TW3 — and holiday greetings!
March 21st, 2008
Good Friday to you all — and I hope it is, the weekend as well. My good thoughts and best wishes go out to those shocked to find themselves shoveling snow, or the deluged, some in my own area, filling sandbags to hold back the water or, having thrown in the too-soggy-to-use towel, wading out of their neighborhoods.
Easter, sneaky this year, “surged” — and I’m SOOOO not ready for it. According to an email I got passed to me [but which I haven’t verified] it hasn’t been this early for 95 years, and it won’t be this early again until 2228, which will give us 220 years to think about it. Maybe I’ll be ready by then.
We’ll start with Harpers, a Week That Was … interesting. I guess I’ve gotten comfortable with chaos. The Grand Cross that prompted much of this was expected, of course — and expecting the unexpected has become our default position.
As usual, TW3 is full of mayhem and serendipity — I send my personal best to the gorilla starting the Weight Watchers program, but reading on, I’d suggest that his handlers give him only bottled water for the healthful results they seek. And I don’t know WHAT to make of the toilet story out of Kansas — I know the locals can be slow … but SERIOUSLY!
I’ve collected a few entertaining reads for you — a Morford on the newest set of cardinal sins, a revealing Easter piece by Garrison Keillor and an amusing bit morphing politicians into cartoon characters for the holiday.
Ready or not, Happy Easter!
Jude
HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW
March 18, 2008
With the assistance of the Federal Reserve, JPMorgan Chase
acquired its rival Bear Stearns for $236.2 million, or $2
a share, about 1 percent of the bank’s value two weeks
ago. Bear Stearns Chairman Jimmy Cayne competed in the
North American Bridge Championship in Detroit as the
buyout transpired, winning fourth in IMP-scoring
pairs. The dollar fell to record lows against the euro,
and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said
the current financial crisis was the worst since World War
II. Nearly two hundred Eliot Spitzer-related domain names
were registered in the wake of the resignation of the New
York Governor, including idontswallowbutispitzer.org;
kristenspitzer.com; and, optimistically,
spitzersextape.com. The United States marked the five-year
anniversary of the war in Iraq, with the total cost of the
war, currently estimated to be in excess of $650 billion,
expected to rise to $2 trillion over the next five
years. Vice President Dick Cheney visited Baghdad, as did
a U.S. congressional delegation that included presumptive
Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who, earlier
in the week, admitted to fears that Al Qaeda or another
extremist group might increase their attacks in Iraq in an
attempt to hurt his chances in the U.S. election. In New
York City, a 19-story crane toppled over, killing seven
people and crushing a townhouse.
An explosion at an arms depot in Gerdec, described as
“Albania’s Hiroshima” and an “apocalyptic tragedy,” killed
fifteen people and destroyed more than three hundred
homes. Tibet’s exiled government said that hundreds of
Tibetans had died in clashes with the Chinese government
in Lhasa, while China put the number of dead at
thirteen. China dismissed as “downright nonsense” the
Dalai Lama’s claim that China has enacted a “rule of
terror” as well as “cultural genocide” in Tibet. Israel
and Germany vowed to strengthen political, cultural,
economic, and social relations between the two countries,
and Israel was preparing the largest emergency exercise in
its history in response to escalating tensions with Syria
and to Iran’s bid to obtain nuclear weapons. Sirens will
wail throughout the country as mass evacuations from “hit
zones” and mock chemical and biological attacks are
performed as drills. The United Nations Environment
Program released data showing that the rate at which the
world’s glaciers are melting has doubled in the past seven
years. “There are many canaries emerging in the climate
change coal mine,” said a UNEP spokesman. “The glaciers
are perhaps among those making the most noise and it is
absolutely essential that everyone sits up and takes
notice.” An investigation measuring contaminants in
drinking water found a vast array of pharmaceuticals–
including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers,
and sex hormones–in the water supply of at least 41
million Americans, and authorities in Kansas were
considering whether to introduce charges in the case of a
woman alleged to have sat on her boyfriend’s toilet for
two years. Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said that the
woman’s skin had grown around the seat, explaining, “We
pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went
with her to the hospital. She was not glued. She was not
tied. She was just physically stuck by her body…It is
hard to imagine. I still have a hard time imagining it
myself.”
