Category: The Dish

Leading Christianist, Albert Mohler, lays down the gauntlet. Mormons aren’t any sort of Christian that Mohler recognizes, and he’s being generous for a fundamentalist:

We are not talking here about the postmodern conception of Christianity that minimizes truth.  We are not talking about Christianity as a mood or as a sociological movement. We are not talking about liberal Christianity that minimizes doctrine nor about sectarian Christianity which defines the faith in terms of eccentric doctrines. We are talking about historic, traditional, Christian orthodoxy.

Orson Scott Card responds by offering what seems to be the new Mormon defense. Not that Mormonism is true or even, necessarily, Christianity; but that any faith is better than no faith in an increasingly atheist world:

We Mormons don’t agree with you on many vital points of doctrine. But I hope we all agree with each other about this: In a time when a vigorous atheist movement is trying to exclude religious people from participating in American public life unless they promise never to mention or think about their religion while in office, why are we arguing with each other?

You don’t want your kids to join the Mormon Church; well, I don’t want mine to join the Baptist Church, either. That’s because you think you’re right about your religion, and I think I’m right about mine.

But I would rather vote for a believing Baptist who lives up to his faith than for a Mormon who doesn’t take his religion seriously or keep the commandments he’s been taught.

Would he vote for an Islamist over a liberal Christian as well, I wonder? I mean: they sure do take their religion seriously.

This is Charles Franklin’s visual representation of SurveyUSA’s instant poll of informed Americans’ view of the commutation of Scooter Libby’s jail term for perjury. Charles comments here. I note that fully one-third of self-described conservatives believe Libby should get the same jail time as perjurers not friends with the president. Jim Fallows gets it right, as usual:

Of course this is outrageous. … The problem is: “of course.” We know that this is how the Administration behaves. We know it from the President’s declaration that Alberto Gonzales had performed magnificently in Congressional testimony the rest of the world saw as catastrophic. We know it from the infamous “three stooges” moment when the Presidential Medal of Freedom was conferred on Paul Bremer, George Tenet, and Tommy Franks. We know it from the failure to hold anyone above the foot-soldier level responsible for disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan. We know it in a thousand other ways.

And thanks to “of course,” people can be upset by this decision but not really shocked. (The main surprise, of course, is that Bush didn’t wait until his last days in office and then pardon Libby; on the other hand, Libby would have spent some time behind bars by then.) That is why I agree with only one part of David Brooks’ column today about Libby: his assertion that outrage over the issue will soon simmer down. The outrageousness will remain.

I have no intention of simmering down. But I take Jim’s point.

Six boys lose their penises altogether in the latest botched circumcision scandal in Africa. Several others have died undergoing the ritual.

Cape Cod:

Popular Hasidic reggae stars:

Rabbit Seasoning:

Self-Contradiction:

"Maybe it’s true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and brawlers, but also the brave and independent and generous. If our ancestors had not been that, they would have stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil…

We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left. All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It’s a breed – selected out by accident.  And so we’re overbrave and overfearful – we’re kind and cruel as children. We’re overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We’re oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic – and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy around like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture?" – John Steinbeck.

Marvin Gaye singing the national anthem in 1983.

Jeff Foxworthy on country music.

Trey Parker, Matt Stone and puking puppets: