Jezebel
Barack Obama thinks the new Pope is hustling the opiate of the masses. But it's the opiate that kept him off his cokehead ways so it's okay! Hillary thinks the potential for life begins at conception, and that Obama is an elitist. Is it possible that the second coming of the Messiah is also the reincarnation of Karl Marx? Is it possible that some countries can only subsist on dirt and opiates for so long? Are we talking about Marx when we should be talking about Malthus and stockpiling guns? Barack Obama seems to think so, and guess what? We agree. In Jezebel's deepest spiritual discussion since I wrote about how being a Libra made me believe in God, the inimitable Megan and I discuss the papacy, fave hymns, and how cool it would be if Jesus came back as a Palestinian stand-up comedian.
MEGAN: Whatever we talk about, can we agree that Bittergate is about to be as played-out as Reverend Wright?
MOE: I haven't been watching the news, so I was really confused by that. Like, okay, so...Obama is saying that people cling to religion in times of crisis, and...like hello have we not talked enough about Obama's religion already Jesus Fuck...and Hillary says that's elitist but she won't say when the last time she set foot in church...and the Pope is coming? Peggy Noonan wrote about the Pope coming. I couldn't quite get through the column though. I have always been one of those terrible Catholics who was like, "John Paul II...uh, what's the big deal?"
MEGAN: Nope, it's the new Pope, JPJ bought it a couple years ago. This is the one who used to be a Nazi, loves him the Opus Dei and the Latin masses and hates that you and I have teh sexes.
MOE: Speaking of which, over the weekend, Tracie and our friend Ryan and I went to a gay bar and burst into "On Eagle's Wings" followed by a "Be Not Afraid," "One Bread, One Body" "Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace" medley.
MEGAN: Oh, God, I miss all the fun by being in D.C.
MOE: No I know that there is a new pope DUH. I am just saying, it seems like everyone is comparing him with the old pope, who was so iconic and humanistic and crap; but I never really understood the hype about the old pope, maybe because he presided over an era of officially sanctioned child molestation? I dunno. I'm pondering this now.
MEGAN: I think the hype about the old Pope was that he eschewed the Pope Pius model of appeasing dictators (cough, Hitler, cough) and instead used the power of his office to confront them directly in countries where there were Catholics. Also, it was only once he was infirm and shit that the Church came to a détente with the Chinese about letting the Chinese government decide on Church officials because when JPJ wasn't laid up he mostly told the Chinese to go fuck themselves, but Benedict is fine with it.
MEGAN: Also, I think probably all the eras of the Church involved the sanctioning of inappropriate sexual or ethical behavior. Absolute power corrupts, yadda yadda
MEGAN: Notably, I left the Catholic Church at 16, so I'm not really a "Catholic" so much as an ex-Catholic with major leftover guilt issues.
MOE: Okay, so sure, he's cool. Let's play a game: The Avignon papacy or the Council of Nicea?
MOE: The Gospel of Tom or the Gospel of John?
MOE: Vatican I or Vatican II?
MEGAN: Hmm, was Vatican I the one in the late 19th century that declared that the Pope was infallible?
MOE: Karl Marx or Bill Kristol?
MEGAN: Karl Marx, but I was a German lit major AND a Sociology major. Also, I'd pay significant money to hear/videotape Bill Kristol reading crap in German
MOE: Okay, so Vatican 1 was indeed about papal infallibility. It was a controversial topic since it made Catholics seem like they had some sort of weird foreign allegiance, so everyone did like Barack Obama and didn't show up, then there was the Franco-Prussian war, which is why they had to revisit the issue a hundred years later. Papal infallibility is such a weird idea. How do you come into this world with Original Sin and achieve "infallibility" when you've NEVER EVEN HAD A REAL JOB?
MEGAN: Also, it was retroactive! I love that they went, oh, by the way, the last 1800 years? Those guys were totes infallible too, even the ones who were all Crusade-y and Inquisition-y. And it means that Pius was, like, totes right for making nice-nice with the Nazis and shit.
MOE: John Henry Newman, a fanboy of St. Augustine and the church's famous advocate for not talking about Papal infallibility, just skipping that discussion entirely.
MOE:
But he made no sign of disapproval when the doctrine was defined, and subsequently, in a letter nominally addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on the occasion of Mr William Ewart Gladstone's accusing the Roman Church of having "equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history," Newman affirmed that he had always believed the doctrine, and had only feared the deterrent effect of its definition on conversions on account of acknowledged historical difficulties. In this letter, and especially in the postscript to the second edition of it, Newman finally silenced all cavillers as to his not being really at ease within the Roman Church.
