Holy Malapropos

Here where I live, if you overshoot on the dial while trying to tune in the local Air America affiliate and instead wind up listening to the next station to the right of your intended target, you find yourself listening to religious programming of the most odious sort.

You should not take this the wrong way. I find that there is religious programming out there which is not "odious." In fact, in my view, by its very nature, religious programming should be anything but. In reality though, the vast majority of what passes for religious discourse on the air is, as I hear it, nothing short of disgusting. And in the name of God, no less.

I almost shat myself when I heard a new low today. In the thirty seconds or so that I had the wrong station on, I listened (with a jaw growing slacker by the moment) as an ad played for a new book titled How Would God Vote? by one David Klinghoffer.

A quick check of the Amazon website this evening showed that the ad copy had been taken verbatim from the Amazon page devoted to How Would God Vote? which is good because it means that I can share it with you. And here it is (at least in part):

To anyone who takes God seriously, every election poses a radical question: Will we vote with Him, or against Him? The Bible is an unapologetically political book, Klinghoffer explains, and an extremely conservative one. Some political views offend God, and those views are mostly liberal. In short, the Bible commands you to be a conservative.

Bull. Fucking. Shit, it does.

The root word of "Christianity" is, if I am not mistaken, "Christ". Now, I haven't read the entire Bible, but I have read the entire Gospel (the four chapters of the Bible which is Christ's bio, essentially) and based on my reading I can tell you for sure that if God is in fact a goddamn conservative, he and His Son must have gone 'round and 'round. Maybe that's why the poor bastard got his ass nailed to a tree, in fact.

Just to name a few, there is no part of the Gospel in which Christ, as conservatives do, espouses tax cuts for the richest among us; in which Christ, as conservatives do, demands an unprovoked attack on another county; in which Christ, as conservatives do, says "Fuck 'em all" to kids without health insurance.

I am sick beyond my ability to effectively express myself of these miserable, bound-for-Hell, scales-still-covering-their-eyes, unholy sons-of-bitches who daily pervert my religion -- a religion which is, by the way, about nothing other than peace and justice and the well-being of the least among us -- by telling me I need to vote for a woman-hating, war-mongering, Keating Five thief like John McCain lest I incur the wrath of my God.

I find the words "conservative" and "Christian" to be mutually exclusive. I always have. In other words, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Or, if you prefer the Talking Heads to talking God: Same as it ever was.

And now for something completely different.

This story that's been gaining traction these past few days about Insane John McCain's little gorilla rape joke back in '86? It's been on my radar since Monday or Tuesday at the latest. My source? Wonkette. That's right. Freaking Wonkette. It has come to this: no longer do I get the important news of the day from MSNBC or Raw Story or the Huffington Post or CNN or CBS or NBC or the Detroit Free Press or The New York Times. It's freaking Wonkette. Oh, my aforementioned God. What has happened to American Journalism?

Finally, in regards to a certain Scotty Bowman story, the target of said story should realize that his friend was just kidding and may have in fact feigned an overreaction merely to get the anecdote out there because it is, after all, a pretty good story and he will feign from time to time just to get the good stuff in. Also, your story as been fully read and a response is being worked on. I just want to be careful in what I say. So, no bruised feelings, okay?

© 2008 Richard Kincaide. All rights reserved