Prickly Pear Wine

Oh, honestly, won’t somebody stuff Hillary in a sack with a boulder and drop her in a river somewhere? The time has come.

While chatting with my mother the Texas democrat–yes, there are democrats in Texas–I mentioned this lovely blog posting over at DailyKos. (It should be noted, that as of late, Kos has become an Obama-only blog. Seems all the Hillary supporters, miffed by the lack of adulation their candidate received at the blog, took their toys and went home. Snerk.) The writer (an atheist) of this particular diary once worked for Reverend Wright.

He preached that no-holds-barred, do-the-right-thing, eye-for-an-eye stuff that is so hard to live up to, but was for him the only acceptable way to live. Dr. Wright did not turn me into a black militant. But he did turn me into a white atheist who spent a lot of time thinking about what it might be like to grow up as a black man in the America he knows. He helped me to wear those shoes, at least for a little while, and he tried to wear mine.

Imagine my surprise a week ago, when there he was, in all his Pentecostal glory, on the TV, saying “God Damn America!” What could have made him say such a thing? Maybe it was the segregated bathrooms, restaurants, hotels, busses, trains, and planes. Or was it the dogs? The fire hoses? the billy clubs? The nooses? Or maybe it was serving in the Marines, and coming home to be spit on and denied even the pretense of equality, in a country where the watchword was “Know your place.”

There are links to Reverend Wright’s “offensive” sermons in the diary. Justin, my hunka-burning-love-atheist, watched both sermons, and noted that the media, by only playing snippets, the inflammatory snippets, has, as usual, provided the usual skewed (and racist) slant. Watching the entire sermons is enlightening.

On a different tangent, like a good little atheist, I’ve been enjoying how poorly received the movie Expelled has been (except by mouth breathers who think God is some kind of super-duper Dumbledore who “poofed” the world into existence.) Julia Sweeney’s blog has a cute response to the creationist propaganda that is “Expelled,” in which she notes that Ben Stein is a IDiot.

I really like this bit about the stupidity that is the Idiot Design / Evolution “debate.”

To be honest, this shouldn’t even be something that is even being debated. It only continues to be in the public discourse at all because of the lack of sophisticated science education amongst the general public, coupled with groups who have a vested interest in keeping people confused on these matters, mixed with a darker push from elected officials (and some judges and those in power, funded by the more conservative religious groups) who use issues like this to rile people up and make the more complicated, truer view of life’s nature and origins seem as though it’s a debate between those who are moral and good and those who are cruel and heartless. So that when people skim the issue it appears as though those people (on the side of God) are the moral and just ones. They’re nicer. Cause, y’know, they believe in God. They are “open” to a God implanting and guiding life to it’s crowning glory, human beings! ARGH.

Argh, indeed.

We’ve received a few mailing about “Expelled” showings at the church. Which I shredded. Which, isn’t all that unusual–except for the shredding. You would not believe the amount of junk mail that the church gets. Most of it is just junk, and some of it might encourage the elders to spend money we don’t have, so I chuck most in the recycle bin. (The current meme is Narnia-related merchandising.) Anything IDiot Design related, however, wins a trip through the shredder.

It’s so satisfying to watch the metal teeth devour Ben Stein’s face.

Cheers,
P.K.