The Vatican released a list of seven “social” sins, meant
to complement the existing seven cardinal vices. They
include drug abuse, littering, genetic tampering,
excessive wealth, and creating poverty–specifically,
“contributing to the widening divide between rich and
poor.” Perrier-Jouet announced it would sell the world’s
most expensive champagne, priced at 4,166 euros, or
$6,485, per bottle. Spokesman Olivier Cavil said sales
would be limited to 100 members of the “super-rich” global
elite accustomed to “ultimate luxury.” Heather Mills was
awarded $50 million in her divorce settlement with
estranged husband Sir Paul McCartney. A British fan of
Scarlett Johansson will pay $2,030 per minute to go on a
date with the actress to the U.S. premiere of her new film
“He’s Just Not That Into You,” with proceeds going to the
charity Oxfam. It was reported that the richest man in
Great Britain, the Duke of Westminster, was a client of
the same high-end prostitution agency as Eliot
Spitzer. The Duke allegedly haggled over pricing,
requested sex without a condom, and bored prostitute Zana
Brazdek with conversation “about the Army, going to
Afghanistan, and bin Laden.” Facing limited supplies of
rice, the Philippine government announced plans to ask
fast-food outlets to reduce portion sizes of the national
staple, and in Egypt, President Mubarak ordered the army
to increase the production and distribution of bread,
after shortages caused violence in poor neighborhoods,
resulting in several deaths. Concerned about ever-fatter
animals, zookeepers across the U.S. were initiating diet
programs for their charges, putting gorillas on a Weight
Watchers-based point system and offering polar bears
sugar-free Jell-O. Newt Gingrich announced that his
favorite guilty snack is a Slim-a-Bear ice cream, and
Angelina Jolie fed her biological child a bag of
Cheetos. In Uttar Pradesh, India, a baby girl born with
two faces was being worshipped as a reincarnated god.
– Gemma Sieff
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/03/WeeklyReview2008-03-18
Thou shalt not kid thyself
The Vatican unveils fresh new sins, as the world just rolls its eyes. Is your name on the list?
Mark Morford, SF Gate
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
This just in: If you’re an obscenely wealthy drug-dealing pedophile stem-cell researcher who drives a Hummer and doesn’t recycle, you are totally going to hell. Oh please, like you didn’t already know.
Hey, the Catholic Church wouldn’t lie, mister. The Big Book o’ Deadly Sins apparently has a whole new addendum and it looks like it ain’t just gluttony and lust and murder and hot porn and witchcraft and coveting thy neighbor’s way cool Flickr photo stream anymore.
That stuff is for wimps. Serfs. Lutherans.
The Vatican is trying to get serious. Modern. Hip, even. Indeed, Sins 2.0 now includes taking “mind-altering” drugs and polluting the planet and creating poverty and hoarding excessive wealth and messing around with genetics and did you not see the grim expression on the face of that Vatican official when he announced the new aberrations? Totally serious. Deadly. I mean, the scales were flaking right off his face. And if you look closely, you can see God right there, standing just behind the podium like a hulking Dick Cheney figure, nodding gloomily in agreement. Mmm, the Vatican. It’s like Disneyland for arthritic masochists.
Hey, don’t get mad at me. These are just the rules. I don’t make them up, I just report the facts. Like this one: Do you have a healthy Adderall/Zoloft/Budweiser addiction that you couple with a severe case of keepin’ your uppity and sexually dangerous wife in her gul-dang place? God loves you. And your fellow Republicans. Do you enjoy a joint with your wine and a few hits of Ecstasy at Burning Man and maybe some special mushrooms at SXSW as you play with a Pyrex dildo with your joyful girlfriend just after yoga but before meditating? Say hello to Satan for me, pervert.
Perhaps you are amused by it all. Or maybe frightened. Or a bit of both.
Perhaps you also note that what’s remarkable about Sinapalooza ‘08 is not that the Catholic Church has now finally managed to recognize that drugs and pollution even exist. It’s not even remarkable that a priest actually had the gall to say to the world that pedophilia is also horrible and wrong and God does not approve, and no one actually walked up and slapped him across the face, hard.
No, what’s perhaps most amusing is that in this modern age, someone still feigns to have the authority to invent new sins in the first place, to perpetuate the inanity of the very concept, to torque and mold and reshape divine will as he sees fit, just sort of making it up as he goes along, expecting everyone to basically kneel and cower and kiss the ring. Is that not fabulous, in a hey-look-we’re-back-in-1328 sort of way?
And yes, I also enjoyed the new sin of excessive wealth, given how the Vatican is one of the most - if not the most - gluttonously wealthy organizations on the planet, oozing with real estate and massive stock portfolios, dripping with cash, billions of dollars in hoarded treasure and unknown gems, icons, art, the solid gold vaginas of 1,000 pagan goddesses locked up in its vaults. The hypocrisy is positively comical. Epic. Makes Eliot Spitzer’s trifle look like Mary Ann smoking a roach in rural Idaho.
To be fair, the church does use some of that massive wealth, once estimated at about $15 billion but likely far, far higher, to fund its various charities and clinics and community centers. But it also uses it to buy more land, to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements in hundreds of pedophilia cases worldwide, to wield frightening political power, buy favor with the Italian mafia, and to refuse services it deems “sinful,” such as providing honest health information and condoms in AIDS-ridden Africa.
Despite all of that, I don’t particularly hate the Catholic Church, per se. It just happens to be the finest extant example of a largely hypocritical misogynistic authoritarian patriarchy that still wields far too much power. When it comes to insulting religious silliness, it is, of course, far from alone.
It’s also fun to consider, in an inverse sort of way, the great Joseph Smith, founder and creator and master editor of his entire religion, who, much like the Catholic Church, actually adjusted and erased and rewrote entire hunks of Mormonism’s bylaws on the fly, just so he could, say, marry multiple women or perhaps prevent one of them from claiming certain property ownership and perhaps so he could slouch on the couch and not do the damn dishes and watch back-to-back episodes of “Weeds” on DVD without the incessant nagging from the wives.
Is that not fantastic? Is that not every male’s dream? I do believe we should all try this.
“Honey, it says right here in the Good Book that thou shalt not take my Mercedes and go for a joy ride to Vegas with your girlfriends for the spa weekend and leave me with the kids.” “What? Where the hell does it say that?” “Why, right here!” “You just wrote that with an orange Sharpie, just now!” “So? It’s my religion! And by the way, thou shalt now go make me a tuna sandwich. Naked.”
You have to ask: Do religious convulsions such as these make any difference? Mormonism’s silliness aside, is there really anyone left who takes Vatican decrees at all seriously, someone who might’ve been hell-bent on becoming, say, a rich child-molesting cokehead with a giant carbon footprint who suddenly saw the new sins and was like, “Oh crap! Guess I’ll become a social worker after all.”
It’s like that old joke: You’re driving along just happy as can be and you glance over and there’s Exhausted Urban Mom piloting the Caravan to the Gymboree, and just when you’re about to ram her off the road and hopefully down that steep embankment to her fiery death as you laugh maniacally, you see it: “Baby on Board.” Damn! Thwarted again.
Speaking of babies, here’s a terrific new statistic: 25-40 percent of American teenage girls have a sexually transmitted disease. Isn’t that wonderful? Abstinence education has been a blessing and a joy.What does that have to do with Vatican impudence? Easy. This same Catholic Church has been lying to young women for upwards of 2,000 years, telling them to loathe and mistrust their bodies and fear sex and restrain their natural urges and not to touch any naughty body parts until they marry a pasty middle manager who looks disturbingly like their father, and only he can touch their naughty bits and make them feel lousy about their bodies because he has no clue what he’s doing. Praise!
And hence, awash in misinformation and lies and the ignorance of their elders, teens follow their natural urges anyway and have uninformed, unprotected, deeply lousy sex, getting STDs and learning all sorts of damaging habits that require years and decades and far too much wine and therapy to correct.
Note to the Vatican: You want true sin? Here you go: Lying to women is a sin. Pathological hypocrisy is a sin. Half a billion dollars in pedophilia lawsuit payouts is a sin. Homophobia is a sin. Hiding those golden vaginas is a sin. And creating new sins in a strange attempt to stay relevant as your church withers and struggles and falters in the new and spiritually hungry but religiously mistrustful world, that’s surely a sin.
No, wait. Check that. That’s not a sin at all. It’s actually just a sad, inexcusable joke. ++
A Pagan’s Thoughts At Eastertide
Garrison Keillor, CaglePost
3/18/2008
There was a small epiphany in church last week when we sang the recessional “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” a German chorale in which we basses must jump around more limberly than we may be used to. A tough part compared to “When the Roll Is Called up Yonder” and I stood in the rear and struggled with it and then as the choir recessed down the main aisle and came up and stood in the side aisles, three basses wound up standing near me, like border collies alongside the lost sheep, and I got myself in their draft and we sang our way to the barn. (Moral: get with the group - just make sure it’s the right one.)
I came to church as a pagan this year, though wearing a Christian suit and white shirt, and sat in a rear pew with my sandy-haired gap-toothed daughter whom I would like to see grow up in the love of the Lord, and there I was, a skeptic in the henhouse, thinking weaselish thoughts.
This often happens around Easter. God, in His humorous way, sometimes schedules high holy days for a time when your faith is at low tide, a mud flat strewn with newspapers and children’s beach toys, and while everyone else is all joyful and shiny among the lilies and praising up a storm, there you are, snarfling and grumbling. Which happened to me this year. God knows all about it so I may as well tell you.
Holy Week is a good time to face up to the question: Do we really believe in that story or do we just like to hang out with nice people and listen to organ music? There are advantages, after all, to being in the neighborhood of people who love their neighbors. If your car won’t start on a cold morning, you’ve got friends.
A year or so ago, I sat down and read the four Gospels in one fell swoop and somehow the jaggedness of some of it shook my faith, which maybe was based more on visuals - Jesus tending His flock, and little children gathered at His knee, sunbeams bursting through storm clouds, and so forth - and then I read about how the early Church cobbled the Scriptures together, which has to raise doubts in anyone’s mind. The Jews got stone tablets and the Mormons arranged for an angel to bring them their holy text, but ours was hammered out through a long contentious political process, sort of like the tax code, and that’s something you don’t care to know more about.
I don’t doubt God’s existence - there He is - but I doubt His interest in us right now and I haven’t the faintest idea what He wants from me.
So I sat and felt miserable. And then we had to chant the Psalm, which went, “I am in trouble, my life is wasted with grief and my years with sighing.” Oh boy. David really gets into the blues, he is the Howlin’ Wolf of the Chosen, and when he sings, “I have become a reproach even to my neighbors, a dismay to those of my acquaintance, when they see me in the street they avoid me,” I know that feeling. The leper. The unbeliever. And that’s how I felt when my fellow basses came up alongside and we put our backs to it and sang.
There is comfort for the doubter in the Passion story. You are not alone. Jesus’s cry from the cross was a cry of incredulity. The apostle denied even knowing Jesus three times. The guy spent years with Jesus, saw the miracles up close, the raising of Lazarus, the demons cast out, the sick healed, the water-walking trick, all of the special effects, but when the cards were down, he said, “Who? Me? No way.”
He repented. I would too, but not quite yet.
Skepticism is a stimulant, not to be repressed. It is an antidote to smugness and the great glow of satisfaction one gains from being right. You know the self-righteous - I’ve been one myself - the little extra topspin they put on the truth, their ostentatious modesty, the pleasure they take in being beautifully modulated and cool and correct when others are falling apart. Jesus was rougher on those people than He was on the adulterers and prostitutes.
So I will sit in the doubter’s chair for a while and see what is to be learned back there. ++
Think of politics as a holiday
Reg Henry, Capital Hill Blue
3/20/08
As the presidential primaries continue to grab all the attention, a parallel but less publicized contest has been taking place among familiar characters.
I refer, of course, to the battle between Mrs. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny for the Democratic Party nomination for president of the United Holidays of America. As you know, the Republican nomination has already been sewn up by the Great Pumpkin.
As it happens, the Great Pumpkin was not the first choice of many in his party, because he has not shown up for the true believers on many occasions. Still, he is a respected figure in the nation and even some who prefer other vegetables have a kind word for him. With his ruddy glow, the Great Pumpkin has the appearance of a venerable figure.
The other candidates in the Republican primaries didn’t have much of a chance. The Tooth Fairy was always going to be a loser. From the start, he was plagued by silly questions about whether Tooth Fairies are in the same religious tradition as other Americans.
Moreover, the Tooth Fairy seemed too well groomed and therefore not macho enough for the red-meat voters in the red states. Worst of all, it was known that in his own sphere of influence the Tooth Fairy had brought kiddies money for their spare teeth. To some, this sounded suspiciously like a government entitlement program if not dental socialism.
Among the other candidates, Punxsutawney Phil, the prognosticating groundhog, was a bust. Of course, he lives in Manhattan most of the year (celebrities refuse to live in burrows), but groundhogs who root around indiscriminately in the big city are never going to be popular in the country at large. Moreover, he just couldn’t sway the voters by predicting more weeks and years of fearful winter in the war on terror.
The surprise of the Republican primaries was Huckleberry Hound, not a traditional holiday character to be sure, but then again every day is a holiday in America when the cartoons are on. With his sense of humor, aw-shucks manner and his traditional beliefs, Mr. Huckleberry had some early success.
But in the end the party’s nomination went easily to the Great Pumpkin. Coming out of the Halloween observance, he is now well positioned to spin scary tales that can take him all the way to the presidency, according to the tried and true formula.
Meanwhile, the Democrats go on being Democrats — in other words, ripping themselves to shreds, grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory, finding flies in every ointment, and taking the silver lining from every cloud and putting lead in its place.
The Easter Bunny is still hopping down the bunny trail with most eggs but Mrs. Claus is clawing her way back. This is a historic contest. No Easter Bunny has ever been president and for that matter no female has ever ruled over the Holiday House.
The greater challenge has been that of the Easter Bunny. After all, what do people really know about the Easter Bunny? Where does he live when he’s not bringing the eggs around? Well, thanks to this campaign, we now know it’s Chicago, but still people have questions.
Unfortunately, rumors have flourished in this climate of suspicion. At first, it was said that Mr. Obunny was a secret pagan, because eggs were obviously part of pagan fertility rituals he had learned as a boy.
However, that preposterous falsehood was soon abandoned by his critics for a better line of attack. Yes, they now concede, he does go to church but the pastor there was as mad as a March hare. Mr. Obunny then made a fine speech explaining the context of his friendship with his pastor. It was a very daring speech because he treated the voters like grown-ups, not the core constituency that an Easter Bunny must impress to win.
Mrs. Claus is surely loving this. It takes the minds of the voters off her husband and the blizzards of controversy that beset the North Pole during his tenure as president, including that unfortunate incident with the young female elf. Indeed, many voters suffer Claus fatigue at the very mention of either of them. As for her claims of superior experience, she wasn’t the one in the toyshop at 3 a.m. when the red emergency phone was ringing.
The irony, of course, is that both Mrs. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny aren’t far apart on the issues. They both want to bring people stuff for the holidays. The Great Pumpkin won’t bring the people anything, unless you happen to be rich.
Where will it end? As you ponder that, Happy Easter! ++
Reg Henry is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Entry Filed under: Political Waves
TW3 — and holiday greetings!
