Category: Religion

Arguments in Bad Faith

6/18/2012

Jesus Christ, a prominent 1st century Catholic

Most jokes about Catholicism are just jokes. Most insults against the church are too frivolous to denounce. And far too many of our scandals are of our own doing.

The cooler heads among Catholicism know this, but cable news programmers do not rush cool heads into a studio to remain placid in front of a comedian’s jab or emit sorrow over an abuse case. When they need someone to decry and denounce—to say absurd, insulting, and crazy shit—they can always count on Bill Donohue, president of the august-sounding Catholic League, to show up and act pissed.

Bill Donohue is a professional bully. Since he bullies on behalf of religion, he creates a hard-edged irony that makes for good TV. Actually, that’s a cliché: it makes for extremely shitty TV, but it makes for good ratings.

I’m not gonna play his game by quoting his obnoxious copy (the advertising term is apt) about gays, Jews, women, liberals, or whoever is the target of his silly ire. If you are not familiar with him, just imagine someone saying something outlandish and cruel in the name of Jesus. Bonus points if you imagined an assistant dean.

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Obligatory Steve Jobs Reflection

10/12/2011

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I just received this chilling email—sent from my own email account.

Dear Dennis,

Read every word of this letter. We are the cops and we are not fucking around.

Steve Jobs died a week ago. No one reading your blog would know that. We keep hitting refresh, but there is still no assessment of his life, legacy, and cultural impact. Is our browser broken? No dude, YOU are broken.

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Patrick Leigh Fermor, Agnostic

6/16/2011

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It’s impossible not to romanticize Patrick Leigh Fermor, who died last week at 96.

When he was 18 he got booted from military school, so did the logical thing: walked alone from Holland to Constantinople, sleeping in forests, farmhouses, bars—wherever he set down his pack. During World War II he and a band of British commandos parachuted into Nazi-occupied Crete and set up shop “disguised as Cretan shepherds, complete with black turbans and sashes and armed with silver-and-ivory daggers.”* In 1944 he kidnapped a German general—not something I’ve done, but I assume it was exciting.

After the war he became a writer. He picked up languages like the rest of us pick up colds: ancient and modern Greek, Latin, French, among others. His English vocabulary could shame the OED. His prose is so fine it’s as much precision engineering as writing. Author of 8 or so travel books, he stood, I gather, about 6’2”, looked like that (←) and was, in the parlance of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, a “008.” (Royal Breast Inspector.)

This is a biographical sketch, emphasis on sketch. I'm not an expert on the man. I have only read one of his books and portions of another. So, these are the impressions of a casual reader relatively new to his work. (However, all of the above—from his hike to Turkey to kidnapping the general—is true. Except for the 008 part, alas.) I have read several magazine pieces about him—Anthony Lane’s from the New Yorker is great—and whenever I do, I envy him. Or maybe I envy the image as it appears in profiles, but I envy it to the point that I wish I was him. Even in old age he seemed far cooler than the rest of us. In Anthony Lane’s profile, he tells this anecdote of hanging with an 83-year-old Leigh Fermor in Crete:

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