Onward Christian Sludge
Ahh, the mellifluous strains of bigotry...
From Bob Jones III, president of the extremist right-wing college of the same name, in a recent letter to his ol' pal, President George W. Bush: "In your re-election, God has graciously granted America -- though she doesn't deserve it -- a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. ... Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ."
From Gary Wills, the extremist left-wing scholar, in a recent op-ed bashing fundamentalist Christianity: "We (the U.S.) now resemble those [European] nations less than we do our putative enemies. Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists."
You know what? I'm sick to death of hardcore Christians. And I'm sick to death of opponents of hardcore Christians.
posted by Chase McInerney @ 9:58 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I agree (remarkably) with Chase on his observations about the curiously entertaining comments of Bob Jones III -- although the term "hardcore Christians" has a weird, oxymoronic vibe to it.
However, let me get this straight: Gary Wills is an "extremist left-wing scholar"?
I know Chase was just trying to be fair and bash both sides, and throw a bone to his center-right friends like me.
Nevertheless, Gary Wills writes regularly for publications like Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times. He's a Pulitzer Prize winner. He and his ilk are pretty much de rigeur within the pages of these elite establishment publications -- and they constitute the "gliberatti" as I have termed it.
Of course, this might be merely more of the "radical chic" Tom Wolfe so robustly satirized so long ago.
But I think I see a chink of light shining through Chase's argument, and it is this: If Gary Wills and his ilk are "extremist left-wing" then can I syllogistically conclude that the New York Times is the same?
I think I can, and I don't think it's a stretch at all to come to that rational conclusion. And isn't that precisely what critics of mainstream media have been saying all year long, as outlets like the Times have drifted farther and father to the left?
I wasn't trying to throw a bone to my center-right friends, or my right-right friends. I think both are extremist -- as is apparent, I believe, in their comments noted here. I understand your contention here, Red Dirt, but I'm not prepared to call the New York Times an extremist left-wing entity. Left-wing, sure. Extremist? I dunno; occasionally, perhaps. I think a newspaper as complex and varied as the Times is too difficult to categorize like that.
But I don't think Wills' winning of a Pulitzer or appearance in the Times necessarily makes him a "mainstream liberal," or that it taint others who have won Pulitzers or been in the Times (the dreaded MoDo!). But I think Wills' comments here alone on hardcore Christians (and I sure don't think there's anything oxymoronic about that phrase... not when Bob Jones and Pat Robertson are breathing my air) qualify him as an extremist. I'm not the world's biggest fan of fundamentalist Christianity -- at least not in the form that pushes for same-sex marriage bans and Nativity scenes on government property -- but comparing it to Islamic extremism is just plain crazy. Christianity has racked up a body count in centuries past (all religions have, mine included), but Robert Schuller isn't flying planes into skyscrapers.
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