MOE: To me there's something Obamalike about that. Jeremiah Wright or John Henry Newman?
MEGAN: So, like, it's harder to make people convert to Catholicism if you ake shit up 2000 years in to quell dissent? Honey, it's hard to make people stay Catholic when you do that.
MEGAN: Jeremiah Wright. Newman's got, like, centers and shit on campuses everywhere.
MEGAN: Anyway, so, to get back to Bill Kristol, I have definitive evidence that he's either never read any further into his Marx reader than he had to to get that quote, or he's just misinterpreted the entire point of Marxism.
He's disdainful of small-town America — one might say, of bourgeois America.No, asshole, Das Volk is the proletariat, not the bourgeois. The bourgeois are the owners of capital, the guys who moved the jobs out of Pennsylvania and to Mexico and then China. The peeps clinging to guns and God because they can't get work anymore are the proletariat. F'idiot.
MOE: Is it wrong that I still consider myself Catholic? It's a culture and a heritage and indeed, an opiate in times of distress. It's more productive than the reverse, which I suppose is doing a lot of blow. I fucking love Barack Obama.
MEGAN: I don't think it's wrong, it's the whole point of confirmation, right? I refused confirmation and left.
MEGAN: I'm a very committed agnostic. I'm so committed to agnosticism that I'm agnostic about atheism.
MOE: Yeah Bill Kristol is a lumpen of shit. Did you watch the Compassion Forum?
MEGAN: No, I read about it afterwards. I don't watch things called stuff like "Compassion Forum" because I'm afraid it might rub off and I'd have to, like, smile all the time and shit.
MOE:
In response to a question about when life began, Mrs. Clinton replied, "I believe that the potential for life begins at conception."
MEGAN: Oh, for fuck's sake. Way to have it both ways.
MOE: Yeah, it's a shitty answer.
MEGAN: Why not just date it to the moment of a sperm's production? Why not just date it to the moment girls are born because they've got proto-eggs or whatever?
MOE: An embryo is a living thing. So is sperm, so is a staph infection. Is killing it when we know it will grow into a human life wrong? If it is not wrong, then is it desirable? Hillary Clinton herself has said she would like very much to reduce the abortion rate to "almost never" or whatever. And therein lies the awesome awesomeness of Obama: he is not afraid to tell you upfront he questions his faith, that he doesn't abide by all its rules, that Capital made him think in much the way "Love your neighbor as you love yourself" made him feel. I'm projecting, of course, but you knew that. Hillary is a coward.
MOE: IMHO.
MEGAN: Also, apparently the head of PA's Democratic Party is a Hillary surrogate who just said that "she's the most vetted candidate in the Democratic Party's history" and that she's "ready to go to work on Day 1." Can we please, please, please stop hearing that bullshit phrase. You know what happens on Day 1? Everyone parties. There are balls upon balls and everyone gets drunk and then on Day 2 everyone hangover brunches. No President really starts Presidenting until Day 3 anyway.
MEGAN: And I agree with you on Hillary. I don't believe life begins at conception, and I think that abortions should only be as rare as the women who want and need them prefer they be and I think a candidate who thinks that s/he can save the world from abortions is being deliberately disingenuous and courting people I don't agree with.
MOE: Anyway I'd say I'm an agnostic who finds comfort in faith. Because — and speaking of cowards, for every Alberto Gonzales not getting a job, there seem to be a hundred men gangraping children in the name of God, a billion people paying for America's nonsense wastefulness in their stomachs.
MEGAN: Although, isn't it some weird turn of fate that the guy calling for more money to feed the world's poor is a former Bushie?
MOE: That's a good point. Ever the optimist. So...Haiti got sick of eating dirt for breakfast.
MEGAN: Well, that should work out well again. Why does Haiti suck so much worse than anywhere else in the Caribbean?
MOE: Here's the dirt cookies post, which has a decent link to a web page called "Why is Haiti so poor?" The answer is just sort of an orgy of miserable circumstances, the type that lead a person to take comfort and solace in absurdity, which is sort of like my faith. Like, when Jesus comes back he will be an existentialist stand up comedian.
MEGAN: Or Muslim. That would be pretty funny.
MOE: OH my god he will sooooooooo be a Muslim and his middle name will be Hussein. Hey, wanna write a screenplay?
MOE: He'll be a Muslim from Yemen.
MEGAN: Wait, wait, no, a Palestinian!
MOE: Okay but can he escape to Yemen?
