1. It should be remembered from the outset that Mitt Romney is running for president and stands some signficant chance of winning. Thus, he is a bastard. But how is this bastard different from all the other bastards?
2. In this season of non-standard presidential candidates, Romney’s Mormonism has drawn some comment. Damon Linker’s recent essay [...]
Archive for the ‘Religion’ category
Notes toward prolegomena to any future consideration of Mitt Romney’s Mormonism
Frogs and mice making nice
With Parrish gone to a better place, who will do the periodic current-events roundups that made for such delightful early-morning reading? (And who will save us from the special hell of compound words and compound-adjective hyphenation?)
Well, okay, I’ll do it. I begin with the weather. Here in Brooklyn it’s fucking freezing. Eight degrees Fahrenheit this [...]
Let’s not don’t fear the reaper
I like stories about the breakdown of society. I’ve liked a number of post-apocalyptic films: The Mad Max trilogy, 28 Days, 12 Monkeys, Deep Impact, The Day After, AI, and The War of the Worlds. The problem is that most of them just never satisfy my hunger to see a true version of that horrific [...]
But not a single giant strawberry: More short reviews
One hundred words or fewer, words of one or two letters don’t count. This time with a strong West Coast flava, focused on local products: movies, TV, and kooky theology.
Dexter (Showtime, avail. on demand)
This fall, posters appeared on the subway advertising Dexter, “a man who takes life. Seriously.” Michael C. Hall plays the serial killer [...]
Rising up through the talons of the tiger
or to the challenge of arrival
or to the challenge of our rivals.
Whatever.
Bryan at 2:20 am: “2006 is my bitch, yall!!”
Happy New Year from Rocky Balboa and the Garden State Chorale, Inc.
And from all your best friends at The Great Whatsit.
I want an atheist for Christmas
Do you, dear reader, suffer from the anxiety of being an atheist at Christmas time?
Perhaps you have considered going the militant route: taking on a petulant air when you hear “Merry Christmas,” like George W. Bush facing down a British reporter at a press conference. Or giving as gifts copies of The God Delusion [...]
Who will buy this wonderful feeling
I have something in common with a Fox News commentator I will call Mr. Bill.
It is true we do not share a world view. Mr. Bill would consider me a godless, baby-killing, shrill, morally bankrupt whore-of-Babylon. I consider Mr. Bill a carnival barking troll hurling excrement at the bars of his own twisted freak show. [...]
My own private Jesus camp
This past weekend, I went with a group of friends to see the movie Jesus Camp. A documentary about a religious camp in North Dakota for young evangelicals, Jesus Camp is filled with images of kids weeping, trembling, convulsing for the Lord. They speak in tongues, wave their hands around in spiritual ecstasy and say [...]
Various cults
“Artists are the worker priests of the cult of man.”
That’s a statement by Brice Marden. A brand new painting by Marden will set you back about nine hundred thousand dollars. In addition, Marden has been pretty up front about his drug use. He really likes to smoke pot. So what kind of cult is he [...]
The last resort
To anyone who occasionally reads the paper, it’s common knowledge that we live in an aging society. Certainly plenty of politicians find it beneficial to remind us of the oncoming deluge of retiring Baby Boomers destined to “bankrupt Social Security.” The other side of the coin, however, is that more Americans are wealthier [...]
