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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Heavenly Visitations Book Category Raptured (Open Thread)

Heavenly Visitations Book Category Raptured (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker|  April 9, 20159:59 am| 254 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Religion

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Thanks to my maternal grandmother, I’ve read some truly awful Christian literature. A Southern Baptist missionary and preacher’s wife, my grandma was in charge of my spiritual development until I refused to participate further at age 13 or so.

My mom was a Christian too, but not particularly dogmatic – she was more of a liberal “many paths” type of Christian. I think she threw her kids to the Southern Baptist wolves because she figured it hadn’t done HER any harm (debatable), and that way, she’d have Sundays to herself. Can’t say as I blame her for that.

Anyway, it didn’t end there. As an adult, I was placed on bed rest for a couple of months at the end of a high-risk pregnancy back in the late 90s, before tablets and smartphones were a thing. Books and daytime TV programming were all I had to while away the dreary hours. Some genius put my grandma in charge of bringing me library books (thanks Mom!), so I got to read the entire “Left Behind” series.

My grandma is very old now, but still pretty sharp. However, like most nonagenarians, she has bad days, which is what happens as your body starts misfiring and shutting down like a worn-out Model T engine that rolled off the assembly line back before women had the vote.

During one such episode several years back, I took the nightshift in grandma-watching and neglected to bring any reading material, a big mistake. I ended up picking up a book from Grandma’s collection: “Heaven Is for Real.” It’s an account of a child who awakes from a coma with stories of meeting dead relatives in heaven.

On another poorly planned grandma-watching shift, I read “The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven,” a book based on the same premise as “Heaven Is for Real.” Only the boy in that story later admitted he’d make the whole thing up:

“I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. … People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough.”

His name is Alex Malarkey. For real. Anyway, Malarkey’s admission recently prompted a strange decision from a Christian bookstore chain:

The LifeWay Christian bookstore chain … will no longer sell any book about contemporary people returning from heaven after a near-death experience. Executives with the chain decided to pull from their shelves the entire category of so-called “experiential testimonies,” such as the popular “The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven,” which was recently recalled by the publisher after the co-author recanted his story.

The bookstore has stopped ordering any similar titles from publishers and “the remaining heaven visitation items have been removed from our stores and website and will not be replenished,” according to company spokesman Marty King.

They’re still selling Bibles, presumably.

Open thread!

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Reader Interactions

254Comments

  1. 1.

    Dolly Llama

    April 9, 2015 at 10:06 am

    Betty, if you’ve never done so, you should check out Fred Clark’s “Slacktivist” blog. (It’s on your blogroll.) His trenchant, brutal and morbidly deconstruction of the “Left Behind” series is one of its standing features.

  2. 2.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 10:09 am

    God bless you and your chickens for the non-Cheney thread.

    Your mom sounds so cool.

    Here’s a religiously-themed article about old ways smacking up against new ones: NYTimes on how some ultra-Orthodox men refuse to sit next to women on flights.

    A growing number of airline passengers, particularly on trips between the United States and Israel, are now sharing stories of conflicts between ultra-Orthodox Jewish men trying to follow their faith and women just hoping to sit down. Several flights from New York to Israel over the last year have been delayed or disrupted over the issue, and with social media spreading outrage and debate, the disputes have spawned a protest initiative, an online petition and a spoof safety video from a Jewish magazine suggesting a full-body safety vest (“Yes, it’s kosher!”) to protect ultra-Orthodox men from women seated next to them on airplanes.

    I don’t know how this whole article was written without ever mentioning “El Al.” Dudes: there’s a whole airline dedicated to travel to Israel. And I’d be interested in hearing what El Al does about this. They may very well have separate seating protocols. But the NYTimes never went there …

  3. 3.

    Belafon

    April 9, 2015 at 10:12 am

    They’re still selling Bibles, presumably.

    They did say contemporary people.

  4. 4.

    kindness

    April 9, 2015 at 10:14 am

    Well I have to give them some credit. Far too many from the orthodox versions of all religions hold out that whole no errors and straight from God cannard. I find that particularly odd wrt the New Testament. Being that it was an oral tradition for the first one or two hundred years, suggesting it was written by the unerring hand of God stretches credibility that these Orthodox are all too happy to surrender themselves to.

  5. 5.

    MattF

    April 9, 2015 at 10:14 am

    Wikipedia has a nice chart showing the time-line-to-salvation beliefs of various kinds of millennial Christian sects:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennialism

    It’s really neat that the common right-hand side of all the time-lines is labeled ‘eternity’. I’d bet that some deep thought went into that.

  6. 6.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 10:14 am

    They’re still selling Bibles, presumably.

    BAM!

  7. 7.

    bemused

    April 9, 2015 at 10:15 am

    I read the first Left Behind book out of curiosity years ago. Ugh. Putting aside the religious hysteria, I couldn’t get over how bad the writing was reminding me of those cheap, shallow romance paperbacks.

  8. 8.

    TaMara (BHF)

    April 9, 2015 at 10:15 am

    I keep praying to a god who will in short order rapture these people already. Lighten the load, so to speak and let the rest of us sinners get on with the business of expanding our knowledge, solving various issues (you know, like climate change and the Middle East) and generally living good lives not bothering anyone with our crazy beliefs.

  9. 9.

    Cervantes

    April 9, 2015 at 10:17 am

    @Elizabelle:

    El Al has had to deal with it for years. They’ve always left it to flight crews to resolve, case by case. There were incidents last year that may eventually provoke a policy change, but I doubt it.

    Bus lines in Israel, again responding to pressure, tried creating gender-segregated rides, but the Israeli Supreme Court made them stop.

  10. 10.

    MattF

    April 9, 2015 at 10:18 am

    @bemused: Those books clearly belong in the ‘genre’ section of the bookstore. Maybe between romance and western.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    April 9, 2015 at 10:21 am

    @TaMara (BHF):

    Right. The rapture sounds like a win/win to me.

  12. 12.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 10:23 am

    @Dolly Llama: Looking for Betty Cracker’s blog, and found this one:

    http://www.bettycracker.me
    Do you cook shitty meals, and everyone hates you because of it? You’ve come to the right place…

    only 3 entries, kind of Elvis level food …. although the bitchin’ bacon wrapped cube steaks look fab. And who can resist a cooking blog with instructions to Beat Your Meat.

  13. 13.

    Mustang Bobby

    April 9, 2015 at 10:26 am

    @TaMara (BHF) & @Baud: Exactly win-win. We’ll be rid of those annoying Christians and we can sell their stuff on E-bay.

  14. 14.

    Mike J

    April 9, 2015 at 10:26 am

    @Dolly Llama:

    Betty, if you’ve never done so, you should check out Fred Clark’s “Slacktivist” blog. (It’s on your blogroll.) His trenchant, brutal and morbidly deconstruction of the “Left Behind” series is one of its standing features.

    You can read them for free on his website, but you can also get the Left Behind posts in convenient e-book form and at the same time throw a few ducats his way. Only $3.99 (cheap!) at Amazon. The Anti Christ Handbook.

  15. 15.

    BGinCHI

    April 9, 2015 at 10:28 am

    I’d read The Boy Who Came Back From Hell.

    Maybe a YA version of The Inferno.

  16. 16.

    Baud

    April 9, 2015 at 10:28 am

    @Mustang Bobby:

    we can sell their stuff on E-bay.

    We’d flood the market with bibles and dildos.

  17. 17.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 10:30 am

    @Baud: No one wants a used version of either.

  18. 18.

    Betty Cracker

    April 9, 2015 at 10:31 am

    @Elizabelle: I think he meant THIS blog’s blogroll. I used to have a solo blog, but it got raptured.

  19. 19.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 9, 2015 at 10:32 am

    @Elizabelle: These ultra orthodox Jewish men are not exceptional. From the Taliban to ultra orthodox Hindus, the ultra religious, you fill in the religion, all want the same thing, no women in the public sphere. I have never been a particularly religious person to me religion is just a very effective way men have devised to control women. The sad thing is that many women buy into it.

  20. 20.

    Punchy

    April 9, 2015 at 10:32 am

    Bookstore: WE WILL NOT SELL BOOKS ABOUT PEEPS COMING BACK FROM THE DEAD WITH STORIES AND SHIT
    Me: Well, you’re selling the bible, yo. Jesus and his 3-day man cave and all that….
    Bookstore: NOT THE SAME THING BECAUZE SHUT UP THAT’S WHY

  21. 21.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 9, 2015 at 10:33 am

    @Betty Cracker: It is in WayBack Machine Heaven now, praise the Ceiling Cat.

  22. 22.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 10:34 am

    Betty, while they said they wouldn’t carry those books in their store, they did say that they would order them for anyone who wants them.

  23. 23.

    PaulW

    April 9, 2015 at 10:35 am

    Today is Appomattox Surrender Day, and it is the duty of every honest American to approach a redneck a-hole waving a confederate battleflag and telling said a-hole THE SOUTH LOST YOU GOT YOUR ASSES KICKED.

    Granted, that rebel redneck will try to shoot you, so wearing body armor and running for cover afterwards are necessary steps.

  24. 24.

    the Conster

    April 9, 2015 at 10:35 am

    I stopped going to church at the same time – right after I was confirmed as a Methodist. If you put a gun to my head today, I would never be able to explain what a Methodist is, or how it’s different from a Congregationalist or a Presbyterian or a Lutheran, and really don’t care. For me it was that the Old Testament god was a petty murderous fucking asshole, then Jesus comes along and it’s all like now god is love and sends his son to redeem us for our sins? At the age of 6, I found this god creature to be less than worship worthy and childishly mercurial. Don’t even get me started with the Trinity. Holy Spirit? lolwut? If there are three godheads, why not 4? or hundreds? Then I found out about Hinduism and shamanism, and how much of the Bible was lifted from Greek and Egyptian mythology, and the whole Christian gig was up because it was just a painfully childish and silly set of beliefs. Buddhism appeals because there is no deity worship, and it focuses on the mind. That makes sense.

  25. 25.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    April 9, 2015 at 10:35 am

    I read one of the “Left Behind” books once. Could not believe (actually could, confirmed everything I’d ever suspected about these folks) the insane level of vicious hatred those folks harbor for non-Christians.

    There’s a lot of people I don’t like, but not any of them so much so that I want them to literally die slowly, screaming, in a fire. The Left Behind writers, and I assume their readers, seem to love the idea.

    Utterly repulsive books written, purchased, and read by morally bankrupt people.

  26. 26.

    Mustang Bobby

    April 9, 2015 at 10:35 am

    @BGinCHI: Mark Twain noted:

    Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

    All the really interesting people are there.

  27. 27.

    germy shoemangler

    April 9, 2015 at 10:36 am

    There is a profitable side-genre of people who died, were resuscitated, and caught a glimpse of The Other Side®. The books sell briskly and the authors pick up generous fees on the speaking circuit.

  28. 28.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 10:36 am

    @PaulW: It should be a national holiday.

  29. 29.

    Chris

    April 9, 2015 at 10:38 am

    @kindness:

    Being that it was an oral tradition for the first one or two hundred years, suggesting it was written by the unerring hand of God stretches credibility

    That’s precisely what they argue. “The fact that all the books in the Bible were written over a thousand years and yet are all totally consistent with each other is proof of God’s involvement and guidance!”

  30. 30.

    bemused

    April 9, 2015 at 10:38 am

    @MattF:

    Ha. I rarely enter a Walmart but their book section must be largely romance, western and religious pulp.

  31. 31.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 9, 2015 at 10:38 am

    @the Conster: I have never understood the purpose of the elebenty different Protestant denominations.

  32. 32.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 10:39 am

    @the Conster: I’m a Methodist and I could explain the difference, but it took staying with it longer than my 13th birthday to recognize it.

  33. 33.

    germy shoemangler

    April 9, 2015 at 10:39 am

    Who was it that said “The concept of monotheism is a gift from the gods”?

  34. 34.

    germy shoemangler

    April 9, 2015 at 10:40 am

    @bemused: I’ve seen the walmart book section. It is what you said, but also non-fiction from Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly types.

  35. 35.

    Chris

    April 9, 2015 at 10:40 am

    @bemused:

    Any book that hinges on the UN Secretary General being any kind of meaningfully powerful position, the kind that an Antichrist figure looking to take over the world would have an interest in, is pretty much destroying my suspension of disbelief right off the bat.

    (Yes, more than the whole rapture thing).

  36. 36.

    Gin & Tonic

    April 9, 2015 at 10:43 am

    @Baud: A few years ago my son sublet his place over the summer, to a young lady he’d had a very passing acquaintance with. Come September, she left in a bit of a hurry, my son moved back and almost immediately got very ill and was hospitalized, so we went there to monitor his condition, visit with him, etc. We stayed in his place (since he was in the hospital) and used the downtime to clean up, do some painting and maintenance. In the process we cleaned up and packed the subletter’s few remaining things, which included some apparently used, um, indoor recreational equipment. Is that the sort of stuff you want to leave in a place you’re subletting? Anyway, contact was made with her parents to come by and pick up her stuff, since she’d gone elsewhere. We packed the boxes loosely, just for giggles.

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 10:43 am

    Here’s archive of Fred Clark Slacktivist entries on Left Behind, 1-50.

    And 51-100. Don’t know if this is the last of them …

    All of which is 99 more blogposts than I care to read, but the first one sums up the problem Left Behind has dealt us, very well:

    “Left Behind” is evil. From October 2003.

    The apocalyptic heresies rampant in American evangelicalism are more popular than ever.
    It’s easy to dismiss these loopy ideas as a lunatic fringe, but that would be a mistake. The widespread popularity of this End Times mania has very real and very dangerous consequences, for America and for the church.

    …. Millions of your fellow citizens are reading these books. Millions. If you’re wondering what that means for you, read the following, from Glenn Scherer in E magazine:

    In his book The Carbon Wars, Greenpeace activist Jeremy Leggett tells how he stumbled upon this otherworldly agenda. During the Kyoto climate change negotiations, Leggett candidly asked Ford Motor Company executive John Schiller how opponents of the pact could believe there is no problem with “a world of a billion cars intent on burning all the oil and gas available on the planet?” The executive asserted first that scientists get it wrong when they say fossil fuels have been sequestered underground for eons. The Earth, he said, is just 10,000, not 4.5 billion years old, the age widely accepted by scientists.

    Then Schiller confidently declared, “You know, the more I look, the more it is just as it says in the Bible.” The Book of Daniel, he told Leggett, predicts that increased earthly devastation will mark the “End Time” and return of Christ. Paradoxically, Leggett notes, many fundamentalists see dying coral reefs, melting ice caps and other environmental destruction not as an urgent call to action, but as God’s will. Within the religious right worldview, the wreck of the Earth can be seen as Good News!

    Some true believers, interpreting biblical prophecy, are sure they will be saved from the horrific destruction brought by ecosystem collapse. They’ll be raptured: rescued from Earth by God, who will then rain down seven ghastly years of misery on unbelieving humanity. Jesus’ return will mark the Millennium, when the Lord restores the Earth to its green pristine condition, and the faithful enjoy a thousand years of peace and prosperity.

    Satan could not throw worse dark angels out than these “Christianists.” Who were in 2003, and are now years later, having learned nothing, jonesing for a war against Muslims in the Middle East and wherever they can get one going. Denying climate change and thwarting secular government bent on providing a voice and services to all its citizens.

  38. 38.

    Pee Cee

    April 9, 2015 at 10:44 am

    @germy shoemangler:

    non-fiction from Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly types

    That is unpossible.

  39. 39.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 10:44 am

    @schrodinger’s cat: Because of some king named Henry who wanted a divorce, some guy named Luther who wanted to reform the church, another guy named Calvin who wanted… to cause trouble?, and because a couple of guys named Wesley who simply wanted to bring church to the unwashed masses in England but weren’t trying to start a new flavor.

  40. 40.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 10:45 am

    @schrodinger’s cat: Just the need for illusory moral superiority, I think.

  41. 41.

    Cervantes

    April 9, 2015 at 10:46 am

    @Mustang Bobby:

    He did, but I think he got it from Massachusetts native Ben Wade, one of the most radically humane politicians ever to grace the US Senate.

  42. 42.

    Pee Cee

    April 9, 2015 at 10:46 am

    And there’s something about exactly how much water is required for one to be considered baptized, if I recall correctly ….

  43. 43.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 10:46 am

    @Chris: Is that the story? That the UN Secretary general is in cahoots with the anti-Christ? I’ve never read those books and now I am glad I didn’t bother out of curiosity.

  44. 44.

    boatboy_srq

    April 9, 2015 at 10:46 am

    @bemused: The ability to write engaging fiction is a mark of the Devil.

    /snark

    Seriously: nearly any Reichwing literature more recent than C. S. Lewis seems to suffer from the common problems of poor writing and a generous dollop of fabrication. The fiction is harder to read than Mere Christianity and the There and Back Again accounts are less believable than the Chronicles of Narnia.

  45. 45.

    Cervantes

    April 9, 2015 at 10:47 am

    @opiejeanne:

    Henry wanted an annulment.

  46. 46.

    germy shoemangler

    April 9, 2015 at 10:49 am

    @Pee Cee: I know. As soon as I typed that, I saw my error.
    It’s officially non-fiction, but it should be filed under science fiction and fantasy.

  47. 47.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 10:50 am

    was actually meant for schrodinger’s cat, who said:

    to me religion is just a very effective way men have devised to control women. The sad thing is that many women buy into it.

    I think removing women from the public sphere has to do with removing a potentially more mature and different presence. Eliza Mundy wrote a great essay years ago about how the Taliban very carefully isolated women, because women are a moderating influence in society.

    Kind of how you don’t find that many female libertarians/glibertarians. That philosophy does not work well for anyone who might be a food animal (not apex predator) or has young children to raise, support, and educate.

  48. 48.

    Chris

    April 9, 2015 at 10:50 am

    @Elizabelle:

    There were similar reports of people in New Orleans staying and praying during Hurricane Katrina. Adam Cadre had a nice review of it up here, money quote being –

    The thing of it is, you had people all over the city praying, “Hold that water, Jesus!” Some discovered that this doesn’t accomplish anything, but they’re dead now. The rest think that God came through yet again. It’s like the old trick where you write to 6400 people, telling half that a stock’ll go up, the other half that it’ll go down. Then to the 3200 winners you do the same thing. Eventually you end up with 100 people who’ve seen you get six right in a row and think you’re a genius.

    (The rest of the post is also a nice take on the whole “U.S. a third world nation?” line of thought).

    The other quote I always remember for this kind of thing is from War of the Worlds, when the main character ends up buried in a destroyed house along with a local preacher. He listens to the preacher piss and moan about how this must be the apocalypse and then finally snaps and goes “did you think God exempted this city? He is not an insurance agent.”

  49. 49.

    bemused

    April 9, 2015 at 10:50 am

    Garrison Keillor had a very funny Left Behind bit on PHC during Bush era. Little girl tearfully calls wondering where everyone is. GK calls President Bush, Billy Graham and the Vatican to check if they are still on earth.

    @germy shoemangler:

    Of course, how could I forget the whole Sara Palin genre.

  50. 50.

    Mike E

    April 9, 2015 at 10:51 am

    @the Conster: Miss E is what you’d call a “Presby baby” because she was born’d in their hospital… I like to tell people that, during that time, I was walking with the lord! It’s the best I can do when I get asked, “What church do you belong to?”

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    April 9, 2015 at 10:52 am

    @bemused:

    I protest on behalf of cheap, shallow romance paperbacks. At least they usually include some hot (if acrobatically improbable) sex to keep the reader’s interest.

  52. 52.

    Meg

    April 9, 2015 at 10:53 am

    My sister has sent every relative a copy of “Heaven is for Real”, even the ones living in Taiwan with the Chinese version of it.
    I only read the intro and already had enough of it.
    In no way a three-year-old can remember everything, including all the detailed conversations, so well even it were all real.
    Most people need a journal to keep track of things and most 3-year-olds can’t understand things well enough to remember them accurately and in detail.

  53. 53.

    Botsplainer

    April 9, 2015 at 10:54 am

    I think she threw her kids to the Southern Baptist wolves because she figured it hadn’t done HER any harm (debatable), and that way, she’d have Sundays to herself.

    “Children Ruin Everything”©.

    This is my trademark phrase. Parents of small children give me a dismissive chuckle over that, but anyone who has raised children into adolescence and has the resultant thousand yard stare simply nods in quiet affirmation, not unlike a D-Day veteran who was in that first wave that battled for the first 30 yards of beach at Normandy.

  54. 54.

    Woodrowfan

    April 9, 2015 at 10:55 am

    don’t get too cocky about the rapture. It’s supposed to be like people in the ancient middle east going out to meet their returning king. The fundies ignore that once they met him, they return to the city with the king. So after the rapture not only would the fundies return, they’d be even more insufferably smug.

  55. 55.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 10:55 am

    @Cervantes: Ok, an annulment.

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    April 9, 2015 at 10:57 am

    @germy shoemangler:

    Yep. It started as a secular/New Age genre. These books are the Christian-safe versions sanitized for their protection, just like they have their own Christian romances, Christian mysteries, Christian science fiction, etc.

  57. 57.

    Mary G

    April 9, 2015 at 10:59 am

    I don’t know that it’s true, but I’ve read that there are people who actually pay to have their pets taken care of by sinners after they are “Raptured,” since they don’t believe animals have souls but still don’t want to leave poor Fido alone and starving after they go off to heaven.

  58. 58.

    boatboy_srq

    April 9, 2015 at 11:00 am

    @Elizabelle: The single most curious thing I find in all the Rapture mythology (at least what of that I’ve been exposed to) is that Rapture, according to their explanations, sounds an awful lot like being at Ground Zero for a nuclear strike. Taking that real-world potential equivalent, it’s the unGodly unRighteous city dwellers who are more likely to be “raptured” than their rural Xtian neighbors, and the world “Left Behind” far more likely to be populated by Xtian wingnuts than by the unGodly unrighteous non-Xtians they despise.

  59. 59.

    bemused

    April 9, 2015 at 11:00 am

    @Mnemosyne (tablet):

    I’ll take your word for it. I haven’t opened up a book with covers of heaving bosoms and bare chested men in decades.

  60. 60.

