to only have tax-free churches/Republican get out the vote operations and 85% of the population in this country.
B-O-O-H-O-O Like it’s my fault Ashlee Simpson’s one of theirs.
This all occurred, mind you, in the Omni Shoreham Hotel Ballroom where the plush elegance of their surroundings must have moved them to complain about the rampant “hedonism” in our society. No, I didn’t make that up. They even had a token Semite on hand to make ‘em feel even more victimized. This scholar of history and current events, Michael Horowitz, proclaimed that, "You guys have become the Jews of the 21st century." No, Michael, everyone your political agenda targets, from non-fundamentalist Christians to gays to women to "the Jews in Hollywood," are the Jews of the 21st century. (And what would that make you?) But thanks for caring.
So following that logic, if The Christian Right has become the “Jews of the 21st Century,” does that mean that Matthew Shepherd was the Fred Phelps of the 20th? Just wondering.
In any case, as we all know, these people are not real Christians, of which there are many who are good people. They are cultists. And they are paranoid as hell of a modern world that may offer a bit more complexity than Dan Quayle’s vocabulary.
"This is a skirmish over religious pluralism, and the inclination to see it as a war against Christianity strikes me as a spoiled-brat response by Christians who have always enjoyed the privileges of a majority position," said the Rev. Robert M. Franklin, a minister in the Church of God in Christ and professor of social ethics at Emory University.Upon observing Goldwater supporters, the great historian Richard Hofstadter had this to say: “Behind such movements there is a style of mind, not always right-wing in its affiliations, that has a long and varied history. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial theory that I have in mind.”
Welcome to the sequel —- War on Christians 2006: This Time it’s Psychological.
