Monday, November 20, 2006

Random Musings for the day

I haven't posted in ages, mainly because I have been really busy, however there is much to catch up with, concerning politics, religion, etc.

First off, I have a restrained optimism over the Democrats bulldozing of the Fourth Reich (to see a different take on using the whole Nazi allusion, check out Terry Carroll's Unrepentant Idealist, where he calls the Democrats Nazis for the pro-choice 'baby killing' stance. I love Terry, but we went head to toe on this issue. Either way, he brings up many valid points).

I'm glad the overwhelming votes for Democrats, across the U.S., was like a tazer gun sending a high voltage jolt straight into the crotches of Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld, and I am pleased to see Nancy Pelosi make it to the position she's been waiting for, over the years. Given the elitist gaffes that the splintered party has made over the past eight years, I certainly hope that they take the power that they have and use it for good and not evil. Pelosi choosing Murtha was not a good start, but let's hope that it was just a shaky beginning to a glorious reign.

Let's not screw it up for 2008. I say work and work fast, balls-to-the-wall style, to counteract everything that this dimwitted, lying mama's boy, along with his father's advisors, have done to this country, the Constitution and Habeas Corpus.

In Georgia, nothing changed. Sonny "Mah Flag" Perdue easily won, because the status quo of Georgia is stable and, more importantly, because of the porcine antics of Mark Taylor.

First of all, even I didn't want to vote for Mark Taylor. The guy looks like he's one KFC meal away from needing the paddles applied to his large chest. What is it about the South, especially, that we love our male politicians big, fat, and redneck, but if a hefty WOMAN dared to run for office, that would be the first thing she'd be attacked for, or pummeled into the ground with nasty political ads alluding to her weight.

Mark Taylor is HUGE, and Bubba Perdue looks like he belongs in Sanford Stadium, every week, telling off the UGA team, and eating Varsity chilidogs.

Back to Mark Taylor. Every word he said about Sonny Perdue was right. Sonny's shady land deals cost Georgia taxpayers millions, and ruined nature conservation to the core. But Mark's attacks were really nasty, and he took the first swing. Here in Georgia, little old Southern ladies-who-lunch don't like it when a proper Southern gentleman like Taylor attacks an incumbent "Guv-nah" of the great state of Georgia.

Purdue did that "aw shucks" act, every time Taylor hit him in the gut with the truth, and he already had a cadre of television ads to combat Taylor, even before Taylor lobbed the first verbal volley across the net.

What's interesting is the Marietta Daily Journal—Marietta is a very conservative city, in which I happen to abide—wrote a scathing editorial about the seriousness of Perdue's land dealings. It's not that these things did not go un-noticed. It's that the cult of personality won out, yet again. Taylor came across as angry and shrill, and Perdue spent most of his debate time combating Taylor's assertions.

Actually, the Libertarian candidate was the usual breath of fresh air, pointing out how both Perdue and Taylor were not even touching the real issues that affect Georgians.

As usual, status quo won out.

Losing my religion

25 years ago, Norman Lear—television producer and creator of such shows as All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, etc.—got sick and tired of flipping his television dial and watching evangelical pastors who were basically telling their congregation and viewing audience how to think, politically. Better yet, he realized that these TV wranglers were telling folks that they were "Good Christians" if they voted or thought one way, and "Bad Christians" if they voted and thought in another way.

From that, Lear created People for the American Way, a watchdog organization for we progressives and dare I say, "Liberals."

Norman Lear single-handedly changed the way we view television, and All in the Family taught me more about politics, religion and the separation of Church and State, tolerance for all, than any civics class I took in school. I grew up with men like Archie Bunker in my own family, and what was discussed between Meathead, Gloria, Archie and Edith, many times while sitting around the family dinner table, were real issues that many families argued about in this country. It's amazing that All in the Family even made it on the airwaves when it did. I am not so sure it would work in 2006, except for a possible run on HBO.

The work Lear continues to do with PFAW is very much needed and appreciated in these days of robbing of the Constitution, advocating torture, and the movement of this country toward a theocracy.

Check them out.

People for the American Way

After growing up in such a right wing, conservative and narrow-minded institute such as the Southern Baptist Church, I grew to really dislike organized religion in general. The version of God that I had, while growing up, was one of tyrannical judge, who was more interested in catching me making a mistake, than in showing me that this world was created so we could enjoy it, not live in fear of eternal damnation 24/7.

Wasn't that the point of Christ's dying on the cross? So we may live eternal lives, free from the fear of burning in hell?

As of late, I have truly felt like I lost my religion. I don't mind attending any church, but I truly do not need any man-made institution and its dogma trying to tell me how I think is wrong, how I vote may be wrong, or telling me who is 'bad' or who is 'good.' Once men and women get involved in trying to figure out what the world's creator thinks, or what the world's creator really meant by the words in the Bible, you are in for big trouble.

This point was hammered home when I watched the film, "Pleasantville" yesterday. I had seen snippets of it over the years, but I had never watched the whole thing from start to finish. Though it completely hands you the obvious, concerning freedom of thought, speech, etc., it's a great beginner film for understanding the pitfalls of being a reactionary, or being under the rule of a fascist or totalitarian regime.

But given all that is written above, I still have no problem with attending church per se, just not a reactionary, narrow-minded church. Hard to find one that isn't in Georgia, but my partner grew up Episcopal and so did my mother. It trips me out that my mother grew up Episcopal and gave it all up for my dad, who was a Southern Baptist. Recently, she told me how the pastor of the first Baptist church that my parents attended in a tiny south Georgia town, told her that she was not truly a 'Christian' since she was baptized in the Episcopal church.

See, I would have walked right then and there, if I were her.