    Chris

    April 9, 2015 at 11:01 am

    @opiejeanne:

    Yep. I’ve never read it either, but read reviews and heard from fans. Can’t judge the writing quality, but I know the plot. It’s your basic militia movement fantasy about black helicopters and UN troops.

    @boatboy_srq:

    Seriously: nearly any Reichwing literature more recent than C. S. Lewis seems to suffer from the common problems of poor writing and a generous dollop of fabrication.

    From what little I’ve seen of it, the problem of Reich Wing pop entertainment is that it tries to be conservative propaganda first and entertainment second.

    Chronicles of Narnia as Christian allegory – I had no idea. I mean, I was raised Christian and all, but the whole “Aslan as Jesus” analogy went right over my head until my fifth grade English teacher pointed it out. It’s rather obvious in retrospect, but even then the stories work just as well as simple fairy tales. Same for that matter with Lord of the Rings. Compare and contrast a story about a global secular humanist conspiracy to take over the world through the UN…

  61. 61.

    Betty Cracker

    April 9, 2015 at 11:01 am

    @Mary G: There are entire websites devoted to it and products such as Rapture automatic feeders and watering bowls. It’s a crazy world, I tell ya!

  62. 62.

    Mustang Bobby

    April 9, 2015 at 11:01 am

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): I wrote a play where the main character makes a living batting out romance novels that his agent says “makes the trailer parks rock.” One of his challenges is coming up with new metaphors for creamy breasts and bulging crotches.

  63. 63.

    the Conster

    April 9, 2015 at 11:01 am

    @Mike E: I just like the word “presbyter” . It would be fun to tell someone that you’re a presbyter opposed to episcopacy and see what kind of look you get.

  64. 64.

    elmo

    April 9, 2015 at 11:02 am

    @Elizabelle:

    …and the faithful enjoy a thousand years of peace and prosperity.

    I’ve always wondered: what happens next? The Millennial Kingdom is supposed to last a thousand years, but what happens on Day 365,001?

  65. 65.

    Cervantes

    April 9, 2015 at 11:03 am

    @opiejeanne:

    I liked your summary. Shades of 1066 and All That.

  66. 66.

    JCJ

    April 9, 2015 at 11:03 am

    @germy shoemangler:

    caught a glimpse of The Other Side®

    My preference has always been Gary Larson’s The Far Side

  67. 67.

    Roger Moore

    April 9, 2015 at 11:04 am

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    Utterly repulsive books written, purchased, and read by morally bankrupt people.

    Who are convinced they’re the most moral, upstanding people in the world and everyone not just like them is a degenerate.

  68. 68.

    burnspbesq

    April 9, 2015 at 11:05 am

    Maybe i should have, but I didn’t anticipate that Cato would file an awesome amicus brief in the marriage-equality cases.

    http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/obergefell.pdf

    Of course, it won’t make a damn bit of difference to the supposed originalists on the Court. Visceral disgust at all that icky gheysecks trumps doctrinal purity every time.

  69. 69.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 11:05 am

    @Betty Cracker: It’s almost funny, like the preppers’ worrying about having enough canning lids when the time comes, and what they’ll do when those run out. Also, I’ve heard them tell people to have pets that will make a decent stew, like a fat dog or cat.

  70. 70.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 11:06 am

    @Cervantes: Okay, made me laugh. I probably read that book during my troubled youth, or maybe it was something by Richard Armour.

  71. 71.

    boatboy_srq

    April 9, 2015 at 11:06 am

    @Chris: FundiEvangelist Xtian villainry seem to require impossibly complex preconditions to engage in impossibly complex schemes in order to inflict their evil upon humanity. Biggest tell I can think of that the entire construct is bollox.

  72. 72.

    Ridnik Chrome

    April 9, 2015 at 11:07 am

    @BGinCHI: Somebody should write that book. The kid gets sent to hell for committing the sin of self-abuse…

  73. 73.

    Mary G

    April 9, 2015 at 11:07 am

    @Betty Cracker: I think it’s great that us sinners get to make a few bucks off the rubes.

  74. 74.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 11:08 am

    Has anyone ever written a religiously-aimed book proclaiming they returned from Hell? My ignorance on display, yet again …

  75. 75.

    germy shoemangler

    April 9, 2015 at 11:09 am

    @Mustang Bobby: “One of his challenges is coming up with new metaphors for creamy breasts and bulging crotches.”

    He tries “bulging breasts and creamy crotches” and another masterpiece is born.

  76. 76.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 11:09 am

    @BGinCHI: And you beat me to it!

    But I was wondering if someone had done so earlier. Someone who saw the possibility of grift many decades or centuries ago …. or perhaps someone who genuinely thought they had that vision. Some of the saints (St. Catherine of Sienna and Jesus’s foreskin, if memory serves) would be medicated today.

    Because Dante’s The Inferno and all of that was imagined Hell.

  77. 77.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 9, 2015 at 11:10 am

    @Chris: I call bullshit on the US being a third world country part of that blog post. Any one who can unironically write that has never actually lived in a third world country. Having a parent who grew in the so-called third world countries of India and Malaysia does not count and just visiting does not count.
    The United States has many problems and the Republicans are just making them worse but spare me the hyperbole.

  78. 78.

    Mike J

    April 9, 2015 at 11:10 am

    @Ridnik Chrome: Poe’s law makes that very tricky.

  79. 79.

    Mustang Bobby

    April 9, 2015 at 11:10 am

    @Elizabelle: It would be titled My Four Years at Liberty University.

  80. 80.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 11:12 am

    @Elizabelle: The Divine Comedy? Dante was just visiting, on a tour.

    Beat me to it.

  81. 81.

    MattF

    April 9, 2015 at 11:14 am

    @Elizabelle: You should try reading Richard Kadrey’s “Sandman Slim” novels. The first two or three are better than the rest, IMO.

    ETA: It would be incorrect to call them ‘religiously-aimed’.

  82. 82.

    Roger Moore

    April 9, 2015 at 11:14 am

    @elmo:

    The Millennial Kingdom is supposed to last a thousand years, but what happens on Day 365,001?

    The same thing as on day 365,000. You forgot about leap years. It’s day 365,243 you have to watch out for./pedant

    BTW, I think the answer is “The Last Judgment”.

  83. 83.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 11:14 am

    @Mustang Bobby: Very good. And they have a new circle of hell, in which they’re required to attend Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign kickoff.

    If it was really Hell, they would not have their electronic devices with which to entertain themselves and record the truth.

  84. 84.

    rea

    April 9, 2015 at 11:15 am

    Many years ago, the office manager where I worked took me aside, and showed me where she had her completed leave of absence slips already filled out for when the rapture took her away. She asked me to turn them in for her when the great day arrived. I was, of course, someone she was confident would not be raptured.

  85. 85.

    Mike J

    April 9, 2015 at 11:16 am

    @Elizabelle:

    Has anyone ever written a religiously-aimed book proclaiming they returned from Hell?

    Run DMC said it was filled with Sucker DJs.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FS5rtShdeo

  86. 86.

    germy shoemangler

    April 9, 2015 at 11:16 am

    @Elizabelle: I’m wondering if these authors’ self-righteousness would prevent them. Because their default grift is: “When I die I’m taking the fast lane to the right hand of the lord”. Not many of them would build their fiction around “I died and guess what? I went to hell!”

    Self-critical, brutally honest memoirs don’t usually erupt from the conservative mind.

  87. 87.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 11:17 am

    @Elizabelle: There was a cartoon about that this week, a drawing of a couple of angels remarking over some newcomers whose hands were in a position as if they were holding a smart phone.

  88. 88.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 11:18 am

    @rea: wasn’t that special of her. How had she described her need for a leave of absence?

    (and why would she bother?)

  89. 89.

    Mike J

    April 9, 2015 at 11:19 am

    @germy shoemangler:

    Not many of them would build their fiction around “I died and guess what? I went to hell!”

    In the fundegelical world, people go out of their way to tell how horrible they were before they found Jesus. The exaggeration in the typical testimony is hilarious. I can easily see somebody saying they died, went to hell, came back and started loving God.

  90. 90.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 11:20 am

    @Ridnik Chrome:

    The kid gets sent to hell for committing the sin of self-abuse…

    and finds out it’s full of people who are highly intelligent (EQ and IQ) and stimulating conversationalists and they do what they want and create art and music and profane but wonderful novels, and they procrastinate, fornicate, eat all they want of delicious foods and drink, their pets are allowed to visit them from animal heaven, and the cardinal rule is

    don’t go back and tell anyone what Hell is like. We need the Godbotherers as a food source.

  91. 91.

    germy shoemangler

    April 9, 2015 at 11:22 am

    @rea: I worked in an office about fifteen years ago where our manager had a history of verbally abusing employees she didn’t like (the guy who had the job before me had walked out) and before she rose to management she was famous for falsifying her overtime. She was rarely in the office. Always running out for personal business that lasted hours. I remember how happy she was when Gore lost in 2000.

    Anyway, she organized the annual xmas party the first year I was there. She hired a lady who specialized in giving speeches about how we all had our personal angels, following us around. I was new, but I remember some of the old-timers rolling their eyes during the speech.

  92. 92.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 11:22 am

    @rea: That’s gorgeous!

    I knew someone who was insulted because she was invited to be a charter member of a group of famous fat women.

  93. 93.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 11:23 am

    @Mike J: They tell their stories metaphorically (I think that’s the right term, brain not working right this am), about how they were dead and in hell before they found Jesus. Someone gave us a copy of The Cross and the Switchblade when I was in HS. Dad was an avid reader but I don’t think he ever bothered to read it. I tried and found it not salacious enough for my teenage mind. I preferred the stack of pulp fiction that the previous homeowner left behind in the garage, until Mom figured out that they weren’t just detective stories.

  94. 94.

    Mike J

    April 9, 2015 at 11:25 am

    @opiejeanne: The comic book was hilarious.

  95. 95.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    April 9, 2015 at 11:25 am

    Homer Simpson goes to Hell:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X3ZcZ2h4Ths

  96. 96.

    Roger Moore

    April 9, 2015 at 11:26 am

    @germy shoemangler:
    I think you could make a “I died and went to hell” memoir. It would be about how that was the sinful, old you and how you’re taking advantage of your second chance to find Jesus and get right with The Lord. People would eat it up.

  97. 97.

    Matt McIrvin

    April 9, 2015 at 11:26 am

    @elmo: Different camps of End Times folk have all got different ideas about what order the Rapture, Armageddon, the Tribulation, the Second Coming, the Millennial Kingdom, and the Last Judgment come in. Some of them even think the Millennium already happened.

  98. 98.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 11:26 am

    @rea: That is absolutely the funniest thing I’ve read all week.

  99. 99.

    gene108

    April 9, 2015 at 11:26 am

    I don’t get Christians and their End Times obsession.

    Other religions have an End Times coming, in their teachings, with the world going to hell in a handbasket, god returning to set things right and a new age of prosperity begins, but no other religion, that I know of, has adherents who actually spend time thinking about the End Times, god’s imminent return and/or what they need to do to hasten the coming of the End Times.

  100. 100.

    bemused

    April 9, 2015 at 11:26 am

    @rea:

    Wow. That’s hilarious and pathetic on several levels. I can’t imagine she was a very competent office manager.

