At last, penis jokes that involve a religion other than Catholicism! Glen Runcifer at Defamer explains a NYPost interview with J.D. Shapiro, winner of the “Worst Picture of the Decade” Razzie:
Shapiro—who also wrote Robin Hood: Men in Tights and, um, X-Treme Biography: Santa—blames this film’s existence and resolute awfulness on two things: His penis and John Travolta. The only reason he was given the opportunity to write the movie was thanks to an ill-advised girl-hunting trip to the Celebrity Center:
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“It started, as so many of my choices do, with my Willy Wonker… It was 1994, and I had read an article in Premiere magazine saying that the Celebrity Center, the Scientology epicenter in Los Angeles, was a great place to meet women… Touring the building, I didn’t find any eligible women at first, but I did meet Karen Hollander, president of the center, who said she was a fan of “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.”
[…] “Karen called me a few days later asking if I’d be interested in turning any of L. Ron Hubbard’s books into movies. Eventually, I had dinner with John Travolta, his wife Kelly Preston, Karen—about 10 Scientologists in all. John asked me, “So, J.D., what brought you to Scientology?”
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“I told him. John smiled and replied, “We have tech that can help you handle that.” I don’t know if he meant they had technology that would help me get laid or technology that would stop Willy from doing the majority of my thinking.”
*****
And while we’re speaking of new religions, somehow I had not previously heard that an episode of the Colbert Report led to the proclaimation of a new Messiah:
…Raj Patel appeared on American TV to plug his latest book, an analysis of the financial crisis called The Value of Nothing. The London-born author, 37, thought his slot on comedy talkshow The Colbert Report went well enough: the host made a few jokes, Patel talked a little about his work and then, job done, he went back to his home in San Francisco.
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Shortly afterwards, however, things took a strange turn. Over the course of a couple of days, cryptic messages started filling his inbox… [H]e was being lauded by members of an obscure religious group who had decided that Patel – a food activist who grew up in a corner shop in Golders Green in north-west London – was, in fact, the messiah.
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Their reasoning? Patel’s background and work coincidentally matched a series of prophecies made by an 87-year-old Scottish mystic called Benjamin Creme, the leader of a little-known religious group known as Share International. Because he matched the profile, hundreds of people around the world believed that Patel was the living embodiment of a figure they called Maitreya, the Christ or “the world teacher”.
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His job? To save the world, and everyone on it.
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“It was just really weird,” he said. “Clearly a case of mistaken identity and clearly a case of people on the internet getting things wrong.”
[…]To say Patel – with his academic air, stammer and grey-flecked hair – is a reluctant saviour is an understatement. In fact, he rejects the entire notion of saviours. If there is one thing he has learned from his work as an activist in countries such as Zimbabwe and South Africa, it is that there are no easy answers.
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“People are very ready to abdicate responsibility and have it shovelled on to someone else’s shoulders,” he said. “You saw that with Obama most spectacularly, but whenever there’s going to be someone who’s just going to fix it for you, it’s a very attractive story. It’s in every mythological structure.”
[…]While he struggles to cope with this unwanted anointment, his friends and family are more tickled by the situation.
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“They think it’s hilarious,” he said. “My parents came to visit recently, and they brought clothes that said ‘he’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy’. To them, it’s just amusing.”
General Egali Tarian Stuck
My crazy aunt calls them “Tallywhackers”
General Egali Tarian Stuck
A televised public hanging of just one Insurance Company CEO would put an end to this shit.
Fax Paladin
Raj Patel’s parents: Eric Idle thanks you.
Bill E Pilgrim
Oh lord.
Ross Douthat blames the Vatican’s cover-up of sexual abuse on …. the permissive sexual culture of the 70s.
I kid you not:
He goes on to admit that something or other conservative might be mildly at fault but in a true fair and balanced tour de force, yes, manages to blame the hippies.
Comrade Kevin
Pepperpot: Speaking as a public opinion poll, I’ve had enough of the permissive society.
Man In Dirty Raincoat: I haven’t had enough of the permissive society.
Mark S.
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Are conservatives constitutionally able to distinguish between consensual sex between adults and child rape? When they make statements like this, I’m not sure they can.
r€nato
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Child buggery has been a fact of the Catholic church for centuries. Contemporary accounts I’ve read from the 15th century say as much.
r€nato
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Another ill-timed PR move from the health insurance lobby, just like Anthem proposing a 39% rate increase ‘because not enough people are paying premiums, because it’s too expensive for them.’
Bill E Pilgrim
@r€nato: Exactly. I mean, and Ratzinger dismissed the Wisconsin case in 1998.
More to the point though as you say, the idea that Priests sexually abusing boys was dealt with not by covering up or transferring but by what– open and public prosecution? in the decades and centuries before the 1960s is simply absurd.
It wasn’t dealt with at all, the farther back you go. Roman culture was actually rife with sexual exploitation of minors, and it was only sometimes even seen or punished as crime at all.
If anything, the middle of the 20th century is when it finally started being exposed, rather than when it started being covered up.
This guy really is completely insane, taking conservative myth making to whole new levels.