March 21st, 2008
Good Friday to you all — and I hope it is, the weekend as well. My good thoughts and best wishes go out to those shocked to find themselves shoveling snow, or the deluged, some in my own area, filling sandbags to hold back the water or, having thrown in the too-soggy-to-use towel, wading out of their neighborhoods.
Easter, sneaky this year, “surged” — and I’m SOOOO not ready for it. According to an email I got passed to me [but which I haven’t verified] it hasn’t been this early for 95 years, and it won’t be this early again until 2228, which will give us 220 years to think about it. Maybe I’ll be ready by then.
We’ll start with Harpers, a Week That Was … interesting. I guess I’ve gotten comfortable with chaos. The Grand Cross that prompted much of this was expected, of course — and expecting the unexpected has become our default position.
As usual, TW3 is full of mayhem and serendipity — I send my personal best to the gorilla starting the Weight Watchers program, but reading on, I’d suggest that his handlers give him only bottled water for the healthful results they seek. And I don’t know WHAT to make of the toilet story out of Kansas — I know the locals can be slow … but SERIOUSLY!
I’ve collected a few entertaining reads for you — a Morford on the newest set of cardinal sins, a revealing Easter piece by Garrison Keillor and an amusing bit morphing politicians into cartoon characters for the holiday.
Ready or not, Happy Easter!
Jude
HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW
March 18, 2008
With the assistance of the Federal Reserve, JPMorgan Chase
acquired its rival Bear Stearns for $236.2 million, or $2
a share, about 1 percent of the bank’s value two weeks
ago. Bear Stearns Chairman Jimmy Cayne competed in the
North American Bridge Championship in Detroit as the
buyout transpired, winning fourth in IMP-scoring
pairs. The dollar fell to record lows against the euro,
and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said
the current financial crisis was the worst since World War
II. Nearly two hundred Eliot Spitzer-related domain names
were registered in the wake of the resignation of the New
York Governor, including idontswallowbutispitzer.org;
kristenspitzer.com; and, optimistically,
spitzersextape.com. The United States marked the five-year
anniversary of the war in Iraq, with the total cost of the
war, currently estimated to be in excess of $650 billion,
expected to rise to $2 trillion over the next five
years. Vice President Dick Cheney visited Baghdad, as did
a U.S. congressional delegation that included presumptive
Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who, earlier
in the week, admitted to fears that Al Qaeda or another
extremist group might increase their attacks in Iraq in an
attempt to hurt his chances in the U.S. election. In New
York City, a 19-story crane toppled over, killing seven
people and crushing a townhouse.
An explosion at an arms depot in Gerdec, described as
“Albania’s Hiroshima” and an “apocalyptic tragedy,” killed
fifteen people and destroyed more than three hundred
homes. Tibet’s exiled government said that hundreds of
Tibetans had died in clashes with the Chinese government
in Lhasa, while China put the number of dead at
thirteen. China dismissed as “downright nonsense” the
Dalai Lama’s claim that China has enacted a “rule of
terror” as well as “cultural genocide” in Tibet. Israel
and Germany vowed to strengthen political, cultural,
economic, and social relations between the two countries,
and Israel was preparing the largest emergency exercise in
its history in response to escalating tensions with Syria
and to Iran’s bid to obtain nuclear weapons. Sirens will
wail throughout the country as mass evacuations from “hit
zones” and mock chemical and biological attacks are
performed as drills. The United Nations Environment
Program released data showing that the rate at which the
world’s glaciers are melting has doubled in the past seven
years. “There are many canaries emerging in the climate
change coal mine,” said a UNEP spokesman. “The glaciers
are perhaps among those making the most noise and it is
absolutely essential that everyone sits up and takes
notice.” An investigation measuring contaminants in
drinking water found a vast array of pharmaceuticals–
including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers,
and sex hormones–in the water supply of at least 41
million Americans, and authorities in Kansas were
considering whether to introduce charges in the case of a
woman alleged to have sat on her boyfriend’s toilet for
two years. Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said that the
woman’s skin had grown around the seat, explaining, “We
pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went
with her to the hospital. She was not glued. She was not
tied. She was just physically stuck by her body…It is
hard to imagine. I still have a hard time imagining it
myself.”