  101. 101.

    Mike E

    April 9, 2015 at 11:26 am

    @the Conster: I’ve always admired Episcopalians ability to party…but, splitting hairs with Baptists, that’s what I call “fun”!

  102. 102.

    TG Chicago

    April 9, 2015 at 11:28 am

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    There’s a lot of people I don’t like, but not any of them so much so that I want them to literally die slowly, screaming, in a fire. The Left Behind writers, and I assume their readers, seem to love the idea.

    You’re too kind. They actually envision people not like them EXISTING FOR ETERNITY screaming in a fire.

  103. 103.

    germy shoemangler

    April 9, 2015 at 11:28 am

    @Roger Moore: I could say that hell was full of liberals and radical progressives and communists! Saul Alinsky was there!

    Obama’s dad was a greeter! Damn, this thing’ll write itself.

  104. 104.

    Mike J

    April 9, 2015 at 11:29 am

    @Elizabelle:

    http://www.amazon.com/Near-Death-Experience-Died-Came/dp/1625096798

    The related books section of the page has similar gems.

  105. 105.

    dmsilev

    April 9, 2015 at 11:29 am

    @rea: So, she’d be coming back after a few weeks or months then?

  106. 106.

    Culture of Truth

    April 9, 2015 at 11:30 am

    “Girl, are you from heaven ’cause I can’t believe you’re for real”

  107. 107.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 11:30 am

    @gene108: For a while now, I’ve been enjoying watching ETers moaning, whining and begging Jesus to come quickly on comment threads about marriage equality. I’ve become convinced that more than anything else, these people are simple, unadorned control freaks. Praying for the end of the world because people get to do harmless things you don’t want them to do is the ultimate in taking your ball and going home, with a big dose of You’ll Get Yours thrown in.

  108. 108.

    MattF

    April 9, 2015 at 11:31 am

    @gene108: Lots of religions have esoteric/gnostic sects. Christianity has an odd history in that respect– the original Christian Gnostics were declared heretics and were suppressed for a millennium, but then came back with a vengeance after the Reformation.

  109. 109.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 11:31 am

    @gene108: Near the end of her life, my mom had a nurse who came to the house to help Dad take care of her. Mom had Alzheimers but was more lucid than that nurse, who told me she couldn’t wait for the EndTimes to start. I was astonished and showed it. She wasn’t very bright (another conversation) and when she tried to explain it I told her Heaven and Hell are right here on Earth.

  110. 110.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 11:31 am

    @Mike E: Well, you know how many Episcopalians it takes to change a light bulb. One to change the bulb and one to mix the G&Ts.

  111. 111.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 9, 2015 at 11:32 am

    @gene108: I don’t think its all Christians who obsess over end times. Its the fundie types that are heavy into proselytizing, Jehovah Witnesses and the like. Unfortunately, they seem to be a large part of the base of the Republican party.
    I went to a Catholic school and never once heard of this end times business.

  112. 112.

    gelfling545

    April 9, 2015 at 11:33 am

    @BGinCHI: Well, there’s this

  113. 113.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 11:33 am

    @opiejeanne: I am not sure I would trust someone who’s already mentally gone to Spiritual Disney World to keep my mom fed and dry. You must have had a time with that nurse.

  114. 114.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    April 9, 2015 at 11:33 am

    Protestant Heaven vs Catholic Heaven
    http://gloria.tv/media/VKJUSt6FPWM

  115. 115.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 11:34 am

    @MattF: Most of them don’t spend much time shunning the material bits of the world. My favorites are the brand new expensive SUVs with the NOTW* stickers.

    *Not of This World.

  116. 116.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 11:36 am

    @schrodinger’s cat: You’re right, you didn’t hear it because it’s a relatively new idea, I think beginning in the 1800s. A lot of mainstream preachers say it’s not sound theology.

  117. 117.

    Chris

    April 9, 2015 at 11:36 am

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Fair enough.

    @Mike J:

    What I love about that is 1) how all their testimonies sound the same and hit the same few points, and 2) how ridiculously weak sauce the “sins” they confess to in their past life are. Yes, we get it. You watched a lot of porn and pleasured yourself a lot. It doesn’t make you a vampire with a soul, you fucking drama queen.

    On the other hand, it’s remarkable how rare it is to hear confessions of some other kinds of sins. “I was an asshole who took my friends for granted and bullied and pushed around anyone I thought was weak and outcast enough that I could get away with it.” “I was greedy and thoughtless and didn’t do enough to help the poor like Jesus said I should.” “I was lazy and didn’t do my job as well as I should have.” “I didn’t forgive my enemies like Jesus said I should have.”

    Not that I’m saying all fundies would have these kinds of sins, but, you know, you would expect at least some people to have stories like that, especially if they were as depraved as they claim to be in their past life. But you never hear about that. All the stories hit pretty much the same few points – basically, not believing in Jesus hard enough, and having lots of non-marital orgasms.

  118. 118.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    April 9, 2015 at 11:38 am

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    The End Times is heresy in the Catholic Church. It’s a Protestant thing. That’s what we get for letting read the Bible in the vernacular!
    /sectarian snark

  119. 119.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 11:38 am

    Whoa, Trevor Noah’s rollout is going only slightly better than Rand Paul’s. (Mind you, these gentlemen are not much like each other.) NYTimes:

    Since Mr. Noah, a 31-year-old South African comic, was named to succeed Jon Stewart as that show’s host, he has been embroiled in a controversy over jokes he posted on Twitter about women and Jews that some viewed as offensive and others as merely lame. (He was the subject of a brief defense by Mr. Stewart.)

    Now there’s a new dust-up: Russell Peters, a popular and well-traveled Canadian stand-up comic, called Mr. Noah “a thief” in a television interview in Singapore. “He’s stolen material from David Kau,” he said, referring to another South African comic. “He’s stolen material from myself.”

    … According to interviews with several South African comics, the accusations have been well known in the country’s comedy circles for years, first gaining prominence in 2010, in an article in a now-defunct entertainment magazine called Heat. “Is Trevor a Joke Thief?” it asked on its website.

    Two years later, Mr. Kau cracked pointed jokes about the issue at South Africa’s first Comedy Central roast (hosted by Mr. Noah). Mr. Kau, who has a well-regarded comedy show called “Blacks Only,” quipped that he had appeared on the American program “The Tonight Show,” because Mr. Noah used one of his jokes there.

    … The moral dividing line can be hard to determine, but it can also lead one to think that joke-writing is far more important than performance in comedy, which is not always the case, particularly when it comes to choosing the best person to replace Mr. Stewart.

    After all, “The Daily Show” has a team of excellent writers who will supply jokes for Mr. Noah, and it’s highly unlikely that Comedy Central hired him because he was best at writing punch lines. Judging from his specials and interviews, his calling cards are his intelligence, charm, quickness and ability to get across a sharp point of view in an ingratiating manner. These controversies judge him by a measure that may be peripheral to the job. And the furor surrounding him online does seem out of proportion, the kind of pile-on that was once the province of political campaigns.

  120. 120.

    Mustang Bobby

    April 9, 2015 at 11:38 am

    @shortstop: We Quakers would have a Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Illumination.

  121. 121.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 11:39 am

    @Chris: Also too, abusing alcohol and drugs. Because addiction isn’t a disease — it’s a SIN.

  122. 122.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 11:39 am

    @shortstop: Dad was there with her most of the time, and I don’t think he liked her much either because a wonderful, intelligent new nurse was sent out not long after, but Dad found himself apologizing to her all the time because Mom grew up in Missouri among racists and the new nurse was African American. She was kind to Dad and told him she had heard far worse, but he was mortified. Mom made a couple of comments about how dark her skin was, that she’d like to have a tan like that, which was bad enough.

  123. 123.

    Scott S.

    April 9, 2015 at 11:40 am

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): They also write Christian horror novels. Monsters and serial killers attack, but Jesus saves everyone at the end.

  124. 124.

    Mike E

    April 9, 2015 at 11:40 am

    @TG Chicago: Riding a passenger jet through pockets of turbulence whilst suffering through a sinus infection is as close to hell as it gets IMHO…I still wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

  125. 125.

    TG Chicago

    April 9, 2015 at 11:41 am

    They’re still selling Bibles, presumably.

    Cute line, but of course the story goes that Jesus did not spend his three dead days in heaven. When Christians recite the Apostle’s Creed (a common part of worship services), they profess a belief that Jesus:

    was crucified, died and was buried;
    he descended into hell;
    on the third day he rose again from the dead;
    he ascended into heaven

    Granted, it is generally believed that Jesus will come again to judge the quick and the dead, but that hasn’t happened yet.

  126. 126.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 11:41 am

    @Mustang Bobby: Love it. Unitarians like to form committees to find consensus on the best way to proceed (after first agreeing upon a common definition of “light,” which might take weeks or months and involve several working subgroups).

  127. 127.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 11:42 am

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): And not understanding it, like apes who read Nietzsche.

  128. 128.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 9, 2015 at 11:44 am

    @Scott S.: That’s so lame, how well do these books sell?

  129. 129.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 11:44 am

    @TG Chicago:

    Jesus will come again to judge the quick

    If it turns out to be the quick-witted, they’s got a problem.

  130. 130.

    opiejeanne

    April 9, 2015 at 11:45 am

    @TG Chicago: My dad was funny about that line, the quick and the dead. He didn’t get the meaning of “quick” exactly; he thought if you weren’t fast enough you’d end up dead. I don’t know if he ever caught on that it simply means “alive” (quickening in the womb) but I never told him.

  131. 131.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 11:47 am

    It’s fun to say “quick.” Quick, quick, quick.

  132. 132.

    TG Chicago

    April 9, 2015 at 11:47 am

    @Culture of Truth:

    “Girl, are you from heaven ’cause I can’t believe you’re for real”

    I still remember fondly the moment it finally dawned on me that the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” was essentially expressing this same idea. He’s dreaming of meeting some perfect, ideal woman, then laments that she’s merely a fantasy, just like Heaven.

  133. 133.

    Scott S.

    April 9, 2015 at 11:48 am

    @schrodinger’s cat: Beats me — about as well as any other Christian fiction must sell, I guess.

    Here’s GoodReads’ list of some Christian horror… Looks very glossy, looks like Frank Perretti is the primary instigator.

  134. 134.

    WereBear

    April 9, 2015 at 11:48 am

    @Mike J: Thanks! I’ve been waiting for the announcement, but my blog reading has been erratic and I probably missed it.

  135. 135.

    Gin & Tonic

    April 9, 2015 at 11:48 am

    @shortstop: Hey!

  136. 136.

    brantl

    April 9, 2015 at 11:50 am

    I read the first of the Left Behind series, given to me by my mother-in-law, and man did that suck. Why did you read all of them, Betty, are you a glutton for punishment? The plot line was infantile, the writing execrable.

  137. 137.

    ruemara

    April 9, 2015 at 11:52 am

    @Elizabelle: yes. Pigs in the Parlour. I was raised super fundy with demon chasing training, glossolalia as mandatory proof of spiritual achievement and very, very long Sundays. Demons & angels were everywhere. For spiritual warrior training, we all had to read Pigs in the Parlour to understand the hierarchies of demons.