Yutsano
@r€nato: I choose to encourage this behavior. The more they demonstrate that they cannot act in good faith, the more they will show they need regulation that gets strengthened over time. It will be a painful process but we will get to a sane health care system.
Bill E Pilgrim
@r€nato: Also god knows what the actual law does say, everyone was bending over backwards so hard to accommodate Blue Dogs and their clients they may well have written in enough loopholes to drive an armored car full of cash straight through.
Idiots.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@r€nato:
Uh ….
Linky.
Sexual abuse of children is hardly a history restricted to the Catholic church. In fact, the Church would have been an anomaly in almost every historical period if there had not been sexual abuse of children going on within its jurisdictions.
r€nato
Actual comment I found over at the US Chamber of Commerce’s Facebook page WRT health care reform:
Stupidity ought to be lethal.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Why the fuck would my comment at 12 be in moderation? How do you expect people to operate in this environment with a filter that is out of control?
Maybe the whole blog should be in moderation before a topic like this is posted?
SiubhanDuinne
A couple of weeks ago, I was complaining about some egregious error in Douche Hat’s column: something that any halfway decent journalist would have known to check, or — absent that — that should have been caught by the copy editors. DougJ encouraged me to paste further examples, so here’s today’s:
The “statue of limitations”? I guess that’s part of the Vatican’s fabulously valuable art collection.
This is the New York Fncking TIMES that’s allowing this kind of sloppiness to get through. I weep.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Forget the suggestion that this crap has anything to do with the Catholic church.
Also forget that I am not reposting a link to this material, because this blog has an INEXCUSABLY broken mod filter.
And if this creative repost doesn’t work I will just repost the goddam thing all night until I find a version that works.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
I have found that rather than the inc_st taboo being universal—as anthropologists claim—it is inc_st itself that has been universal for most children in most cultures in most times. A childhood more or less free from adult s_xual use is in fact a very late historical achievement, limited to a few fortunate children in a few modern nations.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Ah, well there you have it. A blog that wants to talk about abuse but lays an out of control filter down on the comments.
The word “inc_st” triggers the mod filter?
Why don’t you just turn this thing into a children’s board as long as we are treating commenters like children?
AngusTheGodOfMeat
The quote in my post earlier is from this website.
Child abuse is not exactly new, or limited to the Catholic Church. It used to be the norm.
Bill E Pilgrim
Well, that was interesting. Done now?
Of course the Catholic Church isn’t the only place that sexual exploitation of children happened.
The point being refuted here is Ross Douthat’s claim that it was the “permissiveness” of the 1960s that led to the Catholic church dealing with abuses cases in a surreptitious and furtive way, that the church starting treating priests with “therapy” instead of some imagined other punishment and exposure that Douthat fantasizes must have happened before that point.
His claim that it was even partly permissive attitudes of the 1960s or 1970s that created these coverups is backwards. And yes, you’re right, as I pointed out in my post before yours, sexual use of minors by adults goes way back, and wasn’t seen as abuse, the farther back you go. The 1960s would be the time it really started being seen as abuse, not the other way around as Douthat claims.
The larger point is that as society began to establish laws and deal with it as a crime, the Catholic church resisted, and remained conservatively closed, protecting its own, and out of step with society.
That’s what people are complaining about. Put another way: If earlier versions of society allowed things that we don’t, of course some group clinging to those older ways is going to fall afoul of society. Eventually.
Comrade Kevin
Since this is an Open Thread..
If you’re on Twitter, and you’re not following Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) on purpose, you’re stupid.
John Christopher Sunol
This coming Messiah is a false messiah and from the symbolism it looks as though he belongs to the Iluminati which is linked to Masonary and connected with the church of Satan
Joey Maloney
That psychohistory stuff reminds of Julian Jaynes’ book: it’s either the most brilliant shit I’ve ever read, or total crackpottery.
I don’t think it’s totally batshit. It reminds me of some of what Barbara Tuchman had to say about 14th-century child-rearing practices and their influence on adult personalities of that age.
But I’d sure like to see that guy’s sourcing for the universality of incest and child rape.
Joey Maloney
Oh, fuck, of course I’m in moderation. Pardon me, inc_st and ch_ld r_pe.
BethanyAnne
Lol, looks like it’s gonna be a fun morning clearing all the posts from the filter. {eyeroll}
Joey Maloney
O fuck, breaking on the BBC World Service, 2 (female!) suicide bombers in the Moscow subway at rush hour. At least 35 dead.
MikeJ
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8592190.stm
bago
@SiubhanDuinne: The statue of limitations. Is that like the “Venus di Pedo”? So close and no arms for the children.
Alex S.
So, at first Douthat blames the Irish, then he blames the hippies. How about…the priests? He says that priests relied on therapy instead of common sense, so the therapists are to blame…why not the priests?
Nate-Dawg
Oh oh! I’ve been following Benjamin Cream for years. He’s a riot.
Sadie
I’m not sure how to respond in the right place; i just wanted to say that i don’t know this website, but my son just sent me as a gift a shirt with a beautiful white cat on it from your store and i love it. He says the profits go to a no-kill shelter! I love you for donating to such a good cause!
thank you thank you!
