Wingnut Watch: Evil Zionist Conspiracy Edition

One of the oddest pairings in the recent political landscape has been the somewhat surprising conjunction of evangelical Christianity with Judaism. I guess I'm the only one who recalls that callers blathering about the International Jewish Banking Conspiracy were a longtime staple of the sort of late-night radio that has since morphed into your Limbaughs and O'Reillys and Coulters: bizarre people up too late and spewing shit in the wee hours. The talk radio hosts in those days would let these people go for a moment, then cut them off. Now, of course, they're the hosts.

September 11, 2001, among its many somewhat bizarre effects, created a rapprochement between evangelical Christians and Jews as they teamed up to fight the Mohammedan Menace© the world over. I hear that your Rapture Right actually want to poke the Middle East with a stick until someone nukes Israel because that's supposed to bring Jesus back, but I confess I do not have independent confirmation of that (except for one family member, married into the Baptists, who confessed to me that they terrify him: "They really do want to cause the end of the world!"). The nuclear annihilation of Israel seems like an odd goal, but even odder when you consider the political alliance between these two groups.

So it's nice, I guess, to see them return to a state of mutual distrust.

Today's example comes from the office of Georgia State Representative Ben Bridges, a Republican from Cleveland, GA, whose office this week released a memo opposing the teaching of evolution in schools, not because it's unGodly per se, but because it's well, you know.

“Indisputable evidence — long hidden but now available to everyone — demonstrates conclusively that so-called ‘secular evolution science’ is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion,” the memo says. “This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic ‘holy book’ Kabbala dating back at least two millennia.”

The memo calls on lawmakers to introduce legislation that would end the teaching of evolution in public schools because it is “a deception that is causing incalculable harm to every student and every truth-loving citizen.”

...........

Bridges denied writing or authorizing the memo.

“I did not put it out nor did I know it was going out,” Bridges said. “I’m not defending it or taking up for it.”

The memo directs supporters to call Marshall Hall, president of the Fair Education Foundation Inc., a Cornelia, Ga.-based organization that seeks to show evolution is a myth. Hall said he showed Bridges the text of the memo and got his permission to distribute it.

“I gave him a copy of it months ago,” said Hall, a retired high school teacher. “I had already written this up as an idea to present to him so he could see what it was and what we were thinking.”

Hall said his wife Bonnie has served as Bridges’ campaign manager since 1996.

Bridges acknowledged that he talked to Hall about filing legislation this year that would end the teaching of evolution in Georgia’s public schools. Bridges said the views in the memo belong to Hall, though Bridges said he doesn’t necessarily disagree with them.

“I agree with it more than I would the Big Bang Theory or the Darwin Theory,” Bridges said. “I am convinced that rather than risk teaching a lie why teach anything?”

Why teach anything indeed? I mean education makes people think, sometimes even about not voting for bigots. Better just to avoid the whole scenario.


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Rep. Bridges' Reelection Campaign Begins.
(Image courtesy of the Florida Holocaust Museum)

Gah. I genuinely don't understand why anyone anywhere ever would ally themselves with these people, but then I'm a moonbat, so what do I know?

The Aging Hipster has more.

Cat Licks

One of the side effects of my current situation (working about 60 hours a week, more or less) is that I tend to catch crises when they're a day or so in, not at the precise moment of crest. But that also gives me the chance to catch up on things with a little reflection. Often, as you may have noted, I get tips from Thers, who, working only one job, has a comparatively flexible schedule.

And so I note, via WhiskeyFire, that:

Professional Outraged Catholic and homophobic misogynist bigot Bill Donahue is Professionally Outraged at [Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan] for making "anti-Catholic" comments.

(Michelle Malkin is also frothing at the mouth, but she always is, isn't she?)

Thers noted that your Professionally Outraged religious folks want to have it both ways: they want to claim "majority culture" status ("Everyone thinks like me, they just don't say so!") while simultaneously wrapping themselves in the tattered cloak of victimhood ("You're not allowed to be mean to me!"). Okay, but it's important to note that these are--or should be--mutually exclusive cultural positions. If you've got the numbers, why worry about the discontents in the balcony?

For me, Catholicism is a tribal identity: more ethnic and cultural than religious, per se. My separation came surprisingly late: with the ascension of Benedict in 2005. It was a repudiation of everything I find valuable in religion, an assertion that ignorance, control, and paranoia were taking the day. My father, a deeply spiritual man who goes to Mass daily and who I respect tremendously, had no better words of comfort than "He's old; he won't live long." If I wanted to follow gay-baiting Nazis, I'd sign on with Ted Haggard: at least he knows how to party.

Donohue's Catholicism is the stuff that drove me away. If he and his ilk were content to assert their control only over the people who chose to participate, it would be one thing, even though I would still despise them for the policies that made my mother, locked in the house with too many children, depressed and old by the time she was 40. But she chose Catholicism, in a certain way, and late in life even went to work for a rogue Lefty branch of the Church.

Donohue's right to outrage ends the second he goes on national television to whine. He does so in order to influence public policy, policy which does not ask whether someone is an observant Catholic before telling them they can't have birth control or an abortion. If he was so sure of the justice of his position, why would he need it enforced by law? As long as Donohue wants to influence policy, as long as he presents himself as the face of the Catholic Church, he's going to get shit thrown at him, and some of it's going to hit his beloved Church. He is doing them damage.

I love many, many Catholics. I love the Catholic Workers and Pax Christi. When I worked in a Catholic school, the nuns were by far the coolest and funniest women there, much less tightly wound than the Donohughian lay people, obsessing about abortion and sex. But the selection of Benedict indicated to me that these last were now in charge, and I cannot be part of them, not even for the delightful people in the other categories.

So fuck off, Bill Donohue. Fuck off from a lifelong Catholic feminist with twelve years of Catholic schooling under her belt. Be as shocked as you like by the language; I care not. You're a scumbag and a Pharisee. You are destroying the Church--my Church, my family--and I hope you rot in hell for it.

Oh, Boo

RIP to the rip-roaring shitkicker Molly Ivins, one of my favorite writers. Articulate, principled, funny, what was not to love?

My fave Molly Ivins moment was, once when I saw her interviewed, someone asked her what she thought of Ann Richards. Ivins replied with this:

Molly Ivins told this story about Ann Richards. They were at a dinner in one of the better neighborhoods in Austin with many leading political types, including a notoriously sexist state senator. He was regaling the crowd loudly with the tale of a fabulous set of jugs he'd seen that day, how they jiggled and bounced as their owner walked down the street, so fetching in fact that he drove around the block just to get another look. As he finished this story, Richards asked loudly, "So, girls, seen any good dicks lately?"

Godspeed to a smart, funny woman.

Attend the Tale of Spocko!

A lovely fellow who did nothing more than point out to a few advertisers that their money was being sent encouraging callers to say "Allah is a Whore" to prove they weren't Muslim, or openly wishing for the death of all Indonesians.



Lots of posts on the Spocko saga here.