The Vatican released a list of seven “social” sins, meant
to complement the existing seven cardinal vices. They
include drug abuse, littering, genetic tampering,
excessive wealth, and creating poverty–specifically,
“contributing to the widening divide between rich and
poor.” Perrier-Jouet announced it would sell the world’s
most expensive champagne, priced at 4,166 euros, or
$6,485, per bottle. Spokesman Olivier Cavil said sales
would be limited to 100 members of the “super-rich” global
elite accustomed to “ultimate luxury.” Heather Mills was
awarded $50 million in her divorce settlement with
estranged husband Sir Paul McCartney. A British fan of
Scarlett Johansson will pay $2,030 per minute to go on a
date with the actress to the U.S. premiere of her new film
“He’s Just Not That Into You,” with proceeds going to the
charity Oxfam. It was reported that the richest man in
Great Britain, the Duke of Westminster, was a client of
the same high-end prostitution agency as Eliot
Spitzer. The Duke allegedly haggled over pricing,
requested sex without a condom, and bored prostitute Zana
Brazdek with conversation “about the Army, going to
Afghanistan, and bin Laden.” Facing limited supplies of
rice, the Philippine government announced plans to ask
fast-food outlets to reduce portion sizes of the national
staple, and in Egypt, President Mubarak ordered the army
to increase the production and distribution of bread,
after shortages caused violence in poor neighborhoods,
resulting in several deaths. Concerned about ever-fatter
animals, zookeepers across the U.S. were initiating diet
programs for their charges, putting gorillas on a Weight
Watchers-based point system and offering polar bears
sugar-free Jell-O. Newt Gingrich announced that his
favorite guilty snack is a Slim-a-Bear ice cream, and
Angelina Jolie fed her biological child a bag of
Cheetos. In Uttar Pradesh, India, a baby girl born with
two faces was being worshipped as a reincarnated god.
– Gemma Sieff
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/03/WeeklyReview2008-03-18
Thou shalt not kid thyself
The Vatican unveils fresh new sins, as the world just rolls its eyes. Is your name on the list?
Mark Morford, SF Gate
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
This just in: If you’re an obscenely wealthy drug-dealing pedophile stem-cell researcher who drives a Hummer and doesn’t recycle, you are totally going to hell. Oh please, like you didn’t already know.
Hey, the Catholic Church wouldn’t lie, mister. The Big Book o’ Deadly Sins apparently has a whole new addendum and it looks like it ain’t just gluttony and lust and murder and hot porn and witchcraft and coveting thy neighbor’s way cool Flickr photo stream anymore.
That stuff is for wimps. Serfs. Lutherans.
The Vatican is trying to get serious. Modern. Hip, even. Indeed, Sins 2.0 now includes taking “mind-altering” drugs and polluting the planet and creating poverty and hoarding excessive wealth and messing around with genetics and did you not see the grim expression on the face of that Vatican official when he announced the new aberrations? Totally serious. Deadly. I mean, the scales were flaking right off his face. And if you look closely, you can see God right there, standing just behind the podium like a hulking Dick Cheney figure, nodding gloomily in agreement. Mmm, the Vatican. It’s like Disneyland for arthritic masochists.
Hey, don’t get mad at me. These are just the rules. I don’t make them up, I just report the facts. Like this one: Do you have a healthy Adderall/Zoloft/Budweiser addiction that you couple with a severe case of keepin’ your uppity and sexually dangerous wife in her gul-dang place? God loves you. And your fellow Republicans. Do you enjoy a joint with your wine and a few hits of Ecstasy at Burning Man and maybe some special mushrooms at SXSW as you play with a Pyrex dildo with your joyful girlfriend just after yoga but before meditating? Say hello to Satan for me, pervert.
Perhaps you are amused by it all. Or maybe frightened. Or a bit of both.
Perhaps you also note that what’s remarkable about Sinapalooza ‘08 is not that the Catholic Church has now finally managed to recognize that drugs and pollution even exist. It’s not even remarkable that a priest actually had the gall to say to the world that pedophilia is also horrible and wrong and God does not approve, and no one actually walked up and slapped him across the face, hard.
No, what’s perhaps most amusing is that in this modern age, someone still feigns to have the authority to invent new sins in the first place, to perpetuate the inanity of the very concept, to torque and mold and reshape divine will as he sees fit, just sort of making it up as he goes along, expecting everyone to basically kneel and cower and kiss the ring. Is that not fabulous, in a hey-look-we’re-back-in-1328 sort of way?
And yes, I also enjoyed the new sin of excessive wealth, given how the Vatican is one of the most - if not the most - gluttonously wealthy organizations on the planet, oozing with real estate and massive stock portfolios, dripping with cash, billions of dollars in hoarded treasure and unknown gems, icons, art, the solid gold vaginas of 1,000 pagan goddesses locked up in its vaults. The hypocrisy is positively comical. Epic. Makes Eliot Spitzer’s trifle look like Mary Ann smoking a roach in rural Idaho.
To be fair, the church does use some of that massive wealth, once estimated at about $15 billion but likely far, far higher, to fund its various charities and clinics and community centers. But it also uses it to buy more land, to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements in hundreds of pedophilia cases worldwide, to wield frightening political power, buy favor with the Italian mafia, and to refuse services it deems “sinful,” such as providing honest health information and condoms in AIDS-ridden Africa.
Despite all of that, I don’t particularly hate the Catholic Church, per se. It just happens to be the finest extant example of a largely hypocritical misogynistic authoritarian patriarchy that still wields far too much power. When it comes to insulting religious silliness, it is, of course, far from alone.
