Holy Shit

Well, It's finally official. Conservative Christians are just completely bat-shit crazy. I know, I know, this isn't a real big surprise. But there is the deep end, and then there's the DEEP END.

Of all the figures in the conservative agenda movement it has been easy for a while now to point to Bill O'Reilly, Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson as the linchpin of the insane right. But there is someone who is trying to fight for that crown for himself. And Dennis Prager has a great shot at it the way he's going.

Prager has been foaming at the mouth all week over what he sees as the most horrible thing to happen to America ever. A politician is going to have his picture taken with a Koran. That's it. Really, I'm serious. Prager is in an absolute tizzy about a Representative-elect planning on using his Koran in his ceremonial picture after his Congressional swearing in ceremony. Oh, the guy is the first Muslim elected to Congress, by the way.

Now the great thing about the right (and by "great" I mean "stupid") is their tendency to act like they are really smart, but then go and prove how absolutely stupid they are.

In his original column about this pointless topic, Prager went on a rant about how this would be causing an "Islamization of America," that "he should not be allowed to do so" and that the "act undermines American civilization." He addressed the Representative-elect directly, saying "But, Mr Ellison, America, not you, decides on what book its public servants take their oath."

Funny thing is, America, as in the Constitution or any other U.S. legal document, doesn't say a damn thing about swearing on a book at all. The bible, or any book for that matter, doesn't have anything to do with the swearing in of public officials. Sure the presidents always use it, out of choice and/or tradition, but it serves no official purpose whatsoever. And Prager is a fool for not knowing this.

Of course, this was pointed out to him eventually, so he had to alter his argument somewhat. He states in his follow-up column that he knows it isn't an official part of the ceremony, but it is obvious in the first column that he thought it was. He also claims that he doesn't advocate it being a law that someone has to use the bible. So what then did he mean that Ellison "shouldn't be allowed to" take his oath with the Koran?

He makes tons and tons of other dumb accusations and statements. On TV the other day, Tucker Carlson's show, he said Ellison is the first politician to break the "tradition" started by Washington of using a bible at the swearing in. This, of course, is not true at all. Media Matters dug up this AP story from last year that had some inauguration facts in it, and it seems that the bible tradition was broken as early as John Quincy Adams, who put his hand on a book of American laws at his swearing in. Another reason to add to the list of why old J.Q. Adams was probably our best president. And proof that the son of a president becoming president himself doesn't have to be a bad thing.

Prager has been arguing the revisionist history claim made by most of the righties about how our country was founded as a Judeo-Christian one. His claims are that our values and morals come from the bible and not our Constitution. I get so sick of this claim.

Right-wing Judeo-Christians like to think they invented moral values. The ideas in the bible were not original concepts by any stretch of the imagination. And I don't need that silly book to know the difference between right and wrong. The idea that killing someone is wrong pre-dates the damn bible. And I can pretty much figure out on my own that fucking my neighbor's wife would be a bad thing.

The funny thing is, this kind of forced religion on people is exactly what our founders were trying to protect us from. The freedom of religion in our great document means I get to have freedom from religion. But that's what they are trying to do, force it on us. And they pretend to have some moral high-road over us (gasp) secular people. And while people like Prager are attacking someone for not having the same religious beliefs as him, they turn right around and play victims. "War on Christmas" anyone?

So it boils down to a Muslim having his picture taken with his religious text that has Prager's panties in a bunch. And he accuses the left of practicing "hate" by calling him on it. That's what he has decided is the most important thing to deal with at the moment.

Typical of the religious right, they care nothing about the actual bad things going on in the world, just care about pushing their screwed up personal religious agenda on everyone else. Over 400,000 are dead in Darfur, and millions more displaced, but Prager focuses on calling his audience to action against a guy's choice of reading material. Really, Prager has a fairly sizable audience and some moderate influence, and this is what he wants to get people mad about. He could be calling his audience to action in helping to do something about genocide or helping to end poverty. No, he'd rather get his mouth all frothy with bigoted attacks on someone with different religious views than him, and based on lies and misinformation to boot.

I did a quick check on Mr. High and Mighty Morals' website to see if he has even spoke out against the genocide in Darfur. I did a search on his site of the terms "Darfur" and "Sudan" to see what I could find. There were a total of six hits, which were to episodes of his radio show. They are for sale, for twelve dollars each. Pretty much the whole site is for schilling his idiotic rants and writings for money, and to tell you what you should watch and read.

But there are summaries of what was said on the shows (I wasn't going to actually buy one). Most of the times he has mentioned Sudan it has been in the context of "proving" the "liberal media bias." On half of them he brings up Sudan as something the media should be paying attention to instead of the abuses at Abu-Ghraib. Basically he uses it as a way to lessen what happened at the American run prison in Iraq. Or he uses it to bitch about some other thing that he's pissed about (liberal media, the UN, too much attention being paid to tsunami victims), not to actually talk about the horrors going on there. He used it as a helpful tool to condemn his imagined enemies and then discarded talking about it when it was no longer useful. He hasn't mentioned Sudan since 2004, though the genocide continues.

I suppose we'll hear him talk about it again the next time some of our soldiers or cops get caught on tape abusing someone, so he can say, "That's nothing compared to the genocide in Sudan."

Look, everyone who reads me or knows me (I suppose that's mostly the same group) knows that I completely despise all religion and think it is the number one worst thing that has ever happened on this planet. That includes everything from Judaism to Catholicism to Scientology to Astrology to Mormanism to Jehova's Witnesses to crazy comet people.

But if people keep it to their damn selves and don't try to make me bend to their beliefs, I'm talking to you Dennis Prager, I could give a shit what you believe or what book you get your publicity shots taken with.

I would say that Prager should be ashamed of himself, but he has no shame. I don't know a right-wing Christian that does.

Of course, he makes the "but I'm a Jew" argument while saying that every U.S. office holder should swear on the bible that includes the New Testament.

You know what they say, if it looks like a Jesus freak and talks like a Jesus freak...




Read more on the idiocy here and here.