  138. 138.

    Cervantes

    April 9, 2015 at 11:53 am

    @opiejeanne:

    Good. The previous comment was supposed to make you laugh, too, but may not have worked as well (or at all, them’s the breaks).

    Richard was an old friend. I once tried to help him collect on a debt that NBC had owed him for decades. The ensuing merriment — ours, not the network’s — was much more valuable than the debt.

    Am off for the day. Have a great one!

  139. 139.

    Mustang Bobby

    April 9, 2015 at 11:54 am

    @brantl: And they have yet to top the one with the two naked people and the talking snake.

  140. 140.

    Violet

    April 9, 2015 at 11:54 am

    If God is so all powerful, why is he so insecure? Why does he need all this worshiping and praising all the time? The guy can do anything he wants at any time, doesn’t he already know he’s great? He needs mere mortals to tell him so all the time? I don’t get it.

  141. 141.

    Mike in NC

    April 9, 2015 at 11:55 am

    Nick Cage starred in “Left Behind” (2014). Apparently one of the biggest stinkers of recent years. If it were the last DVD in the RedBox machine I’d take a pass. The guy must still be deeply in debt to the IRS.

  142. 142.

    Chris

    April 9, 2015 at 11:57 am

    @shortstop:

    True, but even that doesn’t seem to show up nearly as often as sex, at least in the fundiegelical circles I knew in college. That kind of sin is the one that really obsesses them.

  143. 143.

    Pee Cee

    April 9, 2015 at 11:58 am

    @Violet:

    The guy can do anything he wants at any time, doesn’t he already know he’s great? He needs mere mortals to tell him so all the time? I don’t get it.

    Their God’s modeled after a Wall Street banker. Or just any member of the 1%, really.

  144. 144.

    Fred

    April 9, 2015 at 11:58 am

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): A fundamentalist friend, who always had good taste in The Rock-N-Roll before she got saved, played a CD of Christian Rock for me. It was basically a laundry list of rock-n-roll styles but the songs were about Jesus and all things good and Christian.
    But it was all just hack plagiarized crap writing and performance. I guess the idea is that if it’s to spread the word of the Lord it has to be good. I wonder if Born Agin Rock bands get in theological arguments over the contents of their songs? Do the heavy metal dudes get in knock down drag ’em out fights with the folk rockers or the rappers with the reggae guys.

    I actually sat in on a couple recording sessions of a Christian Heavy Metal Band. Their songs were almost all about Hell and they seemed obsessed with China and the Tiananmen Square massacre. I guess they were afraid The Communists were going to outlaw their church and nationalize the wealth they were going to get for being good Christians. They did have a good lead guitarist.

  145. 145.

    Mustang Bobby

    April 9, 2015 at 11:58 am

    Best Rapture Ever.

  146. 146.

    gene108

    April 9, 2015 at 11:59 am

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I don’t think its all Christians who obsess over end times. Its the fundie types that are heavy into proselytizing, Jehovah Witnesses and the like. Unfortunately, they seem to be a large part of the base of the Republican party.

    Not all Christians do obsess, but enough do that it is a serious issue for a large chunk of the U.S. population. I just can’t see an equivalent in other religions. It’s like Hindus debating the coming of the Kalki Avatar, when it’s going to happen and Guruji’s having T.V. shows that focus on how current events are omens for Kalki’s coming.

    It’s just so out of whack from other religions.

  147. 147.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    April 9, 2015 at 12:01 pm

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): And the shallow romances have the best guides.

  148. 148.

    Amir Khalid

    April 9, 2015 at 12:02 pm

    @Fred:
    I vaguely remember a Christian hair metal band from decades ago called Stryper. Was it them?

    I also remember that the Osmond Brothers did a rock band thing. I think they had a hit with a song titled Crazy Horses which wasn’t too bad.

  149. 149.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 12:04 pm

    @Chris: What about a combo platter? You get some good drunken bishop-beating or meth-addled Juggs perusal happening, you’ve really got it going on in the I Once Was Lost category.

  150. 150.

    shell

    April 9, 2015 at 12:05 pm

    @PaulW: And it was their hero, Robert E. Lee, who petitioned for peace first from Grant.

  151. 151.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 12:05 pm

    @Amir Khalid:

    I think they had a hit with a song titled Crazy Horses

    Oh, you must be thinking of White Horses. Prophetic little ditty.

  152. 152.

    burnspbesq

    April 9, 2015 at 12:08 pm

    If you have a couple of hours to kill today and feel a need to get really pissed off at Congressional Republicans, watch this.

    http://www.brookings.edu/events/2015/04/08-irs-budget-cuts-affect-taxpayers

    Drum, WaPo, and Bloomberg all wrote about this phenomenon yesterday, and it’s both real and serious.

  153. 153.

    Amir Khalid

    April 9, 2015 at 12:09 pm

    @shortstop:
    No, I mean this song.

  154. 154.

    Origuy

    April 9, 2015 at 12:10 pm

    I was on a flight which was delayed because some ultra-Orthodox men wouldn’t sit next to women. It was years ago, so I don’t remember if it was Heathrow to JFK, or JFK to SFO. Probably the former. It was a fairly larger group, too, five or six, so it took a while to sort things out.

  155. 155.

    Chris

    April 9, 2015 at 12:10 pm

    @Pee Cee:

    Their God’s modeled after a Wall Street banker.

    Funny, because it occurred to me recently that as portrayed in Christian mythology, the devil’s basically a banker. He travels the world offering people deals that’re too good to be true, demands collateral (your soul, typically), and when the deal falls through (and it always does), repossesses it so that you’re now under his thumb for all eternity.

    ETA: as South Park noted already, this makes Jesus and his “dying for your sins” shtick the equivalent of these people who buy up medical and student debt for the sole purpose of forgiving it.

  156. 156.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 12:10 pm

    @Amir Khalid: So maybe it wasn’t the funniest joke I’ve ever made…

  157. 157.

    boatboy_srq

    April 9, 2015 at 12:11 pm

    @rea: @opiejeanne: Wow. Just, wow…

    And for opiejeanne specifically, she would bother because a) maybe God forgot somebody the first time around who’ll need that information, and b) God saves your soul – but the Devil comes after you for your paperwork.

    /semisnark

  158. 158.

    low-tech cyclist

    April 9, 2015 at 12:13 pm

    Alex Malarkey reminded me of something: Betty, did any of your Southern Baptist relatives push “How to Live Like a King’s Kid” on you? The name of the author is Harold Hill, which seems innocuous enough, but it’s also the name of the con man in “The Music Man.”

    I can’t help but wonder if the author decided to write under that name to see if anyone would notice the hint that he might be pulling a con on them.

  159. 159.

    boatboy_srq

    April 9, 2015 at 12:14 pm

    @Chris:

    Funny, because it occurred to me recently that as portrayed in Christian mythology, the devil’s basically a banker. He travels the world offering people deals that’re too good to be true, demands collateral (your soul, typically), and when the deal falls through (and it always does), repossesses it so that you’re now under his thumb for all eternity.

    Funny: that sounds an awful lot like the deal a certain Dr. Faust got presented once…

  160. 160.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 12:14 pm

    @Origuy: Politely asking for someone to switch seats with them is one thing, but occasionally you’ll hear about an ultra-orthodox man demanding that the woman seated next to him be moved. Uh, no, buddy. Just no.

    Some airlines are now requiring very overweight people to purchase two seats (or have they stopped that due to public outcry?). Perhaps the best way to be assured that you won’t have female flesh on either side of you is to voluntarily purchase two or three seats, depending on row configuration.

  161. 161.

    Amir Khalid

    April 9, 2015 at 12:15 pm

    @shortstop:
    You’d think the Osmonds, themselves being Mormons, would have written a prophetic song about white horses, but it seems they didn’t. Pity. Mitt could have used a decent campaign song back in 2012.

  162. 162.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 12:15 pm

    @ruemara: Pigs in the Parlor? Never heard of it before, thank dog. You are a survivor.

    I just had Wilbur, and Clarence the Clean Pig. And later, Animal Farm.

    From this Amazon offering:

    The Hammonds also present a categorized list of 53 Demonic Groupings, including various behavior patterns and addictions.

    I feel so badly for kids who get their heads filled with this kind of crap. Your choice is pigs or purity.

  163. 163.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 12:17 pm

    @shortstop: The NYTimes readers commenting were suggesting the Orthodox buy multiple seats, stay home, or travel by sea.

  164. 164.

    Citizen Alan

    April 9, 2015 at 12:20 pm

    @germy shoemangler:

    There is a profitable side-genre of people who died, were resuscitated, and caught a glimpse of The Other Side®. The books sell briskly and the authors pick up generous fees on the speaking circuit.

    What’s fascinating to me is how popular such books are among Christians despite the fact that they are actually quite heretical. IIRC, except for a few special cases — Elijah, Enoch, Mary (if you’re Catholic) — Heaven is currently populated by God and his angels. Christians won’t actually be admitted until after they are resurrected on Judgment Day when Christ returns. So all these people who have near death experiences and talk to Grandpa and Aunt Lou-Lou can’t possibly be experiencing Christian heaven. Maybe they’re seeing the Elysian Fields and the Greeks had it right after all.

  165. 165.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 12:21 pm

    @Amir Khalid: And one whose author didn’t make a public request for the campaign to stop playing it.

  166. 166.

    Calouste

    April 9, 2015 at 12:23 pm

    @Citizen Alan: When I was in Catholic school, the priest told us that the only people who would go straight to heaven were the Pope and Mother Theresa, and that everyone else, himself included, would have to go to purgatory first.

  167. 167.

    scav

    April 9, 2015 at 12:23 pm

    @rea: Wait a minute, leave of absence? Isn’t that a tell that she knew her Rapture Status was only to be temporary, that she’d be tossed back as too small to keep?

  168. 168.

    Amir Khalid

    April 9, 2015 at 12:25 pm

    @shortstop:
    Would an airline be obliged to honour an Orthodox Jewish passenger’s request not to have a woman seated next to him, as it would my request for halal food? If so, don’t these guys ask for that when they book their flights?

  169. 169.

    Citizen Alan

    April 9, 2015 at 12:26 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    The whole point of the Protestant Reformation was that there should be no mortal central authority telling people what to believe. Which of course naturally leads to discrimination and conflict whenever a subset of Christians of one denomination move into an area where there is a much larger community with differing beliefs on some “important” point.

  170. 170.

    boatboy_srq

    April 9, 2015 at 12:27 pm

    @Fred: I had a university classmate who insisted that all rock music (actually, anything with harmonies in thirds and a 4/4 signature) was Satanic. Seriously. I had a few more who got incensed when Amy Grant – of all people – dared to ask (in a song!) whether all the judgmental people listening to her were the Good Xtians they thought themselves. There’s no introspection in that crowd. None.

  171. 171.

    Amir Khalid

    April 9, 2015 at 12:28 pm

    @Citizen Alan:
    You mean when good Christians die, they go to Paris?

  172. 172.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 12:30 pm

    @Amir Khalid: I don’t think any airline has an official policy on this yet. I suspect they will going forward. Taking care of it ahead of time is indeed the most efficient way to handle it. I think part of the problem has been that at least some of these passengers are only bringing it up after people are already seated.