I still ask her, repeatedly, how she allowed her children to go to a church and practice a religion that spouted forth such prodigious prognostications such as "KISS means Knights in Satan's Service," or told everyone that Christ was going to return by 1983, so give as much money as you can to the church. It boggles my partner's mind that I turned out so liberal, after growing up the way that I did.

That leads me to my new obsession with reading a certain blog. How is that a woman, who left the Episcopal church because of the evil "liberals" who she feels are invading the rest of the moral, upstanding and, oh yes, CONSERVATIVE Episcopalians, converted to Catholicism to escape the moral depravity of the Episcopal Church, but yet she seems to live her life to report on everything Episcopal?

I've posted about her before, and I've dickered with even giving her any more of the pathetic attention she craves, but I almost feel like producing a Zelig-type mockumentary about her.

This is a woman, who is obviously very intelligent, but there is this constant need she has to blast mainline Episcopalians, who happen to agree with the General Convention, or TEC's new Bishop.

She's very, very conservative and she would probably refer to the late Sen. Barry Goldwater as a bed-wetting liberal, but she pumps it up a notch. She goes after those who she feels are ruining "the church" and will spare no time in trying to viscerate them on her blog.

Believing that she is pithy enough to take on the emotionalism, bleeding-heart sentiments of those "rats" she despises, her blog ends up reading like the fanatical rants of someone who believes the Virgin Mary speaks through her salad fork.

I've never seen someone who is so fed up with modern Episcopalianism, who left the church because of what she despises, give an almost Joan Rivers commentary on Episcopal Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori's Investiture. She spent paragraphs dissecting every movement Schori made, especially a very gay commentary on Schori's choice of vestments.

Despite the inadvertent humor, after doing a little background check on her, it was easy to find out all about her own hypocritical life.

Just simply scanning her own blog archives gave me, a part-time researcher, enough information to find out that this very devout and pious Catholic, who abhors the "evil" she sees within the Episcopal church, also is quite fond of two very well known atheists!

She is quite the fan of magicians Penn and Teller. Hey, I love them too. I think Penn Gillette is brilliant and I love their show, "Bull*&!t" on Showtime. Each week, they take on some fad, religious institution and prove that it's, well, bulls**t. My confusion with this woman is not that she worships Penn and Teller, but that she's so fanatical about her right-wing Catholicism, and so fanatically against the current Episcopal majority, because they are allegedly immoral leftists, who—according to her—promote homosexuality and do not support procreation.

Yet, how can she have such a devotion to two atheists, who are magicians? In the past, her new-found religion would have put them on trial and executed them, for their "magic." In one episode alone, they mocked Mother Theresa to the 10th degree.

So, maybe I don't get it. Maybe I don't get how she can worship Penn and Teller—admitted and proud atheists—even going backstage to meet them and posting all over the Internet about it, but yet she is determined to ridicule and condemn Episcopalians for being Godless.

Her posts are often nasty, comparing liberal Episcopalians to mice or rats—something that Hitler's propaganda machine did for the Jews—and then she'll post about the horrors of Hitler, and how her own, mentally challenged children would have been murdered by Hitler.

I often laugh a lot, when reading her posts. At the same time, her hypocrisy is typical of those who are fanatical about religion in general. But it certainly should be pointed out, for the five people that read and respond to her blog.

She's certainly entertained me. Again, she's a very intelligent, well read individual, who likes many of the same books, films, etc. that I like, however she'd never, ever try to get to know me, because I'm an evil liberal, who is also gay.

I'm single-handedly destroying her family and their way of life, along with the Episcopalians who don't ascribe to her brand of religion.

I can't decide if she reminds me of Sybil's mother, or Carrie White's mother, or a combo of both. I somehow see her sending her daughter into the closet to pray for forgiveness, after her daughter begins to menstruate.

But, following in the steps of the film version of Carrie, I wonder if she'll light a candle to the Virgin Mary or to Penn and Teller?

It's amazing how we humans compartmentalize everything, and then the anger and pain we hold, over some past event, begins to creep out into other areas of our lives. I think this woman deals with a lot of repression and anger.

Take a look at her blog and give her some more traffic!!! It's very funny, only when she doesn't intend to be funny. When she tries for the Ann Coulter effect, it's just boorish.

I've got to go to bed.

Its blog:

Cuckoo for Ko-Ko Puffs

Penn Gillette bio

Also, read a great letter sent to one of the maybe 10 dioceses that believe they represent the majority of Episcopalians, by Bishop Schori. I thought it was excellent and a great rebuke to Cuckoo for Ko-Ko Puffs' rabid ramblings.

A letter from the 'evil one'

One last thought: Maybe I should post on Cuckoo's blog, giving her the link to Babs' STFU song. She needs to hear it.

3 comments:

Dr. Alice said...

Gee. Whiz. You blog about the evils of random vitriol tossing on the internet, yet do such a lovely job of it yourself. For what it's worth, She (who-apparently-must-not-be-named) is, at a random estimate, is at least sixteen times the writer you are. And your partner is a sucky writer too (I say this after having viewed her blog multiple times).

To be more specific, if one were to logically take apart the arguments of conservative Anglicans/Episcopalians I have no doubt that one could put together at least a coherent case for doing so; but no one, least of all your partner, has been successful in this attempt. She merely resorts to the whiny "oh-my-God-I-can't-believe-he/she-is-saying-this" retort--which impresses no one. You would do her a favor, I believe, by gently conveying this to her.

Peace.Out.

Unknown said...

So, maybe I don't get it.

Yup.

Min O'Pause said...

Such and interesting response from such a learned Linguist!! "Yup"

How profound...

Min