MOE: Because that would be absurd.
MEGAN: Yeah, he could "cross the desert" of Saudi Arabia in 40 days to get there.
MOE: OMG and at the end he would marry Ashley Alexandra Dupre.
Comments
What's wrong with believing that live begins at conception & still believing that it's a woman's right to choose what happens with her body? It doesn't have to be an either or situation in my opinion anyway.
Y'all are lovin' that ciggy photo
In the first place, the opposite of religion in times of distress is not cocaine, which is a stimulant, not an opiate. The opposite of religion in times of distress is heroin.
In the second place, the Catholic Church is hilarious, because it's like they've sanctified bureaucracy.
MOE: Yeah, it's a shitty answer.
You know what else was a shitty answer?? When Obama said we should teach our kids about the "sacredness" of sex. And that we should invest in abstinence education. That was a shitty answer too. Personally, faith forums are fucking dumb.
AND he didn't say people seek out religion in times of crisis. He said that the poor white masses of PA are "bitter" and "cling to guns,religion and antipathy" It was great too cuz a bunch of San Francisco billionaires laughed. LOL. Wonderful. Democrats don't have a problem with regular folk seeing them as elitist assholes. So way to go Barry.
@marin79: I see it as a contradiction because I wrap it up with - no killing. I don't think that life begins at conception, but I don't have an alternate "bright line". For me it's clear life does not begin at conception since, on occasion, one fertilized egg will split into identical twins, who later have genetic differences!
@marin79: She actually said the POTENTIAL for life begins at conception. Which you know, if you're a pregnant woman that WANTS to have her baby, that's actually true. The POTENTIAL for life does indeed begin there. The babies aren't just made at 4 months if you decide to keep it.
@marin79:
I think most conservatives have trouble understanding this point...
OH, and Barry, you look tacky with the cigarette hanging out.....
Hillary's backing away from abortion rights? WTF?
I just had a nostalgia attack. I know all the words to all of those hymns. Catholic school, man.
I'm going to finish reading, but may I just say that I think Benedict is yet another nail in the coffin for contemporary Catholicism.
@SinisterRouge: That's debatable. You could argue that the potential for life begins even earlier than that. What, precisely, constitutes "potential"?
@PetiteGal: Photoshopped illustration from Wonkette.
Also, Obama's "people get bitter & cling to guns, religion, anti-immigration & trade" comment (paraphrased, btw) is that it was just politically naïve. He shouldn't be out there trying to give some sociology lecture even if you agree with what he's saying - esp since he managed to some of the most heated issue. I mean, GUNS!!! You just don't go there!!! Shouldn't he know better by now?
@SinisterRouge: Looks like others have stated similar things about depressed working class towns -
"As the rumination continues over Barack Obama's comments about economically-depressed small town voters, statements made by Bill Clinton on the same topic -- uttered while he was running for president in 1991 -- have now surfaced.
"The reason (George H. W. Bush's tactic) works so well now is that you have all these economically insecure white people who are scared to death," Clinton was quoted saying by the Los Angeles Times in September 1991."
"I don't watch things called stuff like "Compassion Forum" because I'm afraid it might rub off and I'd have to, like, smile all the time and shit."
Megan, that comment just made my day!
Are you there God? It's me, Philthyist.
I have a headache, I am bitter just as Obama has stated and I am feckin tired of the attacks by the Clinton campaign.
Both y'all STFU- and get through next week. We need to beat McCain.
Also, Chelsea Clinton should go into politics- she is a damn fine speaker.
oooh, 'One Bread, One Body' is a gooooood one! Being a non-Catholic in Catholic school was so much fun, I just wish I didn't remember the words to all those damn songs and prayers.
Aw man, now I've got On Eagles Wings going through my head for the first time since sixth grade.
I have a bad feeling about this thread. It's going to turn into a Hillary supporters vs. Obama supporters. Again republicans laugh at democrats.
@arodriguez.romero: I guess at least personally I see abortion as my right to choose what happens with my body. Period. I don't get too wrapped up with the debate over when life starts (even though I understand that's the root of the issue). But when it comes down to it, I guess the Catholic church did managed to brainwash my a little since I'd probably be inclined to believe that life starts at conception. The point is though that no one really knows. I see nothing wrong with Hillary saying that life has the potential to start at conception considering that she also has a proven track record of supporting a woman's right to choose.
@RyanB: First off that was BILL. Second of all, what he said is not nearly comparable. Bill was ripping on REPUBLICANS not on the working class. Economically insecure people that are scared is one thing. Those racist, anti-immigration, bitter, gun toting God-loving people that won't do what is right and just vote for Obama already are another thing altogether.