It’s also fun to consider, in an inverse sort of way, the great Joseph Smith, founder and creator and master editor of his entire religion, who, much like the Catholic Church, actually adjusted and erased and rewrote entire hunks of Mormonism’s bylaws on the fly, just so he could, say, marry multiple women or perhaps prevent one of them from claiming certain property ownership and perhaps so he could slouch on the couch and not do the damn dishes and watch back-to-back episodes of “Weeds” on DVD without the incessant nagging from the wives.
Is that not fantastic? Is that not every male’s dream? I do believe we should all try this.
“Honey, it says right here in the Good Book that thou shalt not take my Mercedes and go for a joy ride to Vegas with your girlfriends for the spa weekend and leave me with the kids.” “What? Where the hell does it say that?” “Why, right here!” “You just wrote that with an orange Sharpie, just now!” “So? It’s my religion! And by the way, thou shalt now go make me a tuna sandwich. Naked.”
You have to ask: Do religious convulsions such as these make any difference? Mormonism’s silliness aside, is there really anyone left who takes Vatican decrees at all seriously, someone who might’ve been hell-bent on becoming, say, a rich child-molesting cokehead with a giant carbon footprint who suddenly saw the new sins and was like, “Oh crap! Guess I’ll become a social worker after all.”
It’s like that old joke: You’re driving along just happy as can be and you glance over and there’s Exhausted Urban Mom piloting the Caravan to the Gymboree, and just when you’re about to ram her off the road and hopefully down that steep embankment to her fiery death as you laugh maniacally, you see it: “Baby on Board.” Damn! Thwarted again.
Speaking of babies, here’s a terrific new statistic: 25-40 percent of American teenage girls have a sexually transmitted disease. Isn’t that wonderful? Abstinence education has been a blessing and a joy.What does that have to do with Vatican impudence? Easy. This same Catholic Church has been lying to young women for upwards of 2,000 years, telling them to loathe and mistrust their bodies and fear sex and restrain their natural urges and not to touch any naughty body parts until they marry a pasty middle manager who looks disturbingly like their father, and only he can touch their naughty bits and make them feel lousy about their bodies because he has no clue what he’s doing. Praise!
And hence, awash in misinformation and lies and the ignorance of their elders, teens follow their natural urges anyway and have uninformed, unprotected, deeply lousy sex, getting STDs and learning all sorts of damaging habits that require years and decades and far too much wine and therapy to correct.
Note to the Vatican: You want true sin? Here you go: Lying to women is a sin. Pathological hypocrisy is a sin. Half a billion dollars in pedophilia lawsuit payouts is a sin. Homophobia is a sin. Hiding those golden vaginas is a sin. And creating new sins in a strange attempt to stay relevant as your church withers and struggles and falters in the new and spiritually hungry but religiously mistrustful world, that’s surely a sin.
No, wait. Check that. That’s not a sin at all. It’s actually just a sad, inexcusable joke. ++
A Pagan’s Thoughts At Eastertide
Garrison Keillor, CaglePost
3/18/2008
There was a small epiphany in church last week when we sang the recessional “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” a German chorale in which we basses must jump around more limberly than we may be used to. A tough part compared to “When the Roll Is Called up Yonder” and I stood in the rear and struggled with it and then as the choir recessed down the main aisle and came up and stood in the side aisles, three basses wound up standing near me, like border collies alongside the lost sheep, and I got myself in their draft and we sang our way to the barn. (Moral: get with the group - just make sure it’s the right one.)
I came to church as a pagan this year, though wearing a Christian suit and white shirt, and sat in a rear pew with my sandy-haired gap-toothed daughter whom I would like to see grow up in the love of the Lord, and there I was, a skeptic in the henhouse, thinking weaselish thoughts.
This often happens around Easter. God, in His humorous way, sometimes schedules high holy days for a time when your faith is at low tide, a mud flat strewn with newspapers and children’s beach toys, and while everyone else is all joyful and shiny among the lilies and praising up a storm, there you are, snarfling and grumbling. Which happened to me this year. God knows all about it so I may as well tell you.
Holy Week is a good time to face up to the question: Do we really believe in that story or do we just like to hang out with nice people and listen to organ music? There are advantages, after all, to being in the neighborhood of people who love their neighbors. If your car won’t start on a cold morning, you’ve got friends.
A year or so ago, I sat down and read the four Gospels in one fell swoop and somehow the jaggedness of some of it shook my faith, which maybe was based more on visuals - Jesus tending His flock, and little children gathered at His knee, sunbeams bursting through storm clouds, and so forth - and then I read about how the early Church cobbled the Scriptures together, which has to raise doubts in anyone’s mind. The Jews got stone tablets and the Mormons arranged for an angel to bring them their holy text, but ours was hammered out through a long contentious political process, sort of like the tax code, and that’s something you don’t care to know more about.
I don’t doubt God’s existence - there He is - but I doubt His interest in us right now and I haven’t the faintest idea what He wants from me.
