Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Bill Donohue Brings Teh Stoopid

This is almost unfair. I think my rear-claws-only cat could shred this marshmallow of a human being. But it's a Tuesday, and my job sucks, and I need a defenseless target.

The fearless leader of the League of Extraordinary Catholics has a new guest commentary in the Washington Post. The whole point seems to be "Catholics are being attacked!" and "Buy my book!" in equal measure. And, yet again, the guy walks into a rake:

If societal destruction is the goal, then it makes no sense to waste time by attacking the political or economic structure: the key to any society is its culture, and the heart of any culture is religion. In this society, that means Christianity, the big prize being Catholicism. Which explains why secular saboteurs are waging war against it.
And Billy-boy, don't you just love all those perceived attacks against your precious church, because it gives you something to do during the day that doesn't involve getting a real job. Next:
Sexual libertines, from the Marquis de Sade to radical gay activists, have sought to pervert society by acting out on their own perversions. What motivates them most of all is a pathological hatred of Christianity. They know, deep down, that what they are doing is wrong, and they shudder at the dreaded words, "Thou Shalt Not." But they continue with their death-style anyway.
Swingandamiss!!! It should go without saying, but any Catholic mouthpiece braying about sex, perversions, pathologies, and "thou shalt not" needs to be hammered over and over and over again with "Thou shalt not rape their followers." Or, alternately, "Thou shalt not co-habitate with them, get them pregnant, then neglect their paternal duties." Radical gay activists, indeed--project much? And your church's continued insistence on celibacy for your priests is what leads to all of these heinous acts, which are contributing to its own death spiral. "Death style," if you like.

Oh, and what, exactly, is so "radical" about decent human beings wanting equal rights? The notion that homosexuality is a perversion is yet another excuse to point and laugh as the rake handle knocks another tooth loose. Next:
There was a time when Hollywood made reverential movies about Christianity. But those days are long gone. Now they just insult.
WAAAAAAHHH!!! Hollywood is mean to me! WAAAAAAHHH!!!

Once you've quit crying, ya big sissy, lissenup: I would agree with you that the Catholic Church is a big, fat, easy target. I also agree with you that your church doesn't deserve it. Well, except for the rape, the coverups, the payoffs of the victims, the cynicism, the hypocrisy, the homophobia (project much?), the prohibitions against women being in control of their bodies, and the idiocy of your pope on virtually everything. Oh, and the funny uniforms need to go, too; they make target acquisition too easy. Next:
The only way secular saboteurs can be stopped is by an alliance of religious conservatives across faith lines. The good news is that this is already happening. In the fight over gay marriage, the scorecard is 30-0: traditional Catholics, evangelical Protestants, Orthodox Jews, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and Mormons, along with a big contribution from the Latino and African American communities, have succeeded in throwing a roadblock at this crazy idea.
Thanks for providing us a convenient list of bigots. We'll get back to you.

(Go here for a list of logical fallacies and look up "Argumentum ad populum." Basically, "Just because a lot of people believe it, doesn't make it true. Or in this case, doesn't make it morally right. And any half-assed debate coach would be able to tell that to a high school freshman.)

I'll skip to the last paragraph...it's a real howler:
The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they're too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels.
YOU SCREAMING DUMBO, BILL! You're saying all you need to do is continue to use women as brood mares (quiverful movement, anyone?), then indoctrinate the innocent litters of kids that result into your warped, twisted, and just plain wrong way of looking at the world, and expect it to carry it on throughout their lifetimes. What an arrogant, cynical asshole.

I have every confidence that there is some type of inherent tendency for individuals to be religious or skeptical. I'm living proof of that...I had every excuse growing up to be a lifelong Catholic. I grew up in the era before the Internet, and I went to a Catholic school fuhcryinoutloud. Didn't work. I'm the type of person who's inclined to not believe anything at face value. Ususally...nobody's perfect.

But to suggest that you're just going to keep pounding this guilt, shame, and impossible-to-live-up-to standards into kids until it runs out their ears because queers shouldn't marry... sir, you are a disgrace to your species. All you're really doing is instilling in these kids a perpetual sense of self-loathing. Which, I might add, I battle myself. Daily.

I hope you're satisfied, because a loathsome beast like you will never be happy.
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Update: Andrew Sullivan gives the editors of the WaPo some constructive criticism:
That this column - pure fact-free fulmination, jammed with grotesque generalizations, and no actual arguments - ran in the Washington Post tells you that they are either desperate or just beyond caring what appears under their auspices. Did Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn actually sign off on this as a serious piece of commentary? Their faces are grinning at the top of it.
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More: Daylight Atheism takes to the screed with a civil scalpel more effective than my own sarcastic sledgehammer.

13 comments:

Siamang said...

I read someone who commented thus:

"Whenever I'm sad about newspapers going out of business, I read something like this and think "good riddance"."