  173. 173.

    Citizen Alan

    April 9, 2015 at 12:31 pm

    @opiejeanne:

    No, it’s better than that. After the Rapture, the Antichrist (a Romanian diplomat named — and I am not making this up — Nicolai Carpathia) BECOMES the UN Secretary General and uses that position as a springboard to take over the world.

  174. 174.

    MattF

    April 9, 2015 at 12:31 pm

    @Amir Khalid: I don’t think an airline is obliged to do anything– however, they will try to satisfy their customers. It’s worth noting that orthodox-Jews-who-won’t-sit-next-to-women are a minority of a minority of a minority of a minority. I think an airline could plausibly just say ‘no’.

  175. 175.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 9, 2015 at 12:32 pm

    @Elizabelle: How is this gender based segregation different from racial segregation? It is offensive.

  176. 176.

    boatboy_srq

    April 9, 2015 at 12:32 pm

    @Amir Khalid: Dietary preferences (and to most airlines it’s just that) are handled at the individual ticketholder level: no other ticketholder is impacted. Seating preferences are limited to class-of-cabin/aisle/window/exit-row: anything more falls short of equal-treatment-of-passengers limitations, and is vulnerable to discrimination litigation. Naturally a subculture that discriminates on a daily basis won’t recognize the validity of those obligations, but still. Now, if you required that your entire row be halal, it would be different…

  177. 177.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 9, 2015 at 12:34 pm

    @Citizen Alan: How is that possible? The United Nations does not have a standing army.

  178. 178.

    Citizen Alan

    April 9, 2015 at 12:36 pm

    @elmo:

    I’ve always wondered: what happens next? The Millennial Kingdom is supposed to last a thousand years, but what happens on Day 365,001?

    IIRC, Satan breaks out of Hell and leads another war against heaven which God casually swats down before sticking him and his followers back in Hell, this time for eternity. I think it’s because there’s two different verses about Satan going to Hell (one for 1000 year and one for eternity) and followers who don’t understand metaphor can’t believe that 1000 years might be a euphemism for eternity instead of a specific length of time.

  179. 179.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 12:37 pm

    @MattF: @boatboy_srq: I am guessing that the airlines will say something like: “We can accommodate your advance request as long as seats not next to Walking Bags O’ Tempting Sex, aka Wimmen*, are available, and as long as you don’t request a specific seat. Otherwise, you need to purchase additional seats or make alternate travel arrangements.”

    *Not actual airline terminology

  180. 180.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 9, 2015 at 12:37 pm

    @gene108: Assorted Babajis have enough influence over many Indians without the Kalki avatar nonsense.

  181. 181.

    Chris

    April 9, 2015 at 12:38 pm

    @Citizen Alan:

    I’ve visited the Reformation Museum in Geneva. There’s a pretty funny quote from Calvin to the effect that basically, yes, we’ve overthrown the shackles of the Papacy and that’s wonderful and all, but it’s important to remember that the common people are still going to find themselves overwhelmed by all this Biblical stuff, and so it’s important that there be a clergy to “chew” it all for them before they can digest it.

    Meet the new boss…

  182. 182.

    Citizen Alan

    April 9, 2015 at 12:40 pm

    @gene108:

    Fred Clark attributes it to fear of death. Every prior generation has faced death through disease, age, accident, war, what have you. But THIS generation will be the one that is so special that the believers will be swept up into heaven without dying first.

  183. 183.

    germy shoemangler

    April 9, 2015 at 12:40 pm

    @Citizen Alan: “Maybe they’re seeing the Elysian Fields and the Greeks had it right after all.”

    The Elysian Fields are in Hoboken: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysian_Fields,_Hoboken,_New_Jersey

    I wish I believed in an Afterlife. I envy people who believe in their bones they’ll be reunited with departed loved ones. I don’t believe, and i’ve never believed.

    An old man of my acquaintance recently lost his wife. He told me he held her hand as she passed and whispered “I’ll see you soon.”

  184. 184.

    Violet

    April 9, 2015 at 12:41 pm

    @MattF: The thing about these types of people–the orthodox Jews are only the example in this case–is that it’s all about them. They don’t care if they inconvenience others. They have their religious beliefs and want everyone to accommodate them. Selfish asshats.

    Maybe they could consider buying up the entire row so they don’t risk being next to the unclean woman. Maybe they could choose not to fly if their religious beliefs are offended. But no. They want everyone else to accommodate them. Everyone else has to be inconvenienced, move seats after they’re settled–and that is a massive hassle these days with zero room on planes and maybe your carry on is now behind you and you have to wait for the entire aircraft to deplane before you can get your bag–because they can’t plan ahead to make sure their own religious beliefs are met.

    The whole thing is ridiculous. Selfish, selfish, selfish.

  185. 185.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    April 9, 2015 at 12:41 pm

    @Calouste:

    Purgatory always seemed liked a reasonable compromise position to the question of what happens in the afterlife if you’re not a saint but not really a bad person — basically, you pay off your sins for a few years and then you get to move on to Heaven. The yes-or-no, Heaven-or-Hell dichotomy of most of the Protestant churches seems a little unfair, and that’s even before you get to Calvin-style predestination.

  186. 186.

    ruemara

    April 9, 2015 at 12:43 pm

    @Elizabelle: I had to leave for my sanity. EVERYTHING was a demon. Buying used clothes or furniture? Be careful, the demons that person has could come along for the ride. Paisley? Demonic. Candy corn & trick or treating – demonic. Hearing rock music at a store? Dying your hair funky colors? Wearing too much black? Demons. I used spend an hour or two praying , hoping I covered all the sins I may have done just so I would not be open to demons, because demons also caused madness & cannibalism. That book even taught that reading or watching stories with vampires or monsters or superheroes was to get us used to them being fully present on the earth during the end times and accepting of evil creatures. I used to sleep with my door blockaded for years. It was stressful.

  187. 187.

    germy shoemangler

    April 9, 2015 at 12:45 pm

    @shortstop: “Walking Bags O’ Tempting Sex, aka Wimmen”

    “Her lips, hey eyes, her hair, her perfume! I can’t sit next to her! I WON’T”

    As it was said earlier in this thread, religion is a way to control the dangerous and unpredictable female. Which explains the mens’ violent, outraged reaction to Wiccan practices. “Witches!” talking about the “Goddess” terrifies the shit out of them.

  188. 188.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 9, 2015 at 12:47 pm

    @ruemara: You are a remarkable individual to have put that past behind you and become a sane, rational and a kind person.

  189. 189.

    Roger Moore

    April 9, 2015 at 12:48 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    The NYTimes readers commenting were suggesting the Orthodox buy multiple seats, stay home, or travel by sea.

    My suggestions on what they should do to themselves would be much cruder and ruder.

  190. 190.

    Citizen Alan

    April 9, 2015 at 12:49 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    The author is Tim LaHaye, a notorious Bircher, who believes in UN black helicopter theories. Fred Clark routinely mocks the series’ belief that the UN (a) can rewrite the laws of any country completely by fiat and (b) has its own standing army to back it up. For example, the post-Rapture UN mandate adopting English as the universal language is presented as a fait accompli that no one ever really complains about.

  191. 191.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    April 9, 2015 at 12:49 pm

    Okay, here’s my question for people who know more about predestination than I do: give the Big J’s near obsession with the poor in the Bible, shouldn’t being poor be proof that you are among the Elect and being rich be proof that you’re on the express lane to Hell as soon as you croak? I realize it’s human nature to construct it the other way around, but it seems ass-backwards to what Jesus actually says about the meek inheriting the earth, etc.

  192. 192.

    bemused

    April 9, 2015 at 12:51 pm

    @ruemara:

    Guarding against anything that could be demonic sounds like it takes up most of one’s time which is probably by design. If most of your daily thoughts are consumed by demons, it leaves very little room for any other thinking, let alone critical thinking.

  193. 193.

    Punchy

    April 9, 2015 at 12:53 pm

    @Origuy: I wonder what the airline would do if a group of 3 Muslims decided they needed to all sit together for prayers. Methinks such a seating accomodation so forthcoming for the Orth Jews would not be extended to those of the darker skins.

  194. 194.

    bemused

    April 9, 2015 at 12:53 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I agree.

  195. 195.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 12:53 pm

    @bemused: Me, too.

  196. 196.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    April 9, 2015 at 12:53 pm

    @ruemara:

    If you haven’t read the LoveJoyFeminism blog over at Patheos, I highly recommend it. She broke away from her homeschooling, Rapture-believing family and has a lot of good stories and great links to other bloggers.

  197. 197.

    Roger Moore

    April 9, 2015 at 12:54 pm

    @Amir Khalid:

    Would an airline be obliged to honour an Orthodox Jewish passenger’s request not to have a woman seated next to him, as it would my request for halal food?

    In the US, I wouldn’t expect them to be obligated to do either thing. They will do their best to fulfill your request for halal food because they don’t want to lose your business. Similarly, they will probably try to oblige the Orthodox Jewish men’s requests not to be seated next to women, but they’ll do it by politely requesting people to move. In either case, if they can’t fulfill the request for some reason, that’s the passenger’s tough luck, and they can like it or lump it.

  198. 198.

    Gin & Tonic

    April 9, 2015 at 12:58 pm

    In other annals of Men Who Will Never Be President, it turns out that my fair state’s ex-Governor, Lincoln Chafee, is forming an exploratory committee to challenge Hillary from the left. This does not even rise to the level of point-and-laugh.

    But he is distinguished by at least one fact: he may be the only person to get a Classics degree from Brown and then go on to Montana State University to learn horseshoeing.

  199. 199.

    Central Planning

    April 9, 2015 at 1:00 pm

    @Mary G:

    I don’t know that it’s true, but I’ve read that there are people who actually pay to have their pets taken care of by sinners after they are “Raptured,” since they don’t believe animals have souls but still don’t want to leave poor Fido alone and starving after they go off to heaven.

    That sounds like a great business model. For $250, I will take care of your pet until it’s life (or my life) ends. But if and only if you are raptured. Your death by any other cause will not count. No refunds.

  200. 200.

    bemused

    April 9, 2015 at 1:02 pm

    @scav:

    I think she was subconsciously (or not) hedging her bets.

  201. 201.

    Calouste

    April 9, 2015 at 1:04 pm

    @Punchy: Nothing wrong with people wanting to sit together, how else do you think families travel? And on a lot of airlines, you can pick your own seats at check-in. It’s not wanting to sit next to someone you don’t know and has nothing to do with you that is the issue.

  202. 202.

    ruemara

    April 9, 2015 at 1:05 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): see the prosperity gospel that creeped into the modern Christian theology. I also highly, highly recommend a new book coming out called Saving the Sinner. Ostensibly, it’s regarding the conflicts of science & religion, but it boils down to the role of Adam and the biblical purity that fundamentalism requires.

  203. 203.

    Calouste

    April 9, 2015 at 1:06 pm

    @boatboy_srq:

    I had a university classmate who insisted that all rock music (actually, anything with harmonies in thirds and a 4/4 signature) was Satanic. Seriously.

    Of course Money is mostly in 7/4, so that will be fine.

  204. 204.

    ruemara

    April 9, 2015 at 1:07 pm

    @bemused: this was ever my flaw. I could read and think. It did not go well for me until I ran away from the parents, then from the faith years later.