I love too that he just doesn't apologize and move on. Instead like everything else, he must try and say "Clinton did it too!!" Except for when she didn't.
@SanFranLefty: Not remotely backing away from abortion rights. And Obama said we should teach more abstinence education and the "sacredness" of sex. Just like Bush!
Whatever I am still a little bitter at John Paul II. He openly waged a war against Communism in Poland but squelched the voice of the church in Africa and South America when it came to politics.
I like my politicians like I like my coffee: hot, black and bitter.
@RyanB: But note that Bill didn't take it the extra step & drag in guns, religion, anti-immigration and anti-trade sentiments. That's the part of what Obama said that seems politically dangerous to me & considering he's likely the candidate, I want him to win, damn it! And you can't make those comments at a closed fundraiser in San Fran without leaving yourself incredibly vulnerable to the right.
Clinton and Obama - the Mac & PC of politics.
Meanwhile, Senator McCain's wife has picked out new drapes for the Oval Office, even while the Senator tries to shmooze away his many recent gaffes by going on Letterman.
@SinisterRouge: I think you added a few words into what Obama said. When did he say "racist, anti-immigration"? PLUS, I don't believe that the Obama camp brought Bill Clinton's comments to the media - they were dug up.
@Philthyist says bitter is the new black: I really like Chelsea also - I'll take her over those ridiculous Bush twins any day!
@SinisterRouge: Exactly! Every time I see anything political with the word "Faith" within twenty words of it it makes me want to stick my fingers in my ears and dance around yelling "Church and State Church and State Church and State Church and State."
@marin79: Yes... I suppose he was trying to be "brutally honest" - but perhaps it was too brutal.
@NefariousNewt:I have a feeling she's going to choose pink for the carpets... something about her screams Reese Witherspoon's Capital Barbie look!
@marin79: Not to mention Bill was saying how scummy it is that the Republicans take advantage of people. Not to mention the context. Obama was trying to explain how he lost Ohio and why he will lose PA.
@marin79: I can't find the rest of the conversation, which would give more context to the quote, but from my perspective what makes it asinine is that she didn't say, "regardless of where the potential for life begins, I think it's important that the law support a woman's bodily autonomy."
Saying, "the potential for life begins at birth," as opposed to saying either, "life begins at birth," or "life doesn't really begin at birth," just seems...kind of spineless.
@braak: Along with anti-Semitism, racism, and sexism. The Vatican is the perfect example of what the U.S. Government only wishes it could be.
@SinisterRouge: sorry, didn't realize he said anti-immigration as well.
@marin79: If you want him to win as the likely candidate, don't you see Clinton making major hay out of totally twisting his words and meaning kind of counterproductive?
Does anyone know how these words at the closed San Fran fundraising event became public?
@marin79: Srsly. If she gave all her mother's campaign speeches for her, and answered all the questions, I would totes vote for Hillary.
Chelsea's calmness and her quiet dignity as well as thoughtful answers- are ridiculous. (in a good way)
@RyanB: Antipathy to people not like them? RACIST. Also he claimed that they would have an even harder time because his lovely message is being delivered by a 46-yr old black man. Then the richies laughed their asses off.
Listen, it's one thing for him to speak truthfully and I can see why he would say those things. But he's running for office and politically it was a retarded thing to do. And you better believe it was his campaign that tried to somehow put this on Ol Bill. The problem is that he refuses to say he was wrong. Instead, he digs in his heels and keeps trying to explain it away. FOUR different "What Obama Really Meant" statements the day after. He just needs to say, "It was stupid, I shouldn't have said it. It's untrue. Let's move on." Instead, he repeats it using different words.
Oh, for fuck's sake. "Hillary is a coward"? And Barack if a fucking hero? He's said he wants abortions rare and legal, too. Neither of them support gay marriage, Moe. TEHY'RE BOTH FUCKING "COWARDS" ON THESE TERMS. Seriously, this pisses me the fuck off.
@J.D.Regent:Huffington Post blogger recorded it.
also, can I just say- I really do not think his words were all that terrible and in many respects he was speaking truth. I hate how everyone is spinning it.
I live in a reasonably small town. Less than half a million people, anyway. I believe in God. I beleive in my gun, and if a bad guy breaks down my door, he's gonna believe, too. I'm not bitter. Except when someone thinks I'm stupid because I happen to have a faith that comforts me, and a weapon that protects me.