I agree. If that's what the newspaper is running, it differs in value not one bit from the free internet.

I can find no shortage of similar spittle-flecked rants among the tens of thousands of freaky ass bloggers.

And we all know that the Catholic League is just one dude with a computer anyway. Go back to your blog in your mom's basement, Bill, and leave us non-troglodytes the sunshine.


The bathhouse-abortion-dog-walking combo is an amazing stream of consciousness, though.

trog69 said...

League of Extraordinarily red-in-the-face Catholics!

Bill D. and Don McLeroy should get together and compare firebombs. Oops, I forgot...Catholics are almost as bad as atheists to religious right nutjobs like McLeroy.

Mebbe they'd agree to be Photoshopped together, for the "cause".

Angie Jackson said...

That's it. You and I and all the other atheist bloggers and writers just need to submit editorials to WaPo every week. Just flood em with ”BillDonahue is picking on me!"

I think I'm definitely more naturally a believer. Skepticism is a discipline and an effort (that I treasure). I am *extremely* gullible by nature, so I check citations and Snopes because I'm terrible at reading sarcasm and satire ,even in person.

About the next generation of overbred conservatives - Many of them will grow up to distrust the government, isolate, strive for self-sufficiency or even an agrarian lifestyle And many of them will leave, will grow up, will decide that they are more than helpmeets - they are fucking adults. And they'll blog about it. The difference in how many end up inn each camp is education. (Which is why we need national home school education standards.)

Cycle Ninja said...

You guys have been very kind. Please go read that piece on Daylight Atheism I just added. It's lovely.

Angie, whenever I get a new email friend, it usually takes me two weeks, max, of sending replies with citations from Snopes.com before they either start thinking critically or just stop forwarding the fluff to my address. It helps keep my research "skills" from getting cold (one website does not research entail).

trog69 said...

Cycle Ninja, you are fortunate to have your "new friends" stick around while you debunk their mailings. A friend I'd known since Jr. HS sent me a couple of rightwing screeds that I Snoped for her. The last one to arrive was a racist mish-mash of stupid, and when I told her that the entity sending her that tripe was a blatantly racist org., she proceeded to rail on my atheism, and how intolerant I'd become, I guess because I didn't just ignore the mailing. That was our last conversation, about 3 years ago.

Angie Jackson, you are exactly correct about home schooling needing better standards and more auditing to ensure that the kids are getting the core curriculum rather than biblical conclusions with some facts sprinkled in there to help explain why Godidit.

Cycle Ninja said...

@trog:

"You are fortunate to have your "new friends" stick around while you debunk their mailings."

What can I say? I'm a charmer. And I bake good cookies, too.

trog69 said...

Yeah, I make a mean choc. chip/coconut cookie myself. Mebbe I oughta share them with others. hehehe.

Angie Jackson said...

Trog - Sometimes the kids don't even get that. I used to babysit other little girls in the cult, and there were 9 and 10 year olds who didn't know how to read. So i started (sometimes secret) reading tutoring, and snuck in subversive materials to get them interested in reading. (One girl learned to read on a set of preteen Ford Models books.)

I think we have to create standards for both minimum competency/literacy and also for knowledge base (ahem, science and history for example.)

trog69 said...

Angie, what you describe is the ultimate in child abuse. Those kids were lucky they ran into you.

Angie Jackson said...

Trog - I kind of was one of them. The only major difference is that I was taught education was THE path out of poverty and a good thing (by my single PhD mom, who still managed to be a cult member my whole childhood.)

trog69 said...

Good afternoon, Angie.

I've met so many highly-educated people who've caused me to scratch my union retired head and wonder what happens to them, that their religious wiring is able to jump over the rational tracks without the smell of burning insulation coming outta their ears. Engineers and dentists seem to be highly susceptible to fundie double-think.

Were you a believer at all? I'm always curious as to when and what brings some people out of it, as I never was a true believer, and never had much religious instruction, though I did live for a little over a year with two ordained ministers in one of those non-denominational, spittle/tongues inflected churches, Wednesday evenings and twice on Sundays, at the age of ten. Revelations was interesting at the time, but just as with a Stephen King book, no way was I buying any of it as factual reality. ( They were devout, but not overbearing at all, and those Sundays dinners...they almost made up for the church attendance. hehe.

Cycle Ninja said...

Trog,

You can actually check out a bunch of Angie's story on her blog, "Angie the Anti-Theist." It's listed in my bloglist over at the right.

And steel yourself. That blog breaks my heart about once a week.

Angie Jackson said...

Thanks Ninja :) I'm feeling the bloglove.

Trog - yeah, what he said. I was a true-believing faith-healing tongue-speaking demon-casting home-birthed home-schooled home-churched on-fire True Believer. And now I'm an atheist and amature theologian. Almost nothing pisses the Christians off more than a former-true believing apostate who knows her Bible. :)