  205. 205.

    bemused

    April 9, 2015 at 1:10 pm

    @ruemara:

    I can only imagine how wonderful it must have felt to be free from that oppression and free to be yourself.

  206. 206.

    Chris

    April 9, 2015 at 1:11 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    I think our conservatives are really good at flipping narratives so that the people they like win.

    You know the whole “black racism”/”reverse racism” thing, about how yes, blacks used to be oppressed but now things have changed and it’s the whites who are oppressed? They do the same thing with economics. I’ve seen a whole article titled “Today’s ‘Poor’ Are The ‘Rich’ Jesus Warned Us About” arguing that in the era of the welfare state, it was really poor people who are the parasites gorging themselves on the work of poor oppressed working people. And other arguments saying that unions are the robber-barons of the modern age and that we have to fight their power so they can’t corrupt our political system like robber barons once did.

    Conservatives are really, really, really good at writing themselves into any story they want as the heroes, and their enemies as the villains, and not very good at having the self-awareness to think “hey, wait a minute…” when staring in the mirror.

  207. 207.

    Amir Khalid

    April 9, 2015 at 1:13 pm

    @Roger Moore:
    Well, respecting passengers’ dietary needs is standard practice in the airline business, as a matter of common courtesy, even if no law in the US actually requires it. I would expect the same regard for their religious scruples, however odd they might seem.

  208. 208.

    Roger Moore

    April 9, 2015 at 1:21 pm

    @Amir Khalid:

    I would expect the same regard for their religious scruples, however odd they might seem.

    It depends on how much it inconveniences other passengers. Serving you halal food is a minor inconvenience to the airline, but it doesn’t to anything to the other passengers. Changing seats can be quite a hassle for other passengers, especially on a full or nearly full flight, where it may mean shuffling several people around. At the very least, I would expect that the passenger requiring special seating accommodations would have to deal with whatever was available, even if that meant being downgraded to a less desirable seat.

  209. 209.

    Ripley (Whiskey Fire version)

    April 9, 2015 at 1:21 pm

    @Amir Khalid:

    Yep, Crazy Horses. I’m in an occasional band that’s played it for a few years. Oddly enough, it’s about the increasing number of fossil fuel vehicles and pollution.

  210. 210.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 9, 2015 at 1:22 pm

    @Amir Khalid: So instead of someone not wanting to sit next to a woman, what if someone were to object to sitting next to a black person or a Muslim? Should the airline accommodate them too?

    ETA: I find this behavior is not merely quirky or odd but discriminatory and obnoxious.

  211. 211.

    Violet

    April 9, 2015 at 1:22 pm

    @Amir Khalid: Not sure when the last time is you’ve flown a US airline, but most of them don’t serve food these days except sometimes in first class. Longer haul or international flights may still have a meal included in the price of the ticket. Otherwise you bring your own food on the plane (probably bought at the airport because it’s a challenge to bring food through security–some meets security requirements, some doesn’t) or choose from their dire selections of pre-packaged foods at extortionist prices.

  212. 212.

    'Niques

    April 9, 2015 at 1:25 pm

    @shortstop: @gene108: With the ultimate “I TOLD you so!” thrown in for good measure.

  213. 213.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 9, 2015 at 1:25 pm

    Stuck in moderation, so I am trying again.
    @Amir Khalid: So instead of someone not wanting to sit next to a woman, what if someone were to object to sitting next to a black person or a Muslim? Should the airline accommodate them too?

    ETA: I find this behavior to be not merely quirky or odd but discriminatory and obnoxious.

  214. 214.

    Amir Khalid

    April 9, 2015 at 1:25 pm

    @Violet:
    I last flew on an American airline in the last year of the Clinton administration.

  215. 215.

    Amir Khalid

    April 9, 2015 at 1:27 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    I’m not sure one could point to a religious scruple against sitting next to a black person or a Muslim.

  216. 216.

    Violet

    April 9, 2015 at 1:28 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: My religious beliefs require that airlines upgrade me to first class on every flight. Why won’t the airline accommodate me!

  217. 217.

    Violet

    April 9, 2015 at 1:31 pm

    @Amir Khalid: Ha ha ha. You have no idea how terrible it is now. Asian airlines are so wonderful. American carriers are like cattle cars. Flights are something to endure. There is no food except that which you pay for. I’m waiting for them to take away the soft drinks. I figure they can’t take away the water because of health concerns.

    Edit: I’ll also add that asking passengers to change seats for any reason was much less of a hassle at that time. There is so much less room of any kind these days that even getting up to go use the lavatory is an incredible hassle. Changing seats once you’re settled is nightmarish.

  218. 218.

    Gin & Tonic

    April 9, 2015 at 1:31 pm

    @Amir Khalid: Why should religious preferences get special treatment?

  219. 219.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 1:32 pm

    @Chris: terrific op ed today by Harold Meyerson in the WaPost: in honor of 150th anniversary of Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House:

    Today’s GOP is the party of Jefferson Davis.

    [In the wake of Reconstruction and suppression of emancipated slaves’ rights] As Douglas A. Blackmon has demonstrated in his Pulitzer Prize-winning study “Slavery by Another Name,” numerous corporations — many of them headquartered in the North — relied heavily on the labor of thousands of black prisoners, many serving long sentences for minor crimes or no crimes at all.

    Indeed, one reason the race-based subjugation of labor was so resilient was that it was a linchpin not just of the Southern economy, but also of the entire U.S. economy. For much of the 20th century, the prevailing view of the North-South conflict was that it had pitted the increasingly advanced capitalist economy of the North against the pre-modern, quasi-feudal economy of the South.

    In recent years, however, a spate of new histories has placed the antebellum cotton economy of the South at the very center of 19th-century capitalism. Works such as “Empire of Cotton,” by Harvard historian Sven Beckert, and “The Half Has Never Been Told,” by Cornell University historian Edward E. Baptist, have documented how slave-produced cotton was the largest and most lucrative industry in America’s antebellum economy, the source of the fortunes of New York-based traders and investors and of British manufacturers. The rise in profitability, Baptist shows, resulted in large part from the increased brutalization of the slave work force.

    …. Even today, one of America’s most fundamental problems is that the alliance between the current form of Southern labor and the current form of New York finance is with us still. The five states that have no minimum wage laws of their own are in the South: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee. Southern-based corporations such as Wal-Mart are among the leading opponents of workers’ right to organize, and as Wal-Mart has expanded into the North and West, so have the “right-to-work” statutes of Southern states been enacted by Republican governments in the Midwest.

    The Southernization of the Republican Party and the increasing domination of Wall Street’s brand of shareholder capitalism over the nation’s economic life have combined to erode both the income and the power of U.S. workers. Unions are anathema to Wall Street and the GOP. Federal regulations empowering consumers and employees are opposed by both.

    Fueled by the mega-donations of the mega-rich, today’s Republican Party is not just far from being the party of Lincoln: It’s really the party of Jefferson Davis. It suppresses black voting; it opposes federal efforts to mitigate poverty; it objects to federal investment in infrastructure and education just as the antebellum South opposed internal improvements and rejected public education; it scorns compromise. It is nearly all white. It is the lineal descendant of Lee’s army, and the descendants of Grant’s have yet to subdue it.

  220. 220.

    Elizabelle

    April 9, 2015 at 1:33 pm

    @Roger Moore: Or ejected, if He won’t be reasonable.

  221. 221.

    Violet

    April 9, 2015 at 1:37 pm

    @Gin & Tonic: That’s the fundamental question, isn’t it? Why should religious beliefs get special treatment? Why not moral or ethical beliefs in the absence of religion?

  222. 222.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 9, 2015 at 1:48 pm

    @Amir Khalid: Why should I have to respect the archaic traditions of someone else? If they don’t want to sit next to me, its their problem not mine.

  223. 223.

    Violet

    April 9, 2015 at 1:50 pm

    @Roger Moore: I was on a flight a few years ago where a guy wanted his family to be able to sit together. I think there were about five of them. So he took it upon himself to start asking passengers to change seats. He didn’t speak great English and it was a little confusing what was happening and what he wanted but people tried to be accommodating.

    Apparently he’d also asked the flight attendant for help and she was working on the issue in another section of the plane. She came and told him she had his seats and found all of our section of the plane standing around or struggling with the overhead bin or whatever while this guy kept putting grandma here and young daughter there and then moving them because these two people needed to sit together and he was splitting them up, etc. It was a complete clusterfuck.

    The flight attendant finally told us all to go back to our original seats and the started over from the beginning. She told him and us not to try to do the big seat moving thing on our own because we didn’t know what was available on the plane like they did. It was such a mess. The flight attendant was really angry because it made us fifteen minutes late from pushing back from the gate and ontime departures are a big metric for the airline industry.

    The guy was such an idiot. Lesson: let the flight attendants work it out and if they can’t, deal with the consequences. Note: This doesn’t apply to smaller seat changes. I’m talking about big seat shifts where you have to involve a bunch of people including those you don’t know.

  224. 224.

    TG Chicago

    April 9, 2015 at 1:50 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): From Matthew 19:24 and Mark 10:25:

    it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God

    Direct quote from Jesus that made it into two of the Gospels. Yet many “Christians” are more interested in some anti-gay stuff in Leviticus (which is next to anti-shellfish stuff).

    And when some Christians support gay rights, these others will claim the liberal Christians are picking and choosing which parts of the Bible to follow.

  225. 225.

    RSA

    April 9, 2015 at 1:52 pm

    @Mnemosyne (tablet):

    I protest on behalf of cheap, shallow romance paperbacks. At least they usually include some hot (if acrobatically improbable) sex to keep the reader’s interest.

    After reading the first in the series, I remember telling a friend that the book was a romance, except that wherever a sex scene would ordinarily appear, the relevant characters would fall to their knees and start praying.

  226. 226.

    Gin & Tonic

    April 9, 2015 at 1:55 pm

    @Violet: This isn’t even a belief. It is a preference. I can respect people who believe in, say, the Resurrection. Whom they sit next to on an airplane is not a belief.

  227. 227.

    Violet

    April 9, 2015 at 1:58 pm

    @Gin & Tonic: I thought the religious belief was that they’ll be damned to hell if they sit next to a woman or something.

  228. 228.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    April 9, 2015 at 2:27 pm

    @Amir Khalid:

    You’d be surprised. There’s at least one Christian sect (Christian Identity) that is explicitly racist in its beliefs.

    As with other people here, I’m okay with someone asking to have his own seat moved because of his religious scruples, but I do not think he should be allowed to demand that the other passenger be moved. That would be like you saying the person next to you has to be moved to a different seat because they’re eating a ham sandwich, but you should get to stay in place.

  229. 229.

    Amir Khalid

    April 9, 2015 at 2:34 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    Back when I flew on planes, my own approach to those sitting next to me was to politely ignore them throughout the flight, while they politely ignored me. I never gave a crap about their gender, skin colour, or religious beliefs if any. Had anyone ever refused to sit next to me for those reasons (no one ever did refuse) I too would have been offended, and would have refused to move.

  230. 230.

    cmorenc

    April 9, 2015 at 2:57 pm

    I had a flight years ago where I had such awful problems with my adjacent seat-mate on a full flight that I had to ask the flight attendant’s help to remedy the situation. I had been assigned the middle seat (of 3) on the left side of the aisle, roughly in the middle of the airplane, and was the first one in our row to arrive at my seat. A couple of minutes later, a man and his wife arrived, his wife assigned the window seat, the husband the aisle seat – although the woman was slightly on the smallish side of medium (about 5’3″, probably 100 lbs), her husband was more overweight than Chris Christie before gastric bypass surgery, and his arms and torso flabbed more than six inches over the arm-rest into my seat-space, leaving me so awkwardly packed it took continuous effort for me to resist being pushed over into snuggling impolitely tight against his wife with my head and left shoulder. Fortunately, the flight attendant informed me that there was exactly one, and only one, empty seat left in the entire plane, in the rearmost row immediately in front of the lavatories – which I took, despite it also being a noisy spot beside the plane’s rearward-mounted engines (and no window on that row). I didn’t feel like being a dick and requesting the wife (or requesting the flight attendant to direct the wife) to change seats with me, although both he and she were being major dicks deliberately taking a window and aisle seat instead of adjacent seats (I had not received my seat assignment until the gate due to a late flight change, so it’s unlikely this seating arrangement wasn’t deliberately chosen by them in advance).

    IN MORE RECENT DAYS, the airlines would most likely force a grossly overweight guy like that to purchase TWO seats – which they should have done even back then, 20 years ago.

  231. 231.

    Amir Khalid

    April 9, 2015 at 3:06 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):
    I’m pretty sure Christian Identity doesn’t have any branches in a mostly non-white country like Malaysia. In fact, I doubt they have a lot of branches even in America.

  232. 232.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 9, 2015 at 3:25 pm

    @Amir Khalid: Thankfully my flying experience has been like yours as well.

  233. 233.

    Violet

    April 9, 2015 at 3:27 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): I think that’s the main issue. If a traveler has a problem with where they are seated because of the person they are sitting next to then they, the traveler who has the problem, need to be the one who moves. Asking the other person to move is incredibly inconsiderate and rude. It’s not the second person’s fault the first traveler has some problem sitting next to them.

    If people traveling by commercial aircraft are such delicate flowers that they can’t even risk sitting next to someone they consider objectionable for whatever reason then perhaps they should change their approach to travel. They could find another method or not travel at all and stay in the safe cocoon of whatever place allows them to avoid the undesirable element.

  234. 234.

    shortstop

    April 9, 2015 at 3:34 pm

    @Chris: This practice is increasingly common, and it alarms me greatly because most of the people employing it (at the behest of their meme-makers) have no knowledge of history, no sense of perspective, no understanding of what constitutes a valid analogy, no recognition that words mean something.

    Following the RFRA flap over the past weeks, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen/heard someone say—as they recognize with rage that SCOTUS is not going to rule for the ‘phobes in June—that “the Supreme Court doesn’t always get it right. Remember Dred Scott! This is just like that.” In their minds, having to follow relevant anti-discrimination laws and statutes if they’re a public accommodation is exactly like being a human piece of property. They are serious.

  235. 235.

    Chris

    April 9, 2015 at 3:47 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    Huh, interesting.

    The impression I gleaned from what I’ve read of the Civil War and aftermath is that Northern capitalists resented the power of slave owners as a national elite whose influence rivaled their own. So they were happy to see them taken down a peg (hence Civil War), but once that had happened they were also happy to preserve the class/race hierarchy and let their business interests in the South benefit from that hierarchy, in tandem with local elites.

    In one form or other, I know the alliance between “Southern labor and New York finance” goes back much, much further than the “Southern Strategy” of the sixties. Never occurred to me that Southern labor would be seen as a form of capitalism, though.

    I think part of the reason it’s viewed as feudalism and not capitalism is that Southern plantation owning elites themselves were so keen on projecting the image of a well-bred aristocracy, with an aristocrat’s contempt for the grubby little parasites who worked for profit (not that they wouldn’t still do business with them, of course).

  236. 236.

    Chris

    April 9, 2015 at 3:53 pm

    @shortstop:

    Yeah. It worries me that I think this kind of logic works especially well on white people in my generation – people who grew up well after the civil rights era (or even the crime obsession of the seventies and eighties), who’re taught of the civil rights era as something in the past and MLK as a saint who freed black people and brought us all racial equality. In that context, the thoughtless notion that “oh, why are black people still complaining? Desegregation’s been a done deal for fifty years!” comes easily. As does the thought that really, it’s time to stop trying so hard to help black people with affirmative action and whatnot, after all it’s not really fair to whites, is it?

    I’ve been shown polls that say my generation’s much better than the previous ones, even if you’re limiting yourself to white people, which is nice. But still, I bump into this kind of thoughtlessness constantly.

  237. 237.

    Roger Moore

    April 9, 2015 at 3:55 pm

    @Chris:
    Another critical point is that a lot of the anti-slavery feeling in the North was from selfish motives. Many small-time farmers and businessmen in the North opposed slavery because they saw it as unfair competition, not because they gave a damn about the slaves as people. Once the war was over and slavery was officially over, they didn’t really care whether the former slaves got a fair shake.

  238. 238.

    boatboy_srq

    April 9, 2015 at 4:00 pm

    @Amir Khalid: I’m quite sure a Mormon could have found a religious reason not to sit next to a black person (until quite recently), and an Xtian sitting next to a heretic (Muslim) will find a religious reason to move faster than you can spit.

  239. 239.

    Doug r

    April 9, 2015 at 4:01 pm

    @BGinCHI: Futurama did it

  240. 240.

    Chris

    April 9, 2015 at 4:02 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    Right.

    Lincoln’s “free soil” thing, IIRC, was all about idealizing Northern farmers who earned a living with their own work, and saying that it was disgusting that these people had to compete with fat bastards who didn’t work a day in their lives and derived all their profits from the labor of people they could force to work for them. Which to be fair, I don’t exactly disagree with.

  241. 241.

    Bill Arnold

    April 9, 2015 at 4:05 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    I had an eye-opening experience going to a quaker meeting held in an old quaker meeting house (Pauling NY). The building was divided into two sides, one side for men, one for women. (We all sat, men and women, on the left.). Apparently this was a traditional practice. Usually the barrier was movable, FWIW.
    (Yes, this is still done in some subgroups of some religions.)

  242. 242.

    EthylEster

    April 9, 2015 at 4:07 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I have never understood the purpose of the elebenty different Protestant denominations.

    It’s what you get when you let folks do their own thing…that is, when you ditch R catholicism.

    According to “Rick Steves goes to Israel & talks to an Israeli about orthodoxy in Israel” episode, there are over 40 orthodox sects in the country. So it’s not just the christians who can’t decide on what their religion REALLY means.

  243. 243.

    EthylEster

    April 9, 2015 at 4:18 pm

    @opiejeanne:

    something by Richard Armour

    This reminds me that my first exposure to great books was via “American Lit Re-lit”.
    Funny AND informative. I still know some of Armour’s jokes from it.

  244. 244.

    Bill Arnold

    April 9, 2015 at 4:23 pm

    @Bill Arnold:
    Correction, “Pawling, NY”

  245. 245.

    boatboy_srq

    April 9, 2015 at 4:34 pm

    @Chris: Problem with that illustration is that it differs from modern corporate governance and investor-driven business practices, how, exactly? Because I can’t imagine a better description of the Walton family, Ken Lay, Don Blankenship, the Koch brothers or nearly any investment banker.

  246. 246.

    Bartkid

    April 9, 2015 at 4:45 pm

    >will no longer sell any book about contemporary people returning from heaven after a near-death experience
    I think others beat me to the punch, if I’m reading right what they wrote.
    But, I would put it this way (I’m sure I’m splitting an infinitive):
    They will only sell books about people returning from heaven after a near-death experience as long as those people are now long-dead.

  247. 247.

    Chris

    April 9, 2015 at 5:10 pm

    @boatboy_srq:

    Well… yeah.

    If you’re saying that the Waltons and Kochs and all these characters are little different from slave owners who never worked a day in their lives and did nothing but steal from the people who did, then I think I agree.

  248. 248.

    boatboy_srq

    April 9, 2015 at 5:21 pm

    @Chris: That’s exactly it. Not to mention the holier-than-thou attitude they exude for giving jobs to all the little people whose communities would starve in poverty without them.

  249. 249.

    Chris

    April 9, 2015 at 5:29 pm

    @boatboy_srq:

    Not to mention the holier-than-thou attitude they exude for giving jobs to all the little people whose communities would starve in poverty without them.

    Lincoln had a good quote for this – “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

    Although it pretty quickly got turned into Wall Street’s own PAC, the original Republican Party really did have a meaningful populist component. Economically populist, that is. I do think a lot of their founders would be disgusted with what their party’s become today, and not just because of cultural/social issues.

  250. 250.

    jake the antisoshul soshulist

    April 9, 2015 at 5:40 pm

    @Mustang Bobby:

    I have offended people in the past by saying that you would meet a better class of people in Hell. I suppose it is a tragic failure of the imagination, but I cannot imagine a Heaven that would not be a slow acting version of Hell. But then I can’t understand the appeal of existing for eternity.

  251. 251.

    Citizen Alan

    April 9, 2015 at 5:41 pm

    Looks like my comment got eaten, so hear it is again: The best description of the Left Behind series I have ever seen is “Christian revenge snuff porn.” It’s nothing but twelve novels (plus spin-offs) of people who fit demographic boxes that right wing Christians don’t like getting killed off in horrible ways, with the understanding that they will all be sent to hell to be tortured for eternity for not believing the things the authors say they should.

    Interesting side note: Tim LaHaye’s wife is Beverly LaHaye, the president of Concerned Women of America (or as some snarkily call it “Ladies Against Women”). Beverly LaHaye believes that women should eschew work in favor of staying home and looking after their husbands. She believes this so strongly that she holds a high six-figure salary in an organization for which she works about 3000 miles away from the house where her beloved husband lives. Go figure.

  252. 252.

    Citizen Alan

    April 9, 2015 at 5:44 pm

    @jake the antisoshul soshulist:

    The fundamentalist Xtian view of Heaven is spending every second of every day of every century for eternity praising God. You may have loved ones who went to hell to be tortured for eternity by said God, but you never think of them because you’re too busy praising God. Forever.

    To me, they’re both Hell, but one lets you feel it while the other mind-rapes you into thinking it’s pleasurable.

  253. 253.

    Central Planning

    April 9, 2015 at 6:38 pm

    @Citizen Alan:

    Beverly LaHaye believes that women should eschew work in favor of staying home and looking after their husbands.

    To be fair, I would love it if my wife stayed home and looked after me. She would love it if I was able to stay home and look after her. Reality says neither of us stay home.

  254. 254.

    evodevo

    April 10, 2015 at 7:29 am

    @Citizen Alan: Yes. This. Fundies AND regular Xtians have it all confused. There IS no “heaven” for those who just died. If you are up with what the “good book” actually says, you will lie in the earth (“soul” – where exactly they don’t say) until the second coming, whereupon the dead are judged and THEN sent wherever. Most american Xtians have this ideation that is totally wrong, but you will never hear a preacher correcting this mistake.

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