Ellis Weiner Dogs The Religious Reich!

Ellis Weiner of National Lampoon and Spy infamy sends the snark to "Embattled Christians" at HuffPo. This Weiner dogging is especially good when he writes

But we do hear from Tom DeLay, and for that we can be thankful. Because all men know that when the Hammer opens his mouth, hilarity and moral hi-jinx must ensue. Thus, the article quotes DeLay, "'We are after all a society that abides abortion on demand, that has killed millions of innocent children, that degrades the institution of marriage and often treats Christianity like some second-rate superstition. Seen from this perspective, of course there is a war on Christianity.'"

"Of course"--this is why I love you guys. The sheer epic scope of the intellectual dishonesty, equating having an abortion with waging war on an entire religion. The "culture of life" double standard which denounces the experimental use of blastocysts in a Petri dish as "murder" but stands up and cheers for the bombing of actual, sentient (and innocent) women and children. The smug, presumptive custodianship of "the institution of marriage." It would take the love child of Moliere and Mark Twain to do you justice.

As for our living in a society which "often treats Christianity like some second-rate superstition," well, DeLay may be many things, but stupid he isn't. He knows how to flatter his audience. He knows--in fact everyone except you, dear Defamed Christians, knows--that evangelicals are never so happy as when they feel they are being ill-used. You could institute your hideous brand of All-Christian America on Tuesday and on Wednesday you'd resume bitching about how oppressed you are. What else do you have to do for fun? I mean real fun. Oh, sure, you've got alcoholism, spousal abuse, pederasty, swinging, drug taking, adultery, gambling, gluttony, home entertainment, video games, pop music, pornography, and golf, like the rest of us.

But they're not enough. They don't make you better than everybody else, and isn't that what you really want? To (like your mirror selves, the Islamic jihadists) feel superior to a modern world that, you think, disdains you and scorns your faith?

If the meaning of Einstein's discoveries just bounces off your helpless brains; if the Hubble doesn't send back pictures of the angels in Heaven but, instead, of just more and more space; if evolution threatens to mean that you're not Daddy's special child after all; if rock 'n' roll (to say nothing of hip-hop) and movies and art are just too loud or rude or nihilistic or perplexing; if the contemporary secular world (as seen on TV!) is a no-fault orgy to which you assume you weren't invited and would be intimidated to attend if you were; if everything our culture presents as objectively true is a threat to what you subjectively feel--well, who wouldn't want to take shelter in a self-righteous, morally elitist victimhood?

Your brand of Christianity has nothing to do with JC and the Sermon on the Mount (which, as Leonard Cohen admits, "I don't pretend to understand at all") and everything to do with cultural resentment, sexual repression, and sheer existential terror at the complexities of the real, modern world. Whoever doubts that need only read your Dispensationalist writings that set forth, in loving wacko detail, the bloody revenge fantasy that is the Rapture, the Tribulation, and the Second Coming.

This bizarre combination of the surreal, the arbitrary, and the sadistic, is literally what you live for; until the happy day that billions of us are destroyed, all you can do is wallow in your (bogus) "persecution" and assure each other that, sooner or later(and maybe tomorrow!) we sinners will feel the sting of His divine wrath and you "Saints of the Church" will be airlifted to paradise.

So let me close with one minor correction. Christianity, at least as practiced by you conferees and the poor ignorant bastards that you fleece in your various religious and political flocks, is not (pace DeLay) a "second-rate superstition." It's an absolutely first-rate superstition. I find it endlessly entertaining in a morally appalling and ultra-fun way, and I won't hear a word against it.

Here's the WaPo coverage of the "War on Christians and the Values Voters in 2006." And one must mention that Salon tackled The Hammer and his like minded tools as well. I guess God wanted Katherine Harris somewhere else than this conference? Peace ... or War!