So I sat and felt miserable. And then we had to chant the Psalm, which went, “I am in trouble, my life is wasted with grief and my years with sighing.” Oh boy. David really gets into the blues, he is the Howlin’ Wolf of the Chosen, and when he sings, “I have become a reproach even to my neighbors, a dismay to those of my acquaintance, when they see me in the street they avoid me,” I know that feeling. The leper. The unbeliever. And that’s how I felt when my fellow basses came up alongside and we put our backs to it and sang.
There is comfort for the doubter in the Passion story. You are not alone. Jesus’s cry from the cross was a cry of incredulity. The apostle denied even knowing Jesus three times. The guy spent years with Jesus, saw the miracles up close, the raising of Lazarus, the demons cast out, the sick healed, the water-walking trick, all of the special effects, but when the cards were down, he said, “Who? Me? No way.”
He repented. I would too, but not quite yet.
Skepticism is a stimulant, not to be repressed. It is an antidote to smugness and the great glow of satisfaction one gains from being right. You know the self-righteous - I’ve been one myself - the little extra topspin they put on the truth, their ostentatious modesty, the pleasure they take in being beautifully modulated and cool and correct when others are falling apart. Jesus was rougher on those people than He was on the adulterers and prostitutes.
So I will sit in the doubter’s chair for a while and see what is to be learned back there. ++
Think of politics as a holiday
Reg Henry, Capital Hill Blue
3/20/08
As the presidential primaries continue to grab all the attention, a parallel but less publicized contest has been taking place among familiar characters.
I refer, of course, to the battle between Mrs. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny for the Democratic Party nomination for president of the United Holidays of America. As you know, the Republican nomination has already been sewn up by the Great Pumpkin.
As it happens, the Great Pumpkin was not the first choice of many in his party, because he has not shown up for the true believers on many occasions. Still, he is a respected figure in the nation and even some who prefer other vegetables have a kind word for him. With his ruddy glow, the Great Pumpkin has the appearance of a venerable figure.
The other candidates in the Republican primaries didn’t have much of a chance. The Tooth Fairy was always going to be a loser. From the start, he was plagued by silly questions about whether Tooth Fairies are in the same religious tradition as other Americans.
Moreover, the Tooth Fairy seemed too well groomed and therefore not macho enough for the red-meat voters in the red states. Worst of all, it was known that in his own sphere of influence the Tooth Fairy had brought kiddies money for their spare teeth. To some, this sounded suspiciously like a government entitlement program if not dental socialism.
Among the other candidates, Punxsutawney Phil, the prognosticating groundhog, was a bust. Of course, he lives in Manhattan most of the year (celebrities refuse to live in burrows), but groundhogs who root around indiscriminately in the big city are never going to be popular in the country at large. Moreover, he just couldn’t sway the voters by predicting more weeks and years of fearful winter in the war on terror.
The surprise of the Republican primaries was Huckleberry Hound, not a traditional holiday character to be sure, but then again every day is a holiday in America when the cartoons are on. With his sense of humor, aw-shucks manner and his traditional beliefs, Mr. Huckleberry had some early success.
But in the end the party’s nomination went easily to the Great Pumpkin. Coming out of the Halloween observance, he is now well positioned to spin scary tales that can take him all the way to the presidency, according to the tried and true formula.
Meanwhile, the Democrats go on being Democrats — in other words, ripping themselves to shreds, grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory, finding flies in every ointment, and taking the silver lining from every cloud and putting lead in its place.
The Easter Bunny is still hopping down the bunny trail with most eggs but Mrs. Claus is clawing her way back. This is a historic contest. No Easter Bunny has ever been president and for that matter no female has ever ruled over the Holiday House.
The greater challenge has been that of the Easter Bunny. After all, what do people really know about the Easter Bunny? Where does he live when he’s not bringing the eggs around? Well, thanks to this campaign, we now know it’s Chicago, but still people have questions.
Unfortunately, rumors have flourished in this climate of suspicion. At first, it was said that Mr. Obunny was a secret pagan, because eggs were obviously part of pagan fertility rituals he had learned as a boy.
However, that preposterous falsehood was soon abandoned by his critics for a better line of attack. Yes, they now concede, he does go to church but the pastor there was as mad as a March hare. Mr. Obunny then made a fine speech explaining the context of his friendship with his pastor. It was a very daring speech because he treated the voters like grown-ups, not the core constituency that an Easter Bunny must impress to win.
Mrs. Claus is surely loving this. It takes the minds of the voters off her husband and the blizzards of controversy that beset the North Pole during his tenure as president, including that unfortunate incident with the young female elf. Indeed, many voters suffer Claus fatigue at the very mention of either of them. As for her claims of superior experience, she wasn’t the one in the toyshop at 3 a.m. when the red emergency phone was ringing.
The irony, of course, is that both Mrs. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny aren’t far apart on the issues. They both want to bring people stuff for the holidays. The Great Pumpkin won’t bring the people anything, unless you happen to be rich.
Where will it end? As you ponder that, Happy Easter! ++
Reg Henry is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Entry Filed under: Political Waves
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