Xenos
Argh. (That is the muffled groan of an Anthro major) The inc_st taboo and inc_st are not the same thing. And the linkage of inc_st to systematically tolerated if hidden sexual abuse of children in ancient and modern cultures is not very clear and not very explanatory of anything.
I don’t even know what ‘maternal inc_st’ means. Checking the google it seems to be lumped in with female sex abuse, which is hardly unheard of today.
kid bitzer
from messiah story in guardian:
“There have been similar cases in the past, including Steve Cooper, an unemployed man from Tooting, south London, who was identified by a Hindu sect as the reincarnation of a goddess and now lives in a temple in Gujurat with scores of followers.”
lucky sod. i’m a hindu deity, too, dammit! how can i score some followers?
stuckinred
Boy, ya’ll have come cranky posters!
kay
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Douthat doesn’t have any earthly idea what happened, and either does anyone else. Well, the Pope knows, I guess,
Did he know about the Wisconsin case a week ago?
Did he know about the German scandal a month before that?
Did the Pope or the Church willingly reveal anything at all?
No. They still haven’t revealed anything willingly. Not ever.
The victims have never been able to reach the Vatican, to pierce that wall, and they still can’t. The only reason the Pope’s role in the Wisconsin case came to light is because there was correspondence that had to be revealed. It took two years to serve the Vatican, on the civil lawsuit.
They have no idea what this guy’s role was, let alone any bigger societal factors that drove it, and they never will.
That’s okay, they can take it on faith, but make no mistake that’s what they’re doing. They don’t know jack about the Pope’s role.
WereBear
@kid bitzer: Nice work if you can get it.
The most conservative angle on the Catholic Church with this ongoing scandal? The complete and utter inability to admit error.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sadie: Welcome, and how nice of you to write. That beautiful white cat is a real cat, named Tunch. He, along with his human servant John Cole (owner of this blog) and their little dog Lily, just moved this weekend into a new house where Tunch can sit in the window all day and watch the birds and squirrels.
As for the several hundred of us who are part of this little community: we are all ages and backgrounds, we live all over the world, we are opinionated and not shy about sharing our views, we tend to be politically liberal/progressive (it’s a big tent!) and just about all of us love animals. More than one person has said something like “I came for the politics. I stayed for the pets.”
All this is to say welcome, Sadie, and please come participate any time, or just lurk and laugh. Your son is a good person to have given you the Tunch shirt.
Gravenstone
@John Christopher Sunol: Is this a BoB metamorphic state?
fucen tarmal
i think by tech, the scientologists are engaging in a clever euphemism for something else, and calling it their tech department.
i’m thinking the tech department of the scientology center ought to put out its own calendar.
it brings whole new meaning to the term “trouble ticket”, will that be box, or mezzanine? perhaps you would prefer the working class appeal of the cheap seats….
/end riff on op
Xenos
@Gravenstone: No, completely different hallucinations and shibboleths.
Cacti
Is it true or just a rumor that Travolta isn’t as keen on Hubbard’s cult since its teachings killed his son?
Steeplejack
@WereBear:
Well, when the head guy’s job description includes “infallible” . . .
Linda Featheringill
IMMIGRATION
I talked with one senator’s office staff this morning about immigration reform. Theirs was the only office I found that had an actual person in it.
Follow that up with emails to representative and two senators and whitehouse dot gov.
What I said:
Immigration reform
Investment for electricity
The immigration conflict along the southern border has been going on for some time and is likely to continue for some time UNLESS –
Unless we find a way to improve the economic health of the northern half of Mexico.
It is my idea that we [the US] should contribute money, consider it an investment, in helping Mexico set up a nice, large, green electricity producing industry in northern Mexico. That area of the world has lots of sunshine and may have plenty of wind [I really don’t know about that]. Solar farms and wind farms could furnish a lot of electricity to Mexico, which would be good for industry. These farms could produce electricity for the US – And we seem to have an unending appetite for electricity. The extra electrical power would be good for the US economy as well as for the economy of Mexico.
I think the residents of Mexico could find good, steady jobs in the construction of such power farms and in the maintenance of the equipment.
I also think that if good jobs were available in Mexico, lots of the normally law-abiding citizens would not bother trying to sneak into the US. That part of the problem could be solved.
The drug runners, etc. at the border are another story altogether. Offering them good paying and honest work would probably not solve that problem.
Actually, I would like to see such an investment package attached to the upcoming immigration policy reform bills. Throw it out there and let us have a debate on the idea.
Thank you for your support.
Linda Featheringill
****
Anyway – I think it is a good idea, it is constructive, and might actually make a difference in a number of ways. So far, I am the only being on the planet that is excited by it.
Mark S.
@Linda Featheringill:
Exactly. What do people think happens when you have the richest country sharing a huge border with a third world country? There are other factors (I once read that NAFTA really hurt Mexican farmers in the south) but that is the fundamental one.
knowledge is power
Raj Patel is being used as a mouthpiece for maitreya. Don’t be fooled by any of